Having started to be gathered still during the eighteenth century, the acquis of the Navy Museum now comprises more than 18,000 pieces, of which some 2,500 were selected to feature in its permanent exhibition, depicting the most diverse aspects of the Portuguese maritime past, as well as various sea-related activities.
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The great adventure of the Discoveries is the first major theme of its permanent exhibition, given that it was the golden age of Portuguese navigation. In the entrance hall of the Navy Museum, visitors are welcomed by the statue of Henry the Navigator, the main promoter of the first voyages of discovery, surrounded by the statues of the navigators who, under his direction, carried out the first explorations of the Atlantic Ocean at the beginning of the fifteenth century.
At the end of the entrance hall, there is a huge planisphere produced by the workshops of the Navy Museum, similar to the old charts and maps of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which were profusely illustrated, with the new territories, animals, plants and populations contacted by Portuguese navigators, and serving as a starting point for our journey to the Portuguese maritime past.
The Discoveries Room evokes the evolution of Portuguese shipbuilding over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which produced new and larger vessels that allowed increasingly longer voyages to increasingly distant destinations. From the medieval boats used on the first voyages, through to the Portuguese Lateen-rigged caravel, the great icon of the Portuguese Discoveries which made it possible to open the Atlantic to navigation, and to the large voyage ships that made it possible to reach Brazil and the East, Portuguese shipbuilding was able to innovate and produce the vessels needed to carry out the sea voyages that changed the world.
The development of new navigation tools was key to the success of Portuguese travel. Among these, the Portuguese Mariner's astrolabe stands out, as it made it possible to determine the position of vessels at sea, contributing to the safety of their navigation. To such an extent that, according to some authors, the development of the Portuguese Mariner's astrolabe was as important for navigation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as GPS was for the present day.
The cartography of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries allows us to understand today the true scope of Portuguese navigation by graphically depicting the new territories reached in a truly new world under construction. On the other hand, thanks to the Portuguese contributions to navigation and geographical knowledge, cartography is no longer a mere symbolic representation of the Earth, gaining practical and utilitarian value as a navigation tool.
While the fifteenth century was the period of maritime exploration and discoveries, in the sixteenth century maritime trade routes were established and consolidated, and they took on a global scale for the first time.
Among these, the India Run is undoubtedly the most impressive and unparalleled in global maritime history, both because of the distance travelled and its duration, and it remained virtually unchanged for more than three centuries.
Between crew and passengers, there were often over four hundred people aboard the ships on the India Run, from a wide variety of trades and social strata, and this figure could even be exceeded by a few hundred in some cases. Indeed, there were sometimes more people aboard these vessels than in many villages and towns in the Kingdom.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese had established a maritime trade network consisting of navigation routes that went from Brazil to Japan. In the next century, new European maritime powers would compete with Portugal at sea. The main challenge would now be to keep the routes which had been navigated by the Portuguese for almost two centuries open to navigation.