Latest news and stories about maritime history in Portugal for expats and residents.
In the ship wrecked in 1587 during Drake's attack on Cadiz, ceramic containers with olives in brine, animal remains, ginger boxes, and a woman's skull were found.
The vessel, built in the Mediterranean, belonged to Pietro Paolo Vassallo and was commanded by Clemente Vassallo
An analysis of how Portugal managed to secure the Strait of Hormuz historically with limited means, contrasting it with current US geopolitical challenges in the region.
Banned since the 1980s, whaling continues to shape the history and memory of the Azores. We went to listen to the former whalers and learn about the new ways of integrating cetaceans into the life of the archipelago.
Banned since the 1980s, whaling continues to shape the history and memory of the Azores. We went to listen to the former whalers and learn about the new ways of integrating cetaceans into the life of the archipelago.
For at least 100 years, the Portuguese made that area a military base and an economic control post, a kind of customs house where they collected fees for the passage of goods on a route that connected Asia to the Middle East.
At the end of the 19th century, Nansen's expedition in search of the North Pole identified oceanic phenomena that allow for a better understanding of how sardines become abundant off the Portuguese coast.
The Navy's oldest combat vessel enters a decommissioning state.
The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is a threat to the global economy. Today it is because of oil and gas, 500 years ago it was for another strategic commodity: spices. The Portuguese resolved the issue for over a century.
Geography determines today, as it did for 14th-century Portuguese navigators, that whoever holds control of Hormuz holds the trade routes of the strait of the same name. And that is why this small island is as important now as it was 500 years ago.
Even without the global appeal of oil, the strait was already considered an essential point for our vision of the Orient.
It is not normal that so many experts forgot something that everyone knew: the Strait of Hormuz
The Portuguese vessel was part of the transatlantic slave trade. The museum that exhibited this 15-kilogram piece of wood guarantees that the restitution has nothing to do with pressure from the White House.
In the conflict over the control of the spice trade, one of the national defeats was the 'theft' of this map.
An analysis of the strategic importance of Hormuz to the Portuguese Empire in the 16th century, detailing the conquest by Afonso de Albuquerque, the construction of the Nossa Senhora da Conceição fortress, the complex diplomatic relations with the Safavid dynasty, and the eventual loss of the territory to Persian and English forces in 1622, alongside the expansion of Portuguese fortifications across the region.
Portuguese history in Ormuz was not just an episode of maritime expansion. It was an early demonstration of global strategic thinking.
