Bartolomeu Dias

3 February 1488, not the 4th

Dias's two caravels approached the southern African coast from the south and reached the bay now called Mossel Bay on 3 February 1488. The 4 February date carried in this entry is not supported by the Portuguese academic encyclopedia, the Dias Museum or the South African scholarship consulted.

The anchorage was named for Saint Blaise, whose feast falls on 3 February; the Portuguese name is rendered variously as Aguada, Angra or Golfo de São Brás. The saint's day preserves a date the expedition's lost log cannot.

How they arrived from the wrong direction

After leaving the coast near Serra dos Reis on 6 January, the caravels worked southwest into the Atlantic for thirteen days, found westerly winds, sailed east, then turned north when no land appeared. They had already passed south of the Cape without sighting it.

It is unsafe to say a storm simply blew the fleet around the Cape. Eric Axelson's wind analysis argues that the mariners deliberately made long offshore tacks.

The watering stop

At the bay the expedition replenished its water and encountered Khoikhoi livestock herders. A confrontation reportedly ended when Dias killed one person with a crossbow.

No contemporary narrative of the voyage survives. The itinerary is reconstructed from later chronicles, early maps, rutters, saint's-day place-names and surviving padrões.

The landing supplied the first clear practical confirmation that the expedition had passed Africa's southern extremity, though the moment Dias understood that is not recorded.