António de Noli
Antonio da Noli (* 1415 in Noli (Liguria ), † 1497 in Santiago (Cape Verde ) or according to other sources * 1419, † 1491 ) was an Italian explorer of the 15th century, who discovered some of the Cape Verde Islands in the service of Portugal.
Biography
Antonio da Noli came from a patrician family of the then independent Ligurian Sea Republic of Noli and sailed in the service of the Genoese, before he emigrated in 1449 with his brother Bartolomeo and his nephew, Raffaello to Portugal and stood in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator. It is disputed whether he is the same navigator who discovered in the years 1455 and 1456 under the name Antoniotto Usodimare together with Alvise Cadamosto on the way to a repeated expedition along the Gambia river two of the Eastern Cape Verde Islands (Boa Vista and Santiago). The majority of sources assumes that this is a different, Genoese explorer.
As secured, however, that he 1458-1460 - probably due to the news Cadamostos - with his brother and his nephew to Santiago broke up and in 1462 at the south end of the island, the village of Ribeira Grande (now Cidade Velha ) founded. Here it is as well Diogo Afonso attributed to the systematic development of the whole island of Cape Verde archipelago. Due to diverging travel reports, however, can no longer be clearly reconstructed, which were discovered the individual islands of him or Afonso and which on the other hand go back on reconnaissance trips by Diogo Dias Diogo Gomes.
Antonio da Noli is considered namesake of the islands, where he gave the official name Ilhas de Cabo Verde ( " green islands of the Cape "). The Portuguese King Alfonso V appointed him in 1462 to the Governor ( Capitão - donatário ) of Ribeira Grande, the first permanently occupied European settlement in the tropics. This office was transferred on April 8, 1497 by De Noli's death, his only daughter Branca de Aguiar, under the condition that she marries a descendant of the Portuguese royal family with Jorge Correia.
To commemorate him, the Italian Navy in World War II christened a destroyer in the name of Antonio Da Noli. This sank on September 9, 1943, one day after the public announcement of Italy's capitulation, off the coast of Corsica.