Following 16th-Century Seabirds
European mariners in the Atlantic in the 16th century used a reliable navigational aid: seabirds.
Pedro Álvares Cabral found himself in an unenviable position in April 1500. A Portuguese fleet under his command, aiming to round the southern tip of Africa as Vasco da Gama had done only two years before, had swung too far out into the Atlantic and been blown off course by a storm. Sailing through the uncharted waters of the central Atlantic, it was by chance that the fleet stumbled across ‘some signs of land’ and found the northeast coast of what is today Brazil, inaugurating four centuries of Portuguese control over the region.
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