Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas. His expeditions were the first known European contact with the Caribbean and Central and South America.
Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville was a French military officer, explorer and nobleman. A contemporary of the British explorer James Cook, he served in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. Bougainville later gained fame for his expeditions, including a circumnavigation of the globe in a scientific expedition in 1763, the first recorded settlement on the Falkland Islands, and voyages into the Pacific Ocean. Bougainville Island of Papua New Guinea as well as the flowering plant Bougainvillea are named in his honour.
Brendan of Clonfert is one of the early Irish monastic saints and one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. He is also referred to as Brendan the Navigator, Brendan the Voyager, Brendan the Anchorite, and Brendan the Bold. The Irish translation of his name is Naomh Bréanainn or Naomh Breandán. He is mainly known for his legendary voyage to find the "Isle of the Blessed" which is sometimes referred to as "Saint Brendan’s Island". The written narrative of his journey comes from the immram Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis.
Ruy López de Villalobos was a Spanish explorer who led a failed attempt to colonize the Philippines in 1544, attempting to assert Spanish control there under the terms of the treaties of Tordesillas and Zaragoza. Unable to feed his men through barter, raiding, or farming and unable to request resupply from Mexico due to poor knowledge of the Pacific's winds and currents, Villalobos abandoned his mission and fled to the Portuguese-held Moluccas, where he died in prison. He is chiefly remembered for some sources crediting him with naming Leyte the "Philippine Island" in honor of the Spanish crown prince Philip. The name was later extended across the entire Philippine Archipelago and its nation.
Jean de Thévenot was a French traveller in the East, who wrote extensively about his journeys. He was also a linguist, natural scientist and botanist.
Sebastian Cabot was a Venetian explorer, likely born in the Venetian Republic and a Venetian citizen. He was the son of Venetian explorer John Cabot and his Venetian wife Mattea.
Alonso de Ojeda was a Spanish explorer, governor and conquistador. He travelled through modern-day Guyana, Venezuela, Trinidad, Tobago, Curaçao, Aruba and Colombia, at times with Amerigo Vespucci and Juan de la Cosa. He is famous for having named Venezuela, which he explored during his first two expeditions, for having been the first European to visit Guyana, Curaçao, Colombia, and Lake Maracaibo, and later for founding Santa Cruz.
Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón was a Spanish magistrate and explorer who in 1526 established the short-lived San Miguel de Gualdape colony, one of the first European attempts at a settlement in what is now the United States. Ayllón's account of the region inspired a number of later attempts by the Spanish and French governments to colonize the southeastern United States.
Saint Brendan's Island, also known as Saint Brendan's Isle or San Borondon, is a phantom island or mythical island, supposedly situated in the North Atlantic somewhere west of Northern Africa. It is named after Saint Brendan of Clonfert. He and his followers are said to have discovered it while travelling across the ocean and evangelising its islands. It appeared on numerous maps in Christopher Columbus's time, most notably Martin Behaim's Erdapfel of 1492. It is known as La isla de San Borondón and isla de Samborombón in Spanish.
The Voyage of Bran is a medieval seventh- or eighth-century Irish language narrative.
Andrés de Urdaneta was a maritime explorer for the Spanish Empire of Basque heritage, who became an Augustinian friar. At the age of seventeen, he formed part of the Loaísa expedition to the Spice Islands where he spent more than eight years. Around 1540 he settled in New Spain and became an Augustinian friar in 1552. At the request of Philip II he joined the Legazpi expedition for a return to the Philippines. In 1565, Urdaneta discovered and plotted an easterly route across the Pacific Ocean, from the Philippines to Acapulco in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The route made it practical for Spain to colonize the Philippines and was used as the Manila galleon trade route for more than two hundred years.
The English Armada, also known as the Counter Armada or the Drake–Norris Expedition, was an attack fleet sent against Spain by Queen Elizabeth I of England that sailed on 28 April 1589 during the undeclared Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) and the Eighty Years' War. Led by Sir Francis Drake as admiral and Sir John Norris as general, it failed to drive home the advantage that England had gained resulting from the failure of the Spanish Armada in the previous year. The Spanish victory marked a revival of Philip II's naval power through the next decade.
Pedro Bravo de Acuña was a Spanish military officer and colonial official in the New World and the Philippines. From 1602 to 1606 he was the eleventh governor of the Philippines.
Between 1492 and 1504, the Italian navigator and explorer Christopher Columbus led four transatlantic maritime expeditions in the name of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain to the Caribbean and to Central and South America. These voyages led to the widespread knowledge of the New World. This breakthrough inaugurated the period known as the Age of Discovery, which saw the colonization of the Americas, a related biological exchange, and trans-Atlantic trade. These events, the effects and consequences of which persist to the present, are often cited as the beginning of the modern era.
During the Age of Discovery, the Spanish Empire undertook several expeditions to the Pacific Northwest of North America. Spanish claims to the region date to the papal bull of 1493, and the Treaty of Tordesillas signed in 1494. In 1513, this claim was reinforced by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean, when he claimed all lands adjoining this ocean for the Spanish Crown. Spain only started to colonize the claimed territory north of present-day Mexico in the 18th century, when it settled the northern coast of Las Californias.
The Magellan expedition, sometimes termed the Magellan–Elcano expedition, was a 16th-century Spanish expedition planned and led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. One of the most important voyages in the Age of Discovery—and in the history of exploration—its purpose was to cross the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to open a trade route with the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, in present-day Indonesia. The expedition departed Spain in 1519 and returned there in 1522 led by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, who crossed the Indian Ocean after Magellan's death in the Philippines. Totaling 60,440 km, or 37,560 mi, the nearly three-year voyage achieved the first circumnavigation of Earth in history. It also revealed the vast scale of the Pacific Ocean and proved that ships could sail around the world on a western sea route.
Portuguese maritime exploration resulted in the numerous territories and maritime routes recorded by the Portuguese as a result of their intensive maritime journeys during the 15th and 16th centuries. Portuguese sailors were at the vanguard of European exploration, chronicling and mapping the coasts of Africa and Asia, then known as the East Indies, and Canada and Brazil, in what came to be known as the Age of Discovery.
Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer best known for having planned and led the 1519–22 Spanish expedition to the East Indies, which achieved the first circumnavigation of Earth in history. During this expedition, he also discovered the Strait of Magellan, allowing his fleet to pass from the Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean and perform the first European navigation to Asia via the Pacific. Magellan died in the Philippines during his voyage, and his crew completed the return trip to Spain in 1522.
Luís Vaz de Torres, or Luis Váez de Torres in the Spanish spelling, was a 16th- and 17th-century maritime explorer of a Spanish expedition noted for the first recorded European navigation of the strait that separates the Australian mainland from the island of New Guinea, and which now bears his name.
Cristóvão Jaques, also known as Cristóvão Valjaques, was a Portuguese noble of Aragonese descent.
