Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: How many ships were involved in the Portolà expedition?
Gálvez placed Gaspar de Portolá, recently appointed governor of Las Californias, in overall command of the expedition. Second in command was Captain Fernando Rivera y Moncada, commander of the Presidio at Loreto. Serra headed the Franciscan missionary contingent. Three ships were also assigned: two to follow the land march up the coast and keep the expedition supplied from the naval depot at La Paz (on the Baja peninsula), and another ship to connect La Paz with the mainland at San Blas.
The War of the Spanish Succession started in 1702, during which England's main maritime foes were France and Spain, and a number of Bristol ships were given letters of marque, allowing them to strike against enemy shipping. At least four vessels in which Rogers had an ownership interest were granted the letters. One, "Whetstone Galley", named for Rogers' father in law, received the letters before being sent to Africa to begin a voyage in the slave trade. It did not reach Africa, but was captured by the French. Rogers suffered other losses against the French, although he does not record their extent in his book. He turned to privateering as a means of recouping these losses.
Lisbon and the neighbor Tagus estuary has always been the largest and most important naval base of Portugal, since the 12th century. During the Age of Discovery, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Lisbon and the Tagus became the major naval base in the World. It was from this base, that Vasco da Gama set out to discover the sea route to India.
While returning to Spain, the "Niña" and "Pinta" encountered the roughest storm of their journey, and, on the night of 13 February, lost contact with each other. All hands on the "Niña" vowed, if they were spared, to make a pilgrimage to the nearest church of Our Lady wherever they first made land. On the morning of February 15, land was spotted. Columbus believed they were approaching the Azore Islands, but other members of the crew felt that they were considerably north of the islands. Columbus turned out to be right. On the night of February 17, the "Niña" laid anchor at Santa Maria Island, but the cable broke on sharp rocks, forcing Columbus to stay offshore until the morning, when a safer location was found to drop anchor nearby. A few sailors took a boat to the island, where they were told by several islanders of a still safer place to land, so the Niña moved once again. At this spot, Columbus took on board several islanders who had gathered onshore with food, and told them that his crew wished to come ashore to fulfill their vow. The islanders told him that a small shrine dedicated to Our Lady was nearby. Columbus sent half of the crew members to the island to fulfill their vow, but he and the rest of the crew stayed on the Niña, planning to send the other half to the island upon the return of the first crew members. While the first crew members were saying their prayers at the shrine, they were taken prisoner by the islanders, under orders from the island's captain, João de Castanheira, ostensibly out of fear that the men were pirates. The boat that the crew members had taken to the island was then commandeered by Castanheira, which he took with several armed men to the "Niña", in an attempt to arrest Columbus. During a verbal battle across the bows of both craft, during which Columbus did not grant permission for him to come aboard, Castanheira announced that he did not believe or care who Columbus said that he was, especially if he was indeed from Spain. Castanheira returned to the island. However, after another two days, Castanheira released the prisoners, having been unable to get confessions from them, and having been unable to capture his real target, Columbus. There are later claims that Columbus was also captured, but this is not backed up by Columbus's log book.
Portugal attempted to assert its African territorial claims through three expeditions led by Alexandre de Serpa Pinto, first from Mozambique to the eastern Zambezi in 1869, then to the Congo and upper Zambezi from Angola in 1876 and lastly crossing Africa from Angola in 1877-79. These expeditions were undertaken with the intention of claiming the area between Mozambique and Angola. Following Serpa Pinto’s explorations, the Portuguese government in 1879 made a formal claim to the area south and east of the Ruo River (the present south-eastern border of Malawi) and, in 1882, occupied the lower Shire River valley as far as the Ruo. The Portuguese then asked the British government to accept this territorial claim, but the opening of the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 ended the discussions. Portugal’s efforts to establish this corridor of influence between Angola and Mozambique were hampered by one of the articles in the General Act of the Berlin Conference which required effective occupation of areas claimed rather than historical claims based on discovery or those based on exploration, as Portugal had used.
In 1713 and 1714 a series of peace treaties ended the War of the Spanish Succession. As a result, thousands of seamen, including Britain's paramilitary privateers, were relieved of military duty, at a time when cross-Atlantic colonial shipping trade was beginning to boom. In addition, Europeans who had been pushed by unemployment to become sailors and soldiers involved in slaving were often enthusiastic to abandon that profession and turn to pirating, giving pirate captains a steady pool of recruits in west African waters and coasts.
One of the ships under command of Diogo Dias arrived at a coast that was not in East Africa. Two years later, a chart already showed an elongated island east of Africa that bore the name Madagascar. But only a century later, between 1613 and 1619, did the Portuguese explore the island in detail. They signed treaties with local chieftains and sent the first missionaries, who found it impossible to make locals believe in Hell, and were eventually expelled.
