Bartolomeu Dias passes the Cape unseen and lands at Mossel Bay, 1488

After many days out of sight of land, the lookouts saw high mountains to the north. Two small Portuguese caravels came in under them and anchored in a wide bay. On the land there were cattle, many of them, watched by herdsmen. The sailors called the place the bay of the cowherds, Angra dos Vaqueiros.2 sources2 sources

The herdsmen were alarmed. The Portuguese had no interpreter who could speak their language, and the people drove their animals inland. When the sailors went to fill their casks at a spring near the beach, men on a hill tried to stop them and threw stones. A crossbow bolt killed one of the herders; the journal of Vasco da Gama's voyage, written nine years later, says the commander, Bartolomeu Dias, fired it.3 sources3 sources

The bay is Mossel Bay, on the southern coast of South Africa. Dias did not yet know it, but he had already passed the southern end of the continent. No European ship is known to have been there before him.2 sources2 sources

The day usually given is 3 February 1488, and it is worked out rather than recorded. No log of the voyage survives, and the only narrative of it, by the royal historian João de Barros, was printed in 1552 and gives no date for the landing. The date comes from the bay's other name, Angra or Aguada de São Brás, the bay or watering place of St Blaise, whose feast falls on 3 February. The Florentine merchant Giovanni da Empoli, who sailed east in 1503, wrote that the cowherds' bay was renamed after the saint because it had been discovered on his day.2 sources2 sources

By the 1480s Portuguese ships had been working down the west coast of Africa for decades, trading for gold, ivory and enslaved people. King João II wanted more than trade. He was looking for a Christian king in the east, the legendary Prester John, and for the way to India and its spices.2 sources2 sources

His captain Diogo Cão had made two voyages south in the 1480s, adding 375 leagues of coast by Barros's count, much of it beyond the mouth of the Congo. Cão marked his progress with padrões: stone pillars carved with the royal arms and topped with a cross, set up on headlands to claim the coast. His last stood at Cape Cross, in what is now Namibia, at 21 degrees 50 minutes south.2 sources2 sources

No sooner were Cão's ships home than João II prepared another fleet. On 10 October 1486 he granted Bartolomeu Dias, the master of a royal ship called the São Cristóvão, an annuity of 6,000 reais “in consideration of services which he hoped to receive”. Little is known of Dias before this. His birthplace and date of birth are unknown; Ravenstein found that he had commanded one of the ships sent to the Gold Coast in 1481.2 sources2 sources

The king was trying two routes at once. On 7 May 1487 he sent Pêro da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva overland, through the Mediterranean and Egypt, to look for India and Prester John. Covilhã carried a chart drawn up by the king's experts; Ravenstein thought Dias was given a copy of the same chart.2 sources2 sources

Dias was given two ships of up to 50 tons each and a smaller store-ship, because earlier voyages had so often been forced home when food ran out. Barros names the officers. The pilot of Dias's own ship was Pêro de Alenquer, who would later guide Vasco da Gama.2 sources2 sources

There were passengers with a mission. Barros says the ships carried two African men kidnapped by Cão, who were to be returned home, and four women from the Guinea coast. The women were to be put ashore at different points, well dressed and carrying samples of gold, silver and spices. They were to ask whether such goods were found there and spread word of the King of Portugal and his wish to reach Prester John. Women were chosen, Barros explains, because men did not make war on them.3 sources3 sources

Even the year of departure is disputed. Barros says the fleet left at the end of August 1486 and came home in December 1487. A note in the margin of a book that belonged to Christopher Columbus says Dias landed at Lisbon in December 1488. Ravenstein took the note to be in Columbus's own hand; Axelson credited it to his brother Bartholomew.3 sources3 sources

Duarte Pacheco Pereira, who sailed home with Dias, also dated the discovery of the Cape to 1488. Counting back Barros's 16 months and 17 days from December 1488, historians since Ravenstein place the departure in late July or early August 1487.3 sources3 sources

Beyond the Congo the fleet worked south along the coasts of Angola and Namibia, naming bays after the saints of the day. Somewhere on the way the store-ship was left behind with nine men to wait. Ravenstein guessed it stayed in a sheltered harbour in southern Angola; Barros does not say where.2 sources2 sources

