List of crossings of the Atlantic Ocean
This is a list of notable crossings of the Atlantic Ocean.
Ra II, a ship built from papyrus, was successfully sailed across the Atlantic by Thor Heyerdahl proving that it was possible to cross the Atlantic from Africa using such boats in early epochs of history.
Pre-1492 crossings
- Around 980–982, Norse explorer Erik the Red discovered Greenland, geographically and geologically a part of the Americas.
- Around 1000, Norse explorer Leifur Eríksson, son of Erik the Red, made landfall at Vinland, tentatively identified with the Norse archeological site at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland on the Atlantic coast of Canada.
- Around 1010, Norse explorers and spouses Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir led an expedition to Vinland where they begat their son Snorri Thorfinnsson, the first European born in the Americas outside of Greenland.
- In 1419 and 1427, Portuguese navigators reached Madeira and Azores, respectively.
Post-1492 crossings
15th to 18th centuries
- In 1492, Christopher Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera (Spain) with three ships, crossed the Atlantic Ocean and landed on the Bahamas, Cuba and Hispaniola. He made three additional voyages over the next few years, during which he explored the Caribbean coast from Honduras to Venezuela as well as numerous Caribbean islands. These explorations, along with Columbus's attempts to establish a permanent settlement on Hispaniola, led to the Spanish colonization of the Americas and a period of Columbian Exchange that permanently altered human cultures and the environment on both sides of the Atlantic.
- From 1496 to 1498 John Cabot made three voyages to North America from Bristol, landing in Newfoundland and/or possibly the Canadian Maritimes.
- In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral reached Brazil.
- In 1519 Ferdinand Magellan sailed from Spain to the South Atlantic, navigating the straits named after him and entering the Pacific Ocean.
- In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, in the service of the King Francis I of France, explored the Atlantic coast of North America from Florida to New Brunswick.
- In 1534, Jacques Cartier entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence and reached the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.
- In 1560, the Portuguese carrack São Paulo, captained by Ruy de Mello da Camera, sailed from Recife (Brazil) around the Cape of Good Hope to Sumatra, in whose South coast she was wrecked; actually crossing both the Atlantic and Indian oceans in one non-stop sailing.
- In April 1563, Nicolas Barre and 20 other stranded Huguenots were the first to build a (crude) boat in the Americas and sail across the Atlantic. They sailed from Charlesfort, South Carolina to just off the coast of England where they were rescued by an English ship. Though they resorted to cannibalism, seven men survived the voyage, including Barre.[1][2]
- In 1566, the first trade route across the Atlantic was inaugurated by Spain with the establishment of the West Indies fleets, a convoy system which regularly linked its territories in the Americas with Spain for over two centuries.
- In November 1732 the ship Ann crossed the Atlantic, from London to Georgia, carrying British soldier, Member of Parliament, and philanthropist James Oglethorpe. The journey took 88 days, arriving in Savannah in February 1733. Oglethorpe would found the colony of Georgia, of which he was the governor.
- In 1764, William Harrison (the son of John Harrison) sailed aboard HMS Tartar, with the H-4 time piece. The voyage became the basis for the invention of the global system of Longitude.
19th century
- In 1819, SS Savannah became the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
- In 1858, Cyrus West Field laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable (it quickly failed).
- In 1865, Brunel's ship the SS Great Eastern laid the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable.
- In 1870, the small City of Ragusa of Liverpool became the first small lifeboat to cross the Atlantic from Queenstown, County Cork to Boston with two crew, John Charles Buckley and Nikola Primorac (di Costa).[3]
- In 1896, Frank Samuelsen and George Harbo from Norway became the first people to ever row across the Atlantic Ocean.
20th century
- On 15 April 1912 the RMS Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg with a loss of more than 1,500 lives.[4]
- On 7 May 1915 the RMS Lusitania was torpedoed en route to Queenstown, Ireland, at the loss of 1,198 passengers.
- 1914–1918, during the Atlantic U-boat campaign of World War I, more than 2,100 ships were sunk and 153 U-boats destroyed.
- In 1919, the American NC-4 became the first seaplane to cross the Atlantic (though it made a couple of landings on islands and the sea along the way, and taxied several hundred kilometers).
- Later in 1919, a British aeroplane piloted by Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight, from Newfoundland to Ireland.
