Bartolomeu Dias

person · earth · Southern Africa

The Portuguese navigator who established that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans connect. Sailing from Lisbon in 1487 with two caravels and a supply ship, he was driven far south of the African coast by a storm, ran east expecting to raise land, found none, and turned north to strike the coast beyond its southern tip — proving the passage by accident of weather rather than by intention. His crews forced him to turn back at the Great Fish River, and he sighted the cape itself on the return. He named it, on the usual account, the Cape of Storms, and King John II renamed it the Cape of Good Hope for what it now made possible. Dias did not reach India, and the discovery sat unexploited for nearly a decade while Portugal weighed the cost; he later commanded on Cabral's 1500 fleet and was lost in a storm off the same cape.