Replica of the seaplane Fairey IIID, piloted by Sacadura Cabral and Gago Coutinho, which arrivedin Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, on 17 June 1922 after the first aerial crossing ofthe South Atlantic.
Length: 10.92 m / Wingspan: 14.05 m / Height: 3.70 metres
> The Monument
Monument created by Carlos de Oliveira Correia, paying tribute to the First Aerial Crossing of the South Atlantic by Sacadura Cabral (pilot) and Gago Coutinho (navigator), from 30 March to 17 June 1922, a total of 8,364 kilometres on a flight lasting 62 hours and 26 minutes at an average speed of 134km/hour.
> The Journey
Three Fairey III D seaplanes belonging to the Naval Aviation were used for this journey. The third aircraft, the Santa Cruz, is the one represented by this monument.
The crossing connected Lisbon (Portugal), Las Palmas (Canary Islands), São Vicente Island and São Tiago Island (Cape Verde), and the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Rocks, Fernando de Noronha, Recife, Bahia, Porto Seguro, Vitória and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).
Sacadura Cabral was the only pilot throughout the entire flight. The two longest stages each lasted approximately 11 hours.
Gago Coutinho designed a method of celestial navigation that was pioneering in its precision, as well as the respective instruments: a sextant with an artificial horizon and a course corrector. Special charts were also drawn up and, prior to the journey, celestial calculations for specific points on each stage were plotted in advance.
It was this confidence in Gago Coutinho’s celestial navigation methods that allowed them to find the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Rocks (two small rocks stretching for 250 metres) in the middle of sea, after a flight of 1,652 kilometres over the Atlantic, without any external help. None of the planes had a radio.
The 1922 crossing connected four countries, three continents and two hemispheres, and coincided with the first centenary of Brazil’s independence.
UNESCO recorded the Report of the First Aerial Crossing of the South Atlantic in the Memory of the World Register on 27 July 2011, which, from that day on has been considered World Heritage.
Text: João Moura Ferreira
... The great journey had begun on the 30th of March 1922, when Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral set off from Lisbon aboard a modified single-engine Fairey III-D seaplane, which had been given the name Lusitânia. Sacadura Cabral was the pilot on this daring journey and Gago Coutinho was the navigator who had invented a completely new and highly precise method of aeronautical celestial navigation. He also designed a type of sextant with an artificial horizon to measure the altitude of the heavenly bodies, as well as inventing a course corrector. This method of celestial navigation revolutionised air navigation for ever.
They flew to the Canary Islands and to Cape Verde on the Lusitânia, and from there to the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Rocks in the middle of the South Atlantic. The rough sea damaged the aircraft during landing. They continued their journey from the island of Fernando de Noronha aboard a second seaplane, sent by the Portuguese government.
But the brave flyers had another bad break when engine failure forced them to make an emergency landing, casting them adrift for hours, until they were rescued by a British cargo ship.
Having been brought back to Fernando de Noronha, it was not until the 5th of June that they were able to set off once more aboard a new Fairey III-D (no. 17), transported from Portugal and christened Santa Cruz by the wife of the then President of Brazil, Epitácio Pessoa. On that day, the seaplane took off and headed towards Recife, stopping along the way at Salvador da Bahia, Porto Seguro and Vitória. On the 17th of June 1922, they arrived at Guanabara Bay, in Rio de Janeiro, where crowds of celebrating onlookers were waiting to welcome them.
In 1922, Brazil also celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of its independence. This commemoration was also one of the reasons behind the journey.
> The era
It was the early 1920s...
These were years of unrest in São Brás de Alportel. At that time, cork production was one of the municipality’s economic driving forces, but was already clearly in decline. Outraged at the high level of taxation, the manufacturers complained constantly, giving rise to concern.[1].
In May 1922, the Municipal Council announced that a bandstand was to be built for the Music Band, but the location was still under discussion: either Largo de São Sebastião or the square next to the Igreja Matriz (Main Church). At that time the Verbena Gardens were not even under consideration.