Though Columbus was wrong about the number of degrees of longitude that separated Europe from the Far East and about the distance that each degree represented, he did possess valuable knowledge about the trade winds, which would prove to be the key to his successful navigation of the Atlantic Ocean. During his first voyage in 1492, the brisk trade winds from the east, commonly called "easterlies", propelled Columbus's fleet for five weeks, from the Canary Islands to The Bahamas. The precise first land sighting and landing point was San Salvador Island. To return to Spain against this prevailing wind would have required several months of an arduous sailing technique, called beating, during which food and drinkable water would probably have been exhausted.
Christopher Columbus inadvertently landed on the island during his first voyage across the Atlantic in 1492, where his flagship, the "Santa Maria", sank after running aground on December 25. A contingent of men were left at an outpost christened La Navidad, on the north coast of present-day Puerto Plata. On his return the following year, Columbus quickly established a second compound farther east in present-day Dominican Republic, La Isabela after the destruction of La Navidad.
In 1509, wishing to escape his creditors in Santo Domingo, Balboa set sail as a stowaway, hiding inside a barrel together with his dog "Leoncico", in the expedition commanded by the "Alcalde Mayor" of Nueva Andalucía, Martín Fernández de Enciso, whose mission it was to aid Alonso de Ojeda, his superior.
Royal Louis was a First Rank ship of the line of the French Royal Navy, but was never completed. Launch was scheduled to be in 1743, but on 25 December 1742 she was set alight while still on the stocks, and burnt. It was claimed that this was an act of sabotage by a Señor Pontleau, who was tried and executed for the offence.
Between 1713 and 1714, a succession of peace treaties was signed which ended the War of the Spanish Succession. With the end of this conflict, thousands of seamen, including Britain's paramilitary privateers, were relieved of military duty. The result was a large number of trained, idle sailors at a time when the cross-Atlantic colonial shipping trade was beginning to boom. In addition, Europeans who had been pushed by unemployment to become sailors and soldiers involved in slaving were often enthusiastic to abandon that profession and turn to pirating, giving pirate captains for many years a constant pool of trained European recruits to be found in west African waters and coasts.
The "Elizabeth II" is a full-size representative 16th-century sailing ship that was designed and named after one of the seven ships used by Sir Walter Raleigh's fleet when he first brought colonists to Roanoke Island in 1587. The ship is a square-rigged bark with three masts, and 69 feet long, 17 feet wide and draws 8 feet of water. Guides dressed in period clothing portray the seamen and colonists who traveled to Roanoke with the fleet.
Manuel I of Portugal sought and obtained the title of Grand Master by Pope Leo X's Bull "Constante fide" (June 30, 1516). King Manuel, João's successor, sent Vasco da Gama (a member of the Order of Christ) to sail around the African cape to India. He set sail in 1497 and reached Calicut. By the end of king Manuel's reign, the order possessed 454 commanderies in Portugal, Africa and the Indies. Manuel also made extensive additions to the Order's headquarters in Tomar. Manuel ordered that the church of Tomar be expanded westwards, spreading beyond the castle limits and opening up the Charola to add on to it a magnificent nave which housed the choir and the sacristy, becoming known as the chapter house. The order also began its step-by-step transformation from monastic to secular during Manuel's reign. At the end of this process, the order had taken the form of a royal institution.
In December 1801, France despatched the Saint-Domingue expedition to recapture the island, which had been independent since the 1791 Haitian Revolution. This included over 30,000 troops, many experienced and elite veterans but ended in catastrophic failure; by the end of 1802, an estimated 15,000 - 22,000 had died of disease and yellow fever, among them Napoleon's brother-in-law, General Charles Leclerc.
Europe knew of Madagascar through Arab sources; based on them "The Travels of Marco Polo" claimed that "the inhabitants are Saracens, or followers of the law of Mohammed", without mentioning other inhabitants. Other than its size and location, everything about the island in the book describes southeastern Africa, not Madagascar. European contact began on 10 August 1500, when the Portuguese sea captain Diogo Dias sighted the island after his ship separated from a fleet going to India. The Portuguese continued trading with the islanders and named the island "São Lourenço" (Saint Lawrence). In 1666, François Caron, the director general of the newly formed French East India Company, sailed to Madagascar. The company failed to establish a colony on Madagascar but established ports on the nearby islands of Bourbon (now Réunion) and Isle de France (now Mauritius). In the late 17th century, the French established trading posts along the east coast. On Île Sainte-Marie, a small island off the northeastern coast of Madagascar, Captain Misson and his pirate crew allegedly founded the famous pirate utopia of Libertatia in the late 17th century. From about 1774 to 1824, Madagascar was a favorite haunt for pirates. Many European sailors were shipwrecked on the coasts of the island, among them Robert Drury, whose journal is one of the few written depictions of life in southern Madagascar during the 18th century. Sailors sometimes called Madagascar "Island of the Moon".
By January 2016, Panama's President Varela indicated that he anticipated the expansion to be complete around May 2016. The expanded canal began commercial operation on 26 June 2016. The first ship to cross the canal using the third set of locks was a modern New Panamax vessel, the Chinese-owned container ship "Cosco Shipping Panama." The United States dispatched a navy ship to Panama to demonstrate U.S. naval power to the Chinese ship.
