The Art of Navigating at the time of the Discoveries

About the book

This book discloses the techniques, the means and the studies on the Nature that allowed the Portiugueses to arrive where they did and that marked the transition of the Art of Navigation, of an empirical practice into a Science, created and developed by the Portuguese, in the XV th century.

The astronomical navigation and its instruments; the ships which have developed to deal with the characteristics of the sea and the environment to be exploited; the transmission of acquired knowledge through maps, scripts and seafaring books; the studies of sea and winds that allowed to adapt routes to the natural conditions and the instruction of the sea people, when the complexity of navigation no longer allowed the empiricism; all these are reported on an easy language in this book.

It is a book mainly destined to those who are interested in the History of Portugal, especially by the Discoveries, and in these, by the means used to fulfill this phenomenal Portuguese epic.

From easy reading, the book is read as a story whose characters are a bit different; Letters, winds, astrolabe stars, pilots, etc., living and communicating with each other.

This book is currently only published in Portuguese. However if you wish to know some more details, @mesa.com website and the author himself will be very happy to inform you. Please contact us.

About the author

At the age of 86, after the retirement of a long professional career dedicated to engineering and management in which history was always a hobby, he graduated and obtained a masters degree in "History of the Discoveries and Expansion", with the defense of a Dissertation on "The Art of Navigating" by Manoel Pimental (the editions of 1690 and 1712).

After that he has participated in congresses on the area having already elaborated the biography of the writer José Hermenegildo Correia.

This is his first published work and with it he intends to contribute to the dissemination of facts less well-known of portuguese History, in the area of the Discoveries and Expansion. At the moment its second book is already in the terminal stage.

The book as a gift

The book will be properly protected and shipped within a bag/wrap. If you wish, we can make a tailor made corrugated cardboard blue box (or another colour to be defined) and then you will get it ready to be used as a gift. If hose are your wishes please contact us to match the details and the additional costs.