Henry, surnamed THE NAVIGATOR (Dom Henrique el Navegador), a famous Portuguese prince, the fourth son of João L., king of Portugal, was born at Oporto in 1394, and first distinguished himself at the conquest of Ceuta in 1415. After the death of his father he took up his residence at the town of Sagres, in Algarve, near Cape St Vincent; and while prosecuting the war against the Moors of Africa, his sailors reached parts of the ocean heretofore unvisited and unknown. The grand ambition of Henry was the discovery of unknown regions of the world. At Sagres he erected an observatory, to which he attached a school for the instruction of youthful scions of the nobility in the sciences necessary to navigation. Subsequently he despatched some of his pupils on voyages of discovery, which resulted at last in the discovery of the Madeira Islands in 1418. Henry's thoughts were now directed towards the auriferous coasts of Guinea, of which he had heard from the Moors; and in 1433 one of his mariners sailed round Cape Nun, until then regarded as the farthest point of the earth, and took possession of the coasts as far south as Cape Bojador. Next year Henry sent out a larger ship, which reached a point 120 miles beyond Cape Bojador; and at last, in 1440, Cape Blanco was reached. Up to this period the prince had borne all the expense of these voyages himself; henceforth, self-supporting societies were formed under his patronage and guidance, and what had formerly been the affair of a single individual now became the passion of a whole nation. But Henry did not slack personally in his efforts. In 1446 his captain, Nuno Tristani, doubled Cape Verd in Senegambia, and in 1448 Gonzalez Vallo discovered three of the Azores. Henry died in 1460. A great national celebration of his memory took place in Portugal in 1894. Henry's mother was the English Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt.
See works by Wappäus (Gött. 1842) and De Veer (Königsb. 1864); the Life and the Discoveries of Henry, both by Major (1868 and 1877); and a short work by Raymond Beazley (1895).