Sacrum Promontorium, the Sacred Headland, the Romans had called it. It was from here, so they had said, that if you looked westward at the close of day, you could hear the sun sinking with a hiss into the terrible wastes of the Sea of Darkness. Beyond this promontory the unknown began.

If the great headland had been held sacred in classical days, it was equally so, though for different reasons, in the Middle Ages. The cape now took its name from an early Christian saint, Vincent, Deacon of Saragossa in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, who had been canonized for his fortitude under torture and martyrdom—a fortitude which, so legend had it, had converted his jailers. The martyr of Saragossa baptized them just before he died. During the Moslem invasion of Spain the relics of Saint Vincent had been placed in a ship and sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar to remove them to a place of safety. Accompanied by the Saint’s sacred ravens, the ship had been wrecked on the cape that forever after was to bear his name. Wind-washed and sea-whitened, this southwestemmost point of Europe is still awe-inspiring. In those days, hallowed by dim memories of its classical fame, it was doubly respected for its connection with the legend of Saint Vincent. Whenever ships passed this grim outrider of the Continent—where a wave forever breaks in a white curl at the bow—they lowered their sails and dipped their colors, and men knelt on the decks to pray.

As Prince Henry’s galley passed the grim rock, he too fell on his knees in prayer. Perhaps it was then that he dedicated himself to this ocean and to this wind-swept rock. He may have noticed, as the swell lifted under the galley’s stem, a narrow headland that juts into the sea three-quarters of a mile farther south. Sagres, its name corrupted from the ancient Sacrum Promontorium, is part of the main headland, and yet separate. Whereas Cape St. Vincent is 175 feet above sea level, the point of Sagres is only 120 feet. Even more remote from the world of men than the famous cape, Sagres is no more than a bare bone of rock. St. Vincent points southwest, but Sagres fronts into the Atlantic like the stem of a ship headed due south.

As the fleet passed under canvas and oars, Henry heard the boom of the sea as it made up against the desolate rocks. When the wind is strong, the sound of the breaking waves can be heard for miles around. On Sagres a great tunneled blowhole, which links the headland with the Atlantic, spurts its salt foam over the bleak flatlands of the cape whenever there is an onshore gale. This may well have been the place that the poet Camoens had in mind when he wrote “Onde a terra se acaba e o mar comega”—“Where the land has an end and the sea begins.” There is nothing beyond Sagres but the long swell of the ocean and the curve of the horizon.

The fleet came to anchor 15 miles east of Sagres, in the small port of Lagos. Clear of dangers, and open only to southerly winds, the Bay of Lagos is the best and almost only natural anchorage on this inhospitable coast. The town lies on the western side of its bay, and it was here that the fleet took aboard its final stores, water, and supplies. It was here too that the destination of the expedition was announced to the soldiers, sailors, and to the world at large. The speed of news was the speed of the fastest horse or the fastest ship, and it seemed safe to proclaim the fleet’s destination in its last port of call.

The preacher royal, Father John of Xira, proclaimed the object of the expedition. He read the men the crusading bull granted by the Pope, which gave absolution to all those who might die in the battle against the infidel. He urged them to forget any ideas they might have that this great purpose should have been postponed because of the death of the Queen. This, he reminded them, was a sacred mission.

Leaving Lagos on July 30, the fleet coasted down to Faro, where the off-lying banks and shoals run out to the hundred-fathom line and then drop steeply away into the Atlantic. The wind died, the current drove against them, and for a whole week they lay becalmed. A breeze would drift off the land, and the sailing ships would trim their sails to it, only to find that it had died almost as soon as the creaking yards had been eased round.