Ugolino de Vivaldo

Vivalso, Ugolino and Sorleone de (fl. 1291-1315), Genoese explorers, connected with the first known expedition in search of an ocean way from Europe to India. Ugolino, with his brother Guido or Vadino Vivaldo, was in command of this expedition of two galleys, which he had organized in conjunction with Tedisio Doria, and which left Genoa in May 1291 with the purpose of going to India "by the Ocean Sea" and bringing back useful things for trade. Planned primarily for commerce, the enterprise also aimed at proselytism. Two Franciscan friars accompanied Ugolino. The galleys were well armed and sailed down the Morocco coast to a place called Gozora (Cape Nun), in 28 47' N., after which nothing more was heard of them.

Early in the next (14th) century, Sorleone de Vivaldo, son of Ugolino, undertook a series of distant wanderings in search of his father, and even penetrated, it is said, to Mogadishu on the Somali coast. In 1455 another Genoese seaman, Antoniotto Uso di Mare, sailing with Cadamosto in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, claimed to have met, near the mouth of the Gambia, with the last descendant of the survivors of the Vivaldo expedition. The two galleys, he was told, had sailed to the Sea of Guinea; in that sea one was stranded, but the other passed on to a place on the coast of Ethiopia-Mena or Amenuan, near the Gihon (here probably meaning the Sénégal River) where the Genoese were seized and held in close captivity.

References

* Jacopo Doria, "Annales" (under A.D. 1291) in G. H. Pertz, "Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores, xviii. 335" (1863)
* the "Conogimiento de todos los Reinos," ed. Marcos Jimenez de la Espada in the "Boletin of the Geographical Society of Madrid", vol. ii., No. 2, pp. in, 113, 117-18 (Madrid, February, 1877)
* Canale, "Degli antichi navigatori scopntori Genovesi" (Genoa, 1846)
* G. H. Pertz, "Der Älteste Versuch für Entdeckung des Seeweges nach Ostindien" (Berlin, 1859)
* "Annali di Geografia e di Statistica composti . . . da Giacomo (Jacob) Gråberg" (Genoa, 1802)
* L. T. Belgrano, "Annali Genovesi di Caffaro e de'suoi continuatori," in Archiv Star, /fa/., 3rd series* ii. 124, etc., and "Auidetta Soc. Lig. di Sloria Patria", xv. 320 (1881)
* Wilhelm Heyd, "Histoire du commerce du Levant" (the improved French edition of the "Geschichte des Levantehandels"), ii. 140-43 (Paris, 1886)
* C. R. Beazley, "Dawn of Modern Geography", iii. 41319, 551 (Oxford, 1906).

References

*1911