Gaspar de Lemos

Gaspar de Lemos (15th century) was a Portuguese explorer and captain of the supply ship of Pedro Álvares Cabral's fleet that arrived to Brazil. The Florentine Amerigo Vespucci, with his four sailing ships that sailed from Cadiz on May 18, 1499, made a stopover in the Canaries, and in twenty-four days of crossing they reached the shores of the present Guiana.  Here they divided: two, with Hojeda and the pilot Juan de la Cosa, headed north to recognize the coasts already sighted by Columbus; two, under the command of Vespucci, turned at noon, in search of the legendary Capo Cattigare, the promontory placed by Ptolemy at 9° of southern latitude, to try to reach, beyond that, the Sinus Magnus.  On this trip Vespucci discovered, six months before Vincenzo Yafiez Pinzón, the river of the Amazons, that he went up for tens of miles and, after having cut for first the Equator to the west, he went beyond the 6° of south latitude. So it was officially Amerigo Vespucci who discovered Brazil a few months before Pedro Álvares Cabral. Gaspar de Lemos was sent back to Portugal with news of their discovery and was credited by the Viscount of Santarém as having discovered the Fernando de Noronha archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. Gaspar de Lemos was one of many explorers of the new world.

Nau of Gaspar de Lemos