João da Nova (Galician: Xoán de Novoa, Joam de Nôvoa; Spanish: Juan de Nova; Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒuˈɐ̃w dɐ ˈnɔvɐ]; c. 1460 in Maceda, Ourense, Galicia, Spain – July 16, 1509, in Kochi, India) was a Galician-born explorer in the service of Portugal. He is credited as the discoverer of Ascension and Saint Helena islands.
The Juan de Nova Island, in the Mozambique Channel, is named after him. The Farquhar atoll (in the Seychelles) was, for a long time, known as the João da Nova islands. It is sometimes thought that the Agaléga islands (in the Indian Ocean) were also named after him (although it is almost certain he never visited them).
Juan da Nova was born into a noble family in Maceda, Galicia, then a constituent kingdom of the Crown of Castile. Nova was sent by his family to Portugal, where he grew up, to escape the struggles between aristocratic factions known as the Irmandiño revolts. In Portugal, he was also known as João Galego ("the Galician"). In 1496, he was appointed as Alcaide menor (mayor) of Lisbon by King Manuel I.
It was only realised around the turn of the millennium that when writing about the discoverer of St Helena, most English sources had incorrectly appended the word “Castella” to his name, i.e., naming him as João da Nova Castella. This error was traced back to an 1817 guidebook by the Town Major of Jamestown, Saint Helena, John Barnes. Just as an earlier author had added the Portuguese word of “Galego” as a suffix to da Nova’s name to indicate the latter was born in the province of Galicia, so it was speculated that Barnes’ handwritten book used the Portuguese word of “Castela” as a suffix to also show that he was born in the kingdom of Castile, this being misspelt by Barnes or his printer as “Castella”, an error that was then repeated by later English authors for nearly the next two centuries.
The date of João da Nova’s departure from Lisbon as commander of the third Portuguese expedition to India has variously been quoted as 1 March, 5 March, 11 March, 26-27 March or 10 April. He led a small four-vessel fleet under a joint private initiative of Florentine Bartolomeo Marchionni and Portuguese Álvaro de Bragança. Suggestions that da Nova’s ships were sent to reinforce Cabral’s ships following the outbreak of war with the Calicut kingdom (e.g., “as the plight of the Portuguese at Calicut was acute, three ships were sent on ahead under the Admiral, Joao da Nova Castella, to reinforce de Cabral, the Portuguese commander in India”.
) are now doubted because the Portuguese monarchy was unaware of the outbreak of war at India until the first of Cabral’s ships returned to Lisbon some six months after da Nova sailed from Lisbon. It has been suggested that da Nova was charged to block any attempt by the Spanish to enter the spice trade. If true, given the small size of his fleet, he was entrusted with a very delicate mission.
Two chronicles claimed these ships discovered Ascension Island during the outward voyage, naming it Conception Island. Thus, João de Barros wrote that passing eight degrees beyond the equator, towards the south, an island was found to which the name Concepcão was given whilst Damião de Góis’ later chronicle described the sighting of an island south of the line which was named Conçeicam. There are at least three reasons why it is thought this name was quoted by de Barros in error, this later being repeated by de Góis. First, the Church of Rome has long celebrated the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary on the fixed date of 8 December, yet by then the third armada had already reached India. Second, the Portuguese Cantino Planisphere, completed in 1502 after the third armada returned, shows the newly sighted island marked as ilha achada e chamada Ascenssam [island found and called Ascension], not as Conception. Third, in 1503 a division of the 4th Portuguese India Armada (Gama, 1502) under Estêvão da Gama also named the island as Ascension, not as Conception. It is usually presumed that the island was discovered on the movable feast of Ascension Day, which fell on 20 May in 1501, 39 days after Easter.
Two sources, a letter from King Manuel I of Portugal and Gaspar Corrêa’s chronicle, made no mention of either Ascension or Conception, instead describing a visit to Brazil.
After doubling the Cape, it is thought da Nova called at Mossel Bay, South Africa. Here he is believed to have picked up letters left in a shoe placed in a conspicuous situation by Pedro de Atayde from the 2nd Portuguese India Armada (Cabral, 1500). This will have been da Nova’s first opportunity to learn he should avoid trade with Calicut, with whom a state of war now existed. It is speculated that the Mossel Bay Stone found after the demolition of the old Government House bears an inscription of João da Nova’s name and provides evidence of this visit It is also believed that da Nova built a hermida or a small hermitage with space for only a few supplicants at a promitory at Mossel Bay. A letter written by Pedro Quaresma to King Manuel II described a visit to this location a few years later in 1506. This same reference source includes a description of the walls of a ruined hermida dedicated to Saint Blaise on the high ground (Cape St Blaise) between two coves at Mossel Bay in 1576. Later in his outward voyage, Da Nova is also said to have discovered what has since been called Juan de Nova Island in the Mozambique Channel.
Arriving in India, Nova established a feitoria (trading post) in Cannanore and left behind a factor (on behalf of the private Marchionni-Braganza consortium, not the Portuguese crown). On December 31, 1501, João da Nova's little fleet engaged the fleet of the Zamorin of Calicut in a battle outside of Cannanore harbor, the first Portuguese naval battle in the Indian Ocean. In this action, João da Nova’s four ships won a memorable sea battle, largely due to their superior cannonry and one of the earliest combinations of line-ahead and standoff gun battle tactics.
In 1898, a large 20-ton boulder was discovered at the bottom of the old Breakwater Office building at the site in the Fort of Colombo, Sri Lanka. This featured a finely produced carving of the Portuguese coat of arms, above which was carved a cross and to one side a cruder carving, apparently of the numerals “1501”. Some historians have conjectured that Nova (or one of his captains) visited Sri Lank at some point on this trip, four years before the first officially documented Portuguese visit by D. Lourenço de Almeida in 1505-6. However, an alternative suggestion made in the 1899 paper by F. H. de Vos tentatively suggested that the characters might be read as “ISOI” representing a phrase such as Jesus Salvator Orientalium Indicorum [Jesus the Saviour of the East Indies].
Nova's armada left India around the turn of 1501/2. On his return journey, Nova is commonly said to have discovered the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena on 21 May 1502, the feast day of Helena of Constantinople. However, a paper published in 2015 reviewed the discovery date and suggests Jan Huyghen van Linschoten was probably the first (in 1596) to state that the island was so named because it was found on the 21 May. Given that Linschoten correctly stated Whitsunday fell on the Western Christian date of 21 May 1589 (rather than the Orthodox Church date of 28 May), the paper suggests that Linschoten was referring to the Protestant feast-day for Saint Helena on 21 May, not the Orthodox Church version on the same date. It is then argued the Portuguese found the island two decades before the start of the Reformation and the establishment of Protestantism, and it is therefore not possible that the island was so named because it was found on the Protestant feast day. An alternative discovery date of 3 May on the Catholic feast-day celebrating the finding of the True Cross by Saint Helena in Jerusalem, as quoted by Odoardo Duarte Lopes in 1591 and by Sir Thomas Herbert in 1638, is suggested as historically more credible than the Protestant date of 21 May. The paper observes that if da Nova made the discovery on 3 May 1502, he may have been inhibited from naming the island Ilha de Vera Cruz (Island of the True Cross) because Pedro Álvares Cabral had already assigned that same name to the Brazilian coastline, which he thought to be a large island, on 3 May 1500. News of Cabral’s discovery reached Lisbon directly from South America before da Nova’s fleet set off on the voyage to India in 1501. If da Nova knew the True Cross name had already been assigned, the most obvious and plausible alternative name for him to give the island was "Santa Helena".