Everyone pointed to the municipality’s isolation and the dreadful state of the roads as being the major cause of the stagnation and the biggest impediment to the area’s progress. For this reason, the political powers invested all of their energy in solving the problem.
In that spring of 1922, the Senate (national parliament) approved a subsidy of 200 “contos” for the building of the railway line to Loulé and São Brás. The people believed that, finally, with the arrival of the train, the prosperous times of a few decades ago would return.
In October 1922, the first projects began to appear for the future avenue that would lead northwards from the Largo de São Sebastião Square. The road between São Brás and Almargens was also given the go-ahead at this time. Once the preliminary studies had been carried out, the Municipal Council set about issuing compulsory purchase orders on various properties. Many also dreamed of electrical vehicles providing a fast link to Faro.
Portugal was going through a period of despondency, seeing some of the republican ideas wither and trying to heal the wounds of its participation in World War One. It was in this context that, suddenly, in June 1922, the country was swept by a wave of enthusiasm that made everyone forget all their sorrows from one day to the next: two Portuguese, Sacadura Cabral and Gago Coutinho made history by completing the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic, from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro. The journey took them a total of around sixty-two hours of flying time spread over seventy-nine days, including stops, interruptions and mechanical breakdowns.
The country was jubilant. And São Brás de Alportel felt special because one of the heroes had family roots here.
Text: Emanuel Sancho
> Gago Coutinho’s São Brás origins
His paternal grandfather, Manuel Viegas Gago Coutinho, was a bookseller in Faro and a corporal in the Faro Squadron of the Artillery Regiment. According to Gago Coutinho, his father, José Viegas Gago Coutinho “was a man with little academic instruction. He only had primary schooling, but was capable of dealing with the business correspondence that he had to do (...). He was a tall, slim and very white man” from São Brás de Alportel. His mother, Fortunata Maria Mendes Coutinho was “a small, dark woman from the Algarve. Her parents were bakers and she must have had Moorish ancestors. I know nothing else about her except that a brother of hers was the master of a coastal vessel and I saw him visit his sister in Belém on several occasions.” [2]
Many swore, and others still affirm today, that the aviator and scientist was actually born in São Brás and was taken as a newborn infant to Lisbon, where he was registered.
The truth is that the Municipal Council shared in the general enthusiasm, holding a Solemn Session on the 8th of May 1922[3] in the aviators’ honour. “All public officials, schools, associations and various speakers” were invited. In the evening, a civil procession was held and the Town Hall building was lit up. The town’s main street was named after the aviator Gago Coutinho, and the name has been maintained to the present day.
The following month, on the 18th of June, it was the turn of artist and democrat Virgínia Passos to deliver an elaborate speech at the seat of the municipality, in honour of the aviators:
At this time of sublime grandeur for our Homeland, in this heavenly dreamlike dawn, the soul of a people finally awakens from the deep lethargy in which it was foundering and, feeling itself triumphantly carried off to the luminous panoramas of infinity, where all is beautiful, where all is pure, bubbles with patriotic fervour over this heroic feat, the extreme boldness of the two wise and illustrious Portuguese aviators Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral, who, in the patriotic delirium of the educated world, are being crowned, on this immortal day with the everlasting laurels of victory. (excerpt)
In collaboration with:
The São Brás de Alportel Costume Museum
The Lusitânia 100 Association
[1] Minutes of São Brás de Alportel Municipal Council meeting, 5 March 1921, cit. Monumenta Blasiana, Afonso Cunha, 2012
[2] Quoted by Rui Miguel da Costa Pinto in the book Gago Coutinho, o último aventureiro português (Gago Coutinho, the last Portuguese adventurer), page 22
[3] Minutes of São Brás de Alportel Municipal Council meeting, 8 May 1922, cit. Monumenta Blasiana, Doc. 320, Afonso Cunha, 2012