Fernando de Noronha (), officially the State District of Fernando de Noronha () and formerly known as the Federal Territory of Fernando de Noronha () until 1988, is an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, part of the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, and located off the Brazilian coast.
Fernando de Noronha consists of 21 islands and islets, extending over an area of . Only the eponymous main island is inhabited; it has an area of and a population estimated at 3,101 in 2020. While most of the archipelago is relatively low-lying, there are parts reaching more than in elevation, with the volcanic rock Morro do Pico standing 323 meters (about 1,060 feet) above sea level as its highest point.
The islands are administratively unique in Brazil. They form a "state district" () that is administered directly by the government of the state of Pernambuco (despite being geographically closer to the state of Rio Grande do Norte). The state district's jurisdiction also includes the very remote Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago, located northeast of Fernando de Noronha.
In 1988, 70% of the area of Fernando de Noronha was established as a national marine park. In 2001, UNESCO designated the islands as a World Heritage Site because of their importance as a feeding ground for tuna, sharks, sea turtles, and marine mammals. Its time zone is UTC−02:00 all year round.
History
Discovery
Fernando de Noronha's occupation dates to the early 16th century. Due to its geographical position, the archipelago was one of the first lands sighted in the New World, being shown in a nautical chart in 1500 by the Spanish cartographer Juan de La Cosa, and in 1502 by the Portuguese Alberto Cantino, in the latter with the name "Quaresma".
Based on the written record, Fernando de Noronha island was discovered on August 10, 1503, by a Portuguese expedition, organized and financed by a private commercial consortium headed by the Lisbon merchant Fernão de Loronha. The expedition was under the overall command of captain Gonçalo Coelho and carried the Italian adventurer Amerigo Vespucci, who wrote an account of it.The Coelho expedition is also known as the "Fourth Voyage" of Vespucci, and is related in the letter of Amerigo Vespucci to Piero Soderini, 1504–05. See the English translation of the account in Letter to Soderini The flagship of the expedition hit a reef and foundered near the island. On Coelho's orders, Vespucci anchored at the island, and spent a week there, while the rest of the Coelho fleet went on south. In his letter to Soderini, Vespucci describes the uninhabited island and reports its name as the "island of St. Lawrence" (August 10 is the feast day of St. Lawrence; it was customary for explorers to name locations according to the liturgical calendar).
The island's existence was reported to Lisbon sometime between then and January 16, 1504, when King Manuel I of Portugal issued a charter granting the "island of St. John" (São João) as a hereditary captaincy to Fernão de Loronha.See Duarte Leite (1923: p.276–278) and Roukema (1963: p.21). As Vespucci did not return to Lisbon until June 1504, historians have hypothesized that a stray ship of the Coelho fleet, under an unknown captain, may have returned to the island to collect Vespucci, did not find him or anyone else there, and went back to Lisbon by itself with the news.Roukema (1963: p.22) Vespucci, in his letter, claims that he left the island August 18, 1503, and upon his arrival in Lisbon a year later, on June 18, 1504, the people of Lisbon were surprised, as they "had been told" that his ship had been lost.Roukema (1963: p.21) The captain who returned to Lisbon with the news of the island and Vespucci's ship's loss is unknown. Some have speculated this captain was Loronha himself, the chief financier of this expedition.
This account, reconstructed from the written record, is challenged by the cartographic record. An island, named Quaresma, looking very much like Fernando de Noronha island, appears in the Cantino planisphere. The Cantino map was composed by an anonymous Portuguese cartographer, and completed before November 1502, well before the Coelho expedition even set out. This has led to speculation that the island was discovered by a previous expedition. There is no consensus on which expedition that might have been, although Roukema (1963) suggests the expedition by André Gonçalves. The name "Quaresma" means Lent, suggesting it must have been discovered in March or early April. There is also a red island to the west of Quaresma in the Cantino map that does not fit with Fernando de Noronha island. Some have explained these anomalies away by reading quaresma as anaresma, making the proposed Lent timing unnecessary,See Henry Harrisse (1891) The Discovery of North America (1961 ed., p.319) and Orville Derby (1902) "Os mappas mais antigos do Brasil", Revista do Instituto Historico e Geografico de São Paulo, vol. 7, p.244. This reading was also preferred by historian Marcondes de Sousa (1949) Américo Vespúcio e suas viagens (São Paulo). and proposing that the red island is just an accidental inkblot.Duarte Leite (1923: p.275–278).
If Quaresma is indeed Fernando de Noronha, then it is not known who discovered it. One proposal is that it was discovered by a royal Portuguese mapping expedition that was sent out in May 1501, commanded by an unknown captain (possibly André Gonçalves) and also accompanied by Amerigo Vespucci. The 1501 mapping expedition is also known as the "Third Voyage" of Amerigo Vespucci (and his first under the Portuguese flag). Vespucci relates the account of this expedition twice – first in a letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, written in early 1503 (see account in Letter do Medici), and then again in his letters to Piero Soderini, written 1504–05 ([account] in Letter to Soderini). In his account, Vespucci does not mention the name of the captain of this 1501 mapping expedition, and his identity has been widely speculated on. The 16th-century chronicler Gaspar Correia suggests that it was André Gonçalves (Lendas da India, p.152). Greenlee (1945) conjectures that it might be Fernão de Loronha himself (a hypothesis also suggested by Duarte Leite in 1923). However, this is strongly disputed by other authors, e.g. Roukema (1963), who argue that it would be highly unlikely for a wealthy merchant like Loronha to personally command vessels himself. Loronha's support (if any) to the mapping expedition was probably limited to financing.
