Diogo de Silves

Who is Diogo de Silves?

Diogo de Silves, is the presumed name of an obscure Portuguese explorer of the Atlantic who allegedly discovered the Azores islands in 1427.

He is only known from a reference on a chart drawn by the Catalan cartographer, Gabriel de Vallseca of Mallorca, dated 1439. The map, marred by an inkwell accident in 1869, has a note by the Azores archipelago, presumably written by Vallseca, stating:

The surname and part of the date are smudged. The earliest reading we have of this portion of the map is by a Majorcan named Pasqual in 1789 who jotted the surname down as "Guullen". It has since been read by other investigators as Diego de Senill. Others have proposed de Sevill or de Seville or de Sunis, Survis, Sinus, Simis, Sines, Sivils. The date has been variously interpreted as MCCCCXXVII or MCCCCXXXII or MCCCCXXXVII.

In 1943, Portuguese historian Damião Peres proposed that only Diogo de Sunis or Diogo de Silves should be entertained as readings from the smudged surname, and opted for Silves simply because Portuguese surnames of that era are usually toponyms and that the town of Silves, in the Algarve, not far from the port of Lagos, was not unlikely.