Alvise Cadamosto

Alvise Cadamosto (surname cf. ''Ca' da Mosto, da Cadamosto, da Ca' da Mosto''; also known in Portuguese as ''Luís Cadamosto''; mononymously ''Cadamosto'') (; ) (c. 1432 – 16 July 1483) was a Venetian explorer and slave trader, who was hired by the Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator and undertook two known journeys to West Africa in 1455 and 1456, accompanied by the Genoese captain Antoniotto Usodimare. Some have credited Cadamosto and his companions with the discovery of the Cape Verde Islands and the points along the Guinea coast from the Gambia River to the Geba River (in Guinea-Bissau), the greatest leap in the Henrican discoveries since 1446. Cadamosto's accounts of his journeys, including his detailed observations of West African societies, have proven invaluable to historians.

Background

Alvise was born at the Ca' da Mosto, a palace on the Grand Canal of Venice from which his name derives. His father was Giovanni da Mosto, a Venetian civil servant and merchant, and his mother Elizabeth Querini, from a leading patrician family of Venice. Alvise was the eldest of three sons, having younger brothers Pietro and Antonio.

At a remarkably young age, Alvise was cast out as a merchant adventurer, sailing with Venetian galleys in the Mediterranean. From 1442 to 1448, Alvise undertook various trips on Venetian galleys to the Barbary Coast and Crete, as a commercial agent of his cousin, Andrea Barbarigo. In 1451, he was appointed noble officer of the marine corps of crossbowmen on a galley to Alexandria. The next year, he served the same position on a Venetian galley to Flanders. Upon his return, he found his family disgraced and dispossessed. His father, caught in a bribery scandal, had been banished from Venice, and taken refuge in the Duchy of Modena. His Querini relatives took the opportunity to seize possession of his family's property. This setback marred the future prospects of Cadamosto's career in Venice, and probably encouraged his spirit of adventure, hoping to restore his family name and fortune with great feats of his own.

Expeditions to Africa

In August 1454, at the age of 22, Alvise and his brother Antonio embarked on a Venetian merchant galley, captained by Marco Zen, destined for Flanders. On the outward journey, the galley was detained by bad weather near Cape St. Vincent, Portugal. While waiting for the weather to improve, the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator, who had his seat nearby at Sagres, dispatched a couple of his commercial agents, led by his secretary Antão Gonçalves and the local Venetian consul Patrizio di Conti, to interest the stranded Venetian merchants in opening trade contracts for sugar and other goods from the prince's Madeira island. Informed by the visitors of Henry's recent discoveries in Africa, Cadamosto, "inflamed with the desire of visiting these newly discovered regions", immediately applied to Prince Henry at his residence at Raposeira to undertake an expedition on his behalf. Henry hired him on the spot.

(Note: the 16th-century Portuguese chronicler Damião de Góis, uniquely among historians, mistakenly asserted that Cadamosto's encounter took place in 1444 rather that 1454. Given the eminence of Góis, this erroneous dating has been cited by others, and has been a cause of much confusion for later histories and chronologies.)

First Journey (1455)

Alvise Cadamosto set out on 22 March 1455 on a 43-tonne caravel supplied by Prince Henry, with Vicente Dias as ship master He proceeded to Porto Santo and Madeira, and thereafter weaved his way through the Canary islands, making stops in La Gomera, El Hierro and La Palma before reaching the African coast around Cape Blanc. Cadamosto made note of the existence of the Portuguese factory-fort at Arguin, but does not seem to have stopped there himself.

Cadamosto cruised down the west African coast to the mouth of the Senegal River (which he calls the ''Rio do Senega'', the first recorded use of that name.) He does not seem to have stopped here, his destination being further south, at an anchorage point along the Grande Côte he called the ''Palma di Budomel'' (location uncertain, probably around Mboro, ). Cadamosto notes that this spot (or ''resgate'') was already used by Portuguese traders. He dates that trade between the Portuguese and the Wolof people of the Senegal region was opened around 1450 ("five years before I went on this voyage").Cadamosto (Kerr, p.220; Ital: p.110; Port: p.27 ) The chronicle of the Henrican discoveries by Gomes Eanes de Zurara ends in 1448, with hostilities still raging between the Wolofs and the Portuguese. How it transitioned to peace and trade is uncertain. Russell (2000: p.297), citing a later document (f. 1489), suggests trade was opened up by a certain Lourenço Dias. This is possibly the same Lourenço Dias that participated in the flopped slave raid of Lançarote de Freitas in 1445/46, and returned later (sometime between 1448 and 1450) and managed to set things on a new footing. He may be related to Cadamosto's ship-master Vincente Dias (who also might have travelled with Lançarote). Later in his account (Kerr, p.232), Cadamosto notes that, prior to his journey, he had consulted with a Genoese trader in Portugal (name not given) who had come to Palma di Budomel the year before, and gave him an account of trade and reception he might encounter at this anchorage.slaves