According to Vespucci, this expedition returned to Lisbon in September 1502, just in time to influence the final composition of the Cantino map. However, Vespucci does not report discovering this island then, instead stating that the first time he saw the island was on the 1503 Coelho expedition.
There is a letter written by Venetian emissary Pascualigo on October 12, 1502, saying that a ship arrived "from the land of Parrots" in Lisbon on July 22, 1502 (three months before Vespucci).quoted in the diary of Marino Sanuto. See Greenlee (1945: p.11n) and Roukema (1963:p.19). This could be a stray ship from the mapping expedition that returned prematurely, or another expedition altogether, about which there is no information.Roukema (1963) accepts the hypothesis of a unrecorded separate expedition in 1501 – and that this might be the one led by André Gonçalves. However, Greenlee (1945) rejects the unrecorded expedition theory, deeming it superfluous, and instead embraces the stray ship theory (and that this stray ship was the flagship personally commanded by Fernão de Loronha). The timing of its reputed arrival (July 1502), makes it possible that it stumbled on the island some time in March 1502, on the homeward voyage, well within Lent.
A third theory is that the island had already been discovered in 1500, shortly after the discovery of Brazil by the Second India Armada under Pedro Álvares Cabral. After his brief landfall at Porto Seguro, Cabral dispatched a supply ship under either Gaspar de Lemos or André Gonçalves (sources conflict) back to Lisbon, to report the discovery. This returning supply ship would have returned north along the Brazilian coast and might have come across Fernando de Noronha island, and reported its existence in Lisbon by July 1500. However, this contradicts the Quaresma name, since the returning supply ship was sailing well after Lent.
A fourth possibility is that it was discovered by the Third India Armada of João da Nova, which set out from Lisbon in March or April 1501, and returned in September 1502, also in time to influence the Cantino map. Chronicler Gaspar Correia asserts that on the outward voyage, the Third Armada made a stop on the Brazilian coast around Cape Santo Agostinho. Two other chroniclers (João de Barros and Damião de Góis) do not mention a landfall, but do report they discovered an island (which they believe to be identified as Ascension Island, but this is not certain). See Roukema (1963) on the possible problems of identifying the island discovered by the Third Armada on its outward leg as Ascension Island. It is thus possible that the Third Armada may have discovered Fernando de Noronha island on their outward leg. However, the timing is very tight: Easter landed on April 11, 1501, while the estimated departure date of the Third Armada from Lisbon ranges from March 5 to April 15, not leaving enough time to reach those environs within Lent.
As a result of these anomalies, some modern historians have proposed that Fernando de Noronha is not depicted on the 1502 Cantino map at all. Instead, they have proposed that Quaresma island and the accompanying red "inkblot" are in fact the Rocas Atoll, slightly misplaced on the map. This reserves the discovery of Fernando de Noronha island itself as indeed on August 10, 1503, by the Gonçalo Coelho expedition, as originally reported by Vespucci.Roukema (1963: p.19-22). Roukema concludes that it was the Rocas Atoll that was discovered by the returning stray ship or unrecorded expedition on March 16, 1502, well within Lent.
The name "São João" eventually gave way to the initially informal name of "Fernando de Noronha". A royal letter dated May 20, 1559, to descendants of the Loronha family, still refers to the island by its official name of ilha de São João.,Duarte Leite (1923: p.276–278) but already in other places, e.g. the logbook of Martim Afonso de Sousa in the 1530s, it was referred to as the "island of Fernão de Noronha" ("Noronha" being a common misspelling of "Loronha"). The informal name eventually displaced the official name.
1500–1700
The Lisbon merchant Fernão de Loronha held not only Fernando de Noronha island as a hereditary captaincy but also (from 1503 to around 1512) a commercial monopoly on trade in Brazil. Between 1503 and 1512, Noronha's agents set up a string of warehouses (feitorias) along the Brazilian coast, and engaged in trade with the indigenous peoples in Brazil for brazilwood, a native red dye wood highly valued by European cloth-makers. Fernando de Noronha island was the central collection point of this network. Brazilwood, continuously harvested by the coastal Indians and delivered to the various coastal warehouses, was shipped to the central warehouse on Fernando de Noronha island, which was intermittently visited by a larger transport ship that would carry the collected loads back to Europe. After the expiration of Loronha's commercial charter in 1512, the organization of the brazilwood enterprise was taken over by the Portuguese crown, but Loronha and his descendants retained private ownership of Fernando de Noronha island itself as a hereditary captaincy, at least down to the 1560s.
1700–1900
In July 1719, the Welsh pirate Bartholomew Roberts, also known as "Black Bart," was present on the island for a total of nine weeks, before heading off in search of Portuguese ships in the West Indies.
French occupation