South of the Orange River the caravels were tacking against steady southerly winds. Barros says that after five days held up in a bay, a storm drove them out to sea for 13 days with their sails half lowered, in colder seas that the crews took for deadly. Ravenstein and Axelson both doubted that a storm drove the ships south. Northerly winds are rare on that coast in January, so Axelson thought Dias chose to stand out to sea on long tacks, and met the strong westerlies of the higher latitudes there.3 sources3 sources

Either way, the fleet went far south of the Cape. When the weather eased, Dias steered east to find the coast again. After several days with no land, he turned north, and in the end came to the mountains and the bay of the cowherds. Without knowing it he had rounded Africa out at sea.3 sources3 sources

The people at the spring were Khoikhoi, also written Khoekhoen, herders of cattle and sheep along the southern coast; the Dias Museum suggests they may have been the Gouriqua. Barros says only that the strangers could not talk to them and that, frightened by something so new, they drove their herds inland.2 sources2 sources

Barros does not mention the stones or the killing. Those come from the journal of Gama's voyage, whose information here Ravenstein traced to the pilot Pêro de Alenquer, and it adds that the herders had refused the gifts Dias offered. The museum points out that the sailors took the water in the herders' territory, without their permission.4 sources4 sources

From Mossel Bay the caravels worked east against the Agulhas current and the south-easterly winds, past high mountains and into Algoa Bay. The coast was trending north-east, towards India. The crews were exhausted and frightened, and food was short: they still had to get back to the store-ship, hundreds of leagues behind them.2 sources2 sources

Dias's orders told him to consult his officers on anything important. He went ashore with the captains, the officers and some leading seamen and asked them, under oath, what they thought best for the king's service. They all agreed to go home and signed a document saying so. Dias asked for two or three more days along the coast; they granted them.2 sources2 sources

Those days took them to a river that Barros places 25 leagues beyond the islet of Santa Cruz. João Infante, captain of the São Pantaleão, was first ashore, and it became the Rio do Infante. Barros puts it at 32 degrees 40 minutes south; Ravenstein identified it as the Great Fish River, at 33 degrees 30 minutes, on the far side of today's Port Alfred. There the crews renewed their complaints, and the fleet turned for home.2 sources2 sources

Before that, Dias had set up a padrão. Barros put it on the Ilhéu da Cruz, an islet in Algoa Bay. The distances in Gama's journal, which Ravenstein traced to Pêro de Alenquer, place it instead about 15 leagues short of the river. Axelson argued that Barros had run two places together: the islet probably got a wooden cross, and the stone pillar went further along the coast.4 sources4 sources

In 1938 Axelson found the pillar's broken pieces at Kwaaihoek, on the Eastern Cape coast. It was dedicated to St Gregory, whose feast is 12 March; Ravenstein thought it may have been raised that day, though such dedications were usually chosen at home in Portugal. Wits University, which keeps the pieces, calls Kwaaihoek the most easterly point of the voyage, but Barros and Ravenstein put the turn a few days further on, at the river.4 sources4 sources

Sailing west along the coast, Dias saw what he had missed on the way out: the southernmost cape of Africa, now Cape Agulhas, and then the mountains of the Cape Peninsula, ending in a great headland. He set up a padrão dedicated to St Philip there. Its site has never been found.2 sources2 sources

Pêro de Alenquer later remembered leaving the Cape on a morning with the wind astern. Nine months after parting from the store-ship, the caravels found it again. Of the nine men left aboard, three were alive; the others had been killed in a quarrel with local people over trade. One of the survivors, the clerk Fernão Colaço, already weak with illness, was so overcome at seeing his comrades that he died on the spot. There were too few men left to sail the worm-eaten store-ship, so it was emptied and burned.3 sources3 sources

Axelson dated another stop to this homeward leg. Time did not allow Dias to enter Lüderitz Bay, in southern Namibia, on the way out, he argued; on the way home he did, and the next day, 25 July 1488, St James's day, raised his padrão of Santiago on the point now called Dias Point. Ravenstein had placed the pillar on the outward voyage, in late December 1487.2 sources2 sources

