Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Corte-Real

CORTE-REAL, the name of a noble Portuguese family. In 1500 Gaspard Corte-Real sailed from Lisbon, landed on the coast of Labrador, and, having named the country, returned home with some of the natives whom he had captured. In 1501 he undertook a second voyage to the Arctic seas, from which he did not return. In the following year his brother Miguel led an expedition for the purpose of discovering him, but he also never returned. The king, Emmanuel, sent out two ships to the assistance of the brothers, but no traces of either could be found. A third brother, Vasco, was only prevented from risking the fate of Gaspard and Miguel by the king s command. To the same family belonged the poet, Jeronymo Corte-Real. He also was a sailor; for the first fact in his life that has come down to us is that, about 1571, he was appointed captain- general of a fleet fitted out for explorations in the Indies. The invasion of Philip II. in 1580 found him in retirement at Evora ; but of the rest of his life there is nothing satisfactorily known except that he died before 1594. His Diú, an epic founded on the siege of Diú, and his Amtriad, celebrating the victory won in 1571 by Don John of Austria over the Turks at Lepanto, have no great merit. His best work is the Naufragio de Sepulveda (published in 1594), a poem describing the shipwreck and death of Lionor de Sa (the mother of his wife) and of