At the Battle of Papeete on 22 September, "Gneisenau" and the rest of the East Asia Squadron bombarded the colony. During the bombardment, the French gunboat was sunk by gunfire from the German ships. Fear of mines in the harbor prevented von Spee from seizing the coal that lay in the harbor. By 12 October, "Gneisenau" and the rest of the squadron had reached Easter Island. There they were joined by and "Leipzig", which had sailed from American waters. "Dresden" was stationed in the Caribbean, but had been in San Francisco when von Spee issued the order to consolidate German naval forces in the Pacific. After a week off Easter Island, the ships departed for the Chilean mainland.
P&O first introduced passenger services in 1844, advertising sea tours to destinations such as Gibraltar, Malta and Athens, sailing from Southampton. The forerunner of modern cruise holidays, these voyages were the first of their kind, and have led to P&O Cruises being recognised as the world's oldest cruise line. The company later introduced round trips to destinations such as Alexandria and Constantinople and underwent rapid expansion in the later half of the 19th century, with its ships becoming larger and more luxurious. Notable ships of the era include the SS "Ravenna" built in 1880, which became the first ship to be built with a total steel superstructure, and the SS "Valetta" built in 1889, which was the first ship to use electric lights.
Historian Alwyn Ruddock claimed to have found evidence that the navigator Giovanni Cabot ('John Cabot') who discovered North America in 1497 {received backing from the Italian community in London for his voyage to North America. In particular, she suggested he found a patron in the form of Fr. Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis, an Augustinian friar who was also the deputy to the papal tax collector Adriano Castellesi. Ruddock suggested that it was Carbonariis, who certainly accompanied Cabot's 1498 expedition and who was on good terms with the King, who introduced the explorer to Henry VII for the discovery expedition. Beyond this, Ruddock claimed that Cabot received a loan from an Italian banking house in London 'to go and discover new lands'.
The Trafalgar Campaign was a long and complicated series of fleet manoeuvres carried out by the combined French and Spanish fleets; and the opposing moves of the Royal Navy during much of 1805. These were the culmination of French plans to force a passage through the English Channel, and so achieve a successful invasion of the United Kingdom. The plans were extremely complicated and proved to be impractical. Much of the detail was due to the personal intervention of Napoleon, who as a soldier rather than a sailor failed to consider the effects of weather, difficulties in communication, and the Royal Navy. Despite limited successes in achieving some elements of the plan the French commanders were unable to follow the main objective through to execution. The campaign, which took place over thousands of miles of ocean, was marked by several naval engagements, most significantly at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October, where the combined fleet was decisively defeated, and from which the campaign takes its name. A final mopping up action at the Battle of Cape Ortegal on 4 November completed the destruction of the combined fleet, and secured the supremacy of the Royal Navy at sea.
The commanding officers prepared to dispatch the "San Antonio" back to Lower California New Spain, to report to viceroy De Croix and "visitador" Gálvez about the expedition. On July 1, just as the ship was about to sail, the Portolá/Serra party arrived in San Diego in good health, with 163 mules loaded with supplies. Desiring to push the sea expedition north to Monterey — as Gálvez had instructed — Portolá offered captain Vicente Vila of the "San Carlos" 16 of his own men to work the ship on its voyage to Monterey. But Vila had lost all his ship's officers, his boatswain, coxswain of the launch and storekeeper — and none of the men offered by Portolá had experience as sailors. Vila refused to sail under such conditions. So Portolá decided to place all available sailors aboard the "San Antonio", which set out for San Blas on July 9, with a very small crew. Carrying important letters from Serra, Portolá and others, the "San Antonio" reached San Blas in just three weeks. On that voyage, several more sailors died.
Upon hearing about the king’s desire to explore Alta California, New Spain's "visitador" (inspector general) José de Gálvez organized an exploratory expedition and placed Governor Portolá in overall command. The plan called for a joint land-sea movement up the Pacific coast. The job of the ships was to keep the land contingent supplied with provisions and to carry communications between them and New Spain. Portolá decided to travel by land.
The Portolà expedition () was a Spanish voyage of exploration in 1769–1770 that was the first recorded European land entry and exploration of the interior of the present-day U.S. state of California. It was led by Gaspar de Portolà, governor of "Las Californias", the Spanish colonial province that included California, Baja California and other parts of present-day Mexico and the United States. The expedition led to the founding of Alta California and contributed to the legitimacy of Spanish territorial claims in the disputed and unexplored regions along the Pacific coast of North America.
The first leg of the expedition consisted of five groups all departing from Baja California and heading north for San Diego. Three groups traveled by sea while two others traveled by land in mule trains. Three galleons, hastily built in San Blas, set sail for San Diego in early 1769: the "San Carlos", captained by Vicente Vila, a lieutenant of the royal navy (whose diary survives); the "San Antonio", captained by Juan Pérez, a native of Palma de Majorca; and the "San José". All three ships, crossing the Gulf of California from San Blas, arrived leaking on the east coast of Baja, requiring repairs there.