Volta do mar (open-sea return route)
Volta do mar (vuelta por alta mar)
- Date
- c. 1430-1450 · confidence low
- Place
- Azores archipelago, Portugal
- Credited to
- Portuguese pilots in the service of Prince Henry
- Field
- Movement
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
An Atlantic sailing technique for returning from Africa or the Canaries to Portugal: instead of beating against the trade winds, the ship swings in a wide arc to the west and north to catch the westerlies. It made the return from the African coast possible and opened the route to Guinea and, later, to India.
There is no single discoverer or documented date: it is inferred from the series of Portuguese voyages of the 1430s-1440s (after Cape Bojador, 1434) and from the sighting of the Azores (1427, Diogo de Silves). The chronicles (Zurara, Barros) are later and the term volta do mar is later still.
What it led to
- systematic voyages to Guinea and the Cape of Good Hope (Dias, 1488)
- the volta do largo in the South Atlantic, used by Vasco da Gama (1497)
- Columbus's return via the Azores (1493) and the Pacific return route (Urdaneta, 1565), using the same principle