João Álvares Fagundes

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João Álvares Fagundes bigraphy, stories - Portuguese explorer

João Álvares Fagundes : biography

– 1522

João Álvares Fagundes (born c. 1460, Kingdom of Portugal, died 1522, Kingdom of Portugal), an explorer and ship owner from Viana do Castelo in Northern Portugal, organized several expeditions to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia around 1520-1521.

Fagundes explored the islands of St Paul near Cape Breton, Sable Island, Penguin Island (now known as Funk Island), Burgeo, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon which he named the islands of Eleven Thousand Virgins in honor of Saint Ursula.Ganong, W. F., Crucial Maps in the Early Cartography and Place-Nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada, with an introduction, commentary and map notes by Theodore E. Layng (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), Chapter II: "João Àlvares Fagundes," 45-97.

King Manuel I of Portugal gave Fagundes exclusive rights and ownership of his discoveries on March 13, 1521.

In 1607, Samuel de Champlain identified the remains of a large cross ("an old cross, all covered with moss, and almost wholly rotted away") at what is now Advocate, Nova Scotia on the Minas Basin. He attributed the erection of the cross to Fagundes, whom he presumed to have visited the spot some eight decades earlier.Mount Allison University, , 2004