Connor

__//**The Age of Exploratoin:**//__ Prince Henry the Navigator (Dom Henrique) was the son of King João of Portugal, born in 1394. He is most famous for the voyages of discovery that he organised and financed, which eventually led to the rounding of Africa and the establishment of sea routes to the Indies. Henry was also a very devout man, and was Governor of the Order of Christ from 1420 until his death in 1460. ||
 * ==Henry the Navigator==

__//**The Man and the Legend**//__

 * Prince Henry has become a legendary figure, and it is somewhat difficult to disentangle the historical facts from the heroic legends which surround him. Popular ideas about Henry are that he was a very learned and scientific man, skilled in the arts of navigation, and that he formed a school of navigation at Sagres and invented the caravel. However, these ideas are comparatively recent ones, and have no foundation in the historical records of the time. ||  ||
 * The early chroniclers of Henry's time, such as Azurara, need to be taken with a pinch of salt, since they were writing their chronicles with an aim of showing Henry in a good light as a devout and great prince (Azurara was a comendador of the Order of Christ, and was likely to be particularly biased). ||  ||
 * In the following text I have not //excised// all that cannot be reliably proved, but I have attempted to indicate where the legends lie, and to include some of the less palatable facts about Henry's life ||
 * //__Francis Drake:__//**



Sailing career
At age twenty-three, Drake made his first voyage to the new world sailing with his second cousin, Sir John Hawkins, on one of a fleet of ships owned by his relatives, the Hawkins family of Plymouth. In 1568 Drake was again with the Hawkins fleet when it was trapped by the Spaniards in the Mexican port of San Juan de Ulúa. He escaped along with Hawkins. Following the defeat at San Juan de Ulúa, Drake vowed revenge. He made two voyages to the West Indies, in 1570 and 1571, of which little is known. In 1572, he embarked on his first major independent enterprise. He planned an attack on the Isthmus of Panama, known to the Spanish as Tierra Firme and the English as the Spanish Main. This was the point at which the silver and gold treasure of Peru had to be landed and sent overland to the Caribbean Sea, where galleons from Spain would pick it up at the town of Nombre de Dios. Drake left Plymouth on 24 May 1572, with a crew of 73 men in two small vessels, the //Pascha// (70 tons) and the //Swan// (25 tons), to capture Nombre de Dios. His first raid was late in July 1572. Drake and his men captured the town and its treasure. When his men noticed that Drake was bleeding profusely from a wound, they insisted on withdrawing to save his life and left the treasure. Drake stayed in the area for almost a year, raiding Spanish shipping and attempting to capture a treasure shipment. In 1573, he joined Guillaume Le Testu. a French buccaneer, in an attack on a richly laden mule train. Drake and his party found that they had captured around 20 tons of silver and gold. They buried much of the treasure, as it was too much for their party to carry. (An account of this may have given rise to subsequent stories of pirates and buried treasure). Wounded, Le Testu was captured and later beheaded. The small band of adventurers dragged as much gold and silver as they could carry back across some 18 miles of jungle-covered mountains to where they had left the raiding boats. When they got to the coast, the boats were gone. Drake and his men, downhearted, exhausted and hungry, had nowhere to go and the Spanish were not far behind. At this point Drake rallied his men, buried the treasure on the beach, and built a raft to sail with two volunteers ten miles along the surf-lashed coast to where they had left the flagship. When Drake finally reached its deck, his men were alarmed at his bedraggled appearance. Fearing the worst, they asked him how the raid had gone. Drake could not resist a joke and teased them by looking downhearted. Then he laughed, pulled a necklace of Spanish gold from around his neck and said "Our voyage is made, lads!" By 9 August 1573, he had returned to Plymouth.

//**__Able Tasman:__**//

 * In 1642 he was appointed to command two ships to explore southern and eastern waters. Sailing in August he discovered Van Diemen's Land, New Zealand, the Tonga Islands and some of the Fiji group, and re-explored part of the north coast of New Guinea. **

=//__** William Dampier: **__//= On January 15th 1688 the ship sailed into the waters of the north west coast of Australia. It is said that he was the first Englishman to set foot on Australia. 

=James Cook:= On 1769 Captain James Cook Sailed south on the Endever to discover the unknown south land. On his way there he rediscovered New Zealand previously discover by Able Tasman. James Cook sailed west and discovered the Eastern coast of Australia.