Black Henry, the First Man to Circumnavigate the World?
Last month we visited Malacca (again!) This time we visited the maritime museum and here I was intrigued to find mention of Enrique de Malaca also known as “Black Henry”. I had never heard this name before and when I realized that there is reason to believe that he was perhaps the first man to circumnavigate the world, I was hooked on his story. This is what I discovered. The Portuguese came to Malacca, then an international port that served the China India trade as well as the trade from what is now Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It was fabled for its wealth and was the an international city where traders from Arabia rubbed shoulders with sophisticated merchants from Gujarat and the Malabar coast of India and the Chinese captains who came across the South China Sea. The Portuguese captured the port after heavy fighting in 1511. Later, of course, it fell to the Dutch and finally to the English which held it till Merdeka (Independence). There were many peoples here and the slave tra...