Barros put it elsewhere again, at a Serra Parda in 24 degrees south, and called it Dias's first pillar. The one on Dias Point was already illegible when a British officer saw it in 1786, and its fragments ended up in Lisbon and Cape Town.2 sources2 sources

On the way north Dias called at the island of Príncipe, in the Gulf of Guinea, where he picked up Duarte Pacheco Pereira, sick and shipwrecked. He traded for enslaved people at the Rio do Resgate so as not to come home empty-handed, and collected gold from the fortress of São Jorge da Mina. In December 1488 he entered the Tagus.2 sources2 sources

The same note says Dias had measured 45 degrees south with the astrolabe. That is ten degrees beyond Cape Agulhas. Ravenstein thought the figure was the furthest south the ships reached out at sea. Axelson argued that it was false information João II, with Dias's knowledge, gave Columbus to keep Spain off the route round Africa. Dias had charted the coast league by league for the king, but those charts are lost.2 sources2 sources

No reward for Dias is recorded. Between 1490 and 1495 he still commanded the São Cristóvão, and he later became almoxarife, or storekeeper, of the Guinea warehouse in Lisbon, a post he held until at least 25 February 1497. Barros says João II had timber cut for the India ships after Dias came home, and that King Manuel I had Dias finish them so they could stand the seas off the Cape.3 sources3 sources

Dias did not lead the next voyage. In 1497 he sailed with Vasco da Gama's fleet as far as the Cape Verde islands, then turned off for Mina, while Gama went on to India. In 1500 he was a captain in the 13-ship fleet of Pedro Álvares Cabral, which touched Brazil before heading for the Cape. He and his brother Diogo were to go on to Sofala, in what is now Mozambique, to open trade for its gold.3 sources3 sources

In the crossing from Brazil to the Cape a comet stood in the sky for eight to ten nights. Then a sudden head wind struck the fleet with its sails half set, and four ships went down with everyone aboard. One was Dias's. A member of the fleet dated the storm to Sunday 24 May 1500; Barros's text gives the 23rd.2 sources2 sources

Barros wrote that the storm put an end to a man who had survived so many dangers of the sea, above all at the Cape. Ravenstein had Dias die almost within sight of the pillar he had grieved to leave, but the chroniclers put the storm out in the ocean crossing, short of the Cape. His brother Diogo, separated from the fleet, went on to sight Madagascar.3 sources3 sources

Ships calling at the bay of São Brás soon used it to leave news for each other. One of Cabral's captains, Pêro de Ataíde, left a letter there in a shoe tied to a tree, and the next India fleet found it in July 1501. The museum shows the tree, now a heritage site, with a post box shaped like a sailor's boot beside it since 1963.1 source1 source

Dias found 350 leagues of new coast by Barros's count, 373 leagues or 1,260 miles by Ravenstein's. Beyond the Cape the coast he followed turned north-east, the way to India, and the voyage showed that ships could sail round Africa. In 1497 Vasco da Gama, piloted by Dias's man Pêro de Alenquer, rounded the Cape, passed Dias's last pillar and went on to Calicut, in India.3 sources3 sources

Five hundred years on, Portugal and South Africa marked the voyage together. The Portuguese sail-training association APORVELA built a replica caravel, the Bartolomeu Dias, at Vila do Conde. A crew of 17 Portuguese and South African volunteers under Captain Emílio Carlos de Sousa sailed it from Portugal in three months. It had an engine so that it would arrive in time for the festival at Mossel Bay on 3 February 1988, exactly 500 years after Dias.2 sources2 sources

The Portuguese national library's dictionary of historians says the joint commemoration, which Axelson helped to coordinate, was not without controversy. The museum at Mossel Bay now tells the story at the spring differently. Dias's voyage, it says, used to be celebrated as the start of a new era of European expansion and trade, but the violent encounter at the watering place is now also understood as the beginning of centuries of colonisation, dispossession and oppression for the indigenous people of southern Africa.2 sources2 sources

In Lisbon, Dias is one of the figures on the Padrão dos Descobrimentos in Belém, the riverside monument to the voyages. He helps Diogo Cão and António de Abreu haul a stone padrão, and his pilot Pêro de Alenquer is on the monument too.1 source1 source