- Later still in 1919, the British were the first to cross the North Atlantic in an airship with the R34, starting at RAF East Fortune in Scotland and landing in Mineola, New York.
- In 1922, Portuguese aviators Sacadura Cabral and Gago Coutinho were the First aerial crossing of the South Atlantic on a seaplane connecting Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro.
- In May 1927, Charles Nungesser and François Coli in their aircraft L'Oiseau Blanc (The White Bird) mysteriously disappeared in an attempt to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York.
- In 1927, Charles Lindbergh made the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight in an aircraft (between New York City and Paris).
- In 1931, Bert Hinkler made the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight across the South Atlantic in an aircraft.
- In 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first female to make a solo flight across the Atlantic from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland to Derry, Northern Ireland.
- 1939–1945, during World War II, the Battle of the Atlantic resulted in nearly 3,700 ships sunk and 783 U-boats destroyed.[5]
- In 1952, Ann Davison was the first woman to single-handedly sail the Atlantic Ocean.
- In 1965, Robert Manry crossed the Atlantic from the U.S. to England non-stop in a 4.1-meter (13-foot) sailboat named Tinkerbelle.[6] Several others also crossed the Atlantic in very small sailboats in the 1960s, none of them non-stop, though.
- In 1969 and 1970 Thor Heyerdahl launched expeditions to cross the Atlantic in boats built from papyrus. He succeeded in crossing the Atlantic from Morocco to Barbados after a two-month voyage of 6,100 km with Ra II in 1970, thus conclusively proving that boats such as the Ra could have sailed with the Canary Current across the Atlantic in prehistoric times.[7]
- In 1980, Gérard d'Aboville was the first man to cross the Atlantic Ocean rowing solo.
- In 1984, Amyr Klink crossed the south atlantic rowing solo from Namibia to Brazil in 100 days.
- In 1984, five Argentines sail in a 10-meter-long raft made from tree trunks named Atlantis from Canary Islands and after 52 days 4,800 kilometres (3,000 mi) journey arrived to Venezuela in an attempt to prove travellers from Africa may have crossed the Atlantic before Christopher Columbus.[8][9]
- In 1985, Freeport, New York based boatbuilder and marina owner, Al Grovers, Sr., began a voyage which set the Guinness World Record for the first outboard crossing of the Atlantic.[10][11]
- In 1994, Guy Delage was the first man to allegedly swim across the Atlantic Ocean (with the help of a kick board, from Cape Verde to Barbados).
- In 1998, Benoît Lecomte was the first man to swim across the northern Atlantic Ocean without a kick board, stopping for only one week in the Azores.
- In 1999, after rowing for 81 days and 4,767 kilometres (2,962 miles), Tori Murden became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by rowboat alone when she reached Guadeloupe from the Canary Islands.
21st century
- In 2003, Alan Priddy and three crew members made a record crossing of the North Atlantic in a Rigid inflatable boat (RIB) from Newfoundland to Scotland, via Greenland and Iceland, in 103 hours.
- In 2019, Aarohi Pandit became the first woman pilot in the world to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean light-sport aircraft, Pipistrel Sinus 912.
- In August 2019, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, her father and three crew members made a crossing of the Atlantic from Plymouth to New York in 15 days. The voyage generated all of its power during the crossing using solar power and an under-water turbine.
References
- The Huguenot settlement in 16th century South Carolina churchmousec.wordpress.com, accessed 28 October 2020
- http://www.jcs-group.com/oldwest/america/1562ribaut.html
- William H. Longyard (2003). A speck on the sea: epic voyages in the most improbable vessels. International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-07-141306-0.
- Jill, Lawless (16 October 2008). "Last Titanic survivor sells mementos". Associated Press. Retrieved 2015-08-06.
- "Introduction" U-Boat Operations of the Second World War—Vol 1 by Wynn, Kenneth, 1998 p. 1
- Tinkerbelle (1967; Harper & Row, New York City, N.Y.)
- Ryne, Linn. Voyages into History. Retrieved 13 January 2008.
- 5 cross Atlantic in tiny raft. News.google.com. 12 July 1984 Retrieved on 27 October 2011.
- Expedicion Atlantis Archived 2009-04-25 at the Wayback Machine (in Spanish)
- "Our Story: Transatlantic Journey". Al Grovers Marina High and Dry.
- "VIDEO: An epic Atlantic adventure". Soundings Online. March 26, 2017.
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