[Illustration: FIFTEENTH-CENTURY SHIPBUILDING YARD]
Hence Prince Henry’s pupils, even at such a late date in the world’s history, were the first to break through all the superstitious ideas, the ignorance, the myths, and even terror with which the African unknown was regarded. If his own men did not actually reach India, at any rate they prepared the way thither by sailing for two thousand miles to the southward where no other ships and sailors had been before, with the sole exception of the Phœnicians. Thus they went half the way to the Indian peninsula; in fact, we may add, the most important half. For when at last Vasco da Gama had got round the south of Africa from west to east he was in an ocean that had been regularly traversed by Arabian seamen for centuries. But it is not so much the exploits of Henry’s direct pupils which really matter; it is the influence which he began to exert in the fifteenth century and continued to exert even after his death. He created a new school of nautical thought and practice. All maritime progress prior to the fifteenth century leads up to Henry the Navigator: from him radiate all the wondrous improvements which followed after the date when his Sagres school was inaugurated. There is not a man or woman to-day who ought not to feel grateful to this illustrious and able man. The expansion of Christendom, the increase of national wealth, the development of the colonial idea--these are but a few of the achievements which belong to him. From Portugal to Spain the excellent idea spread of carefully instructing the nation’s seamen. It was Charles V who founded a lectureship at Seville on the Art of Navigation. Such authoritative men as Alonso de Chavez, Hieronymo de Chavez, and Roderigo Zamorano are referred to by Hakluyt as among those who, by word of mouth no less than by published treatise, were wont to instruct the Spanish mariners. Not only did Charles V establish a lectureship, but owing to “the rawnesse of his Seamen, and the manifolde shipwracks which they susteyned in passing and repassing betweene Spaine and the West Indies, with an high reach and great foresight, established ... a Pilote Major, for the examination of such as sought to take charge of ships in that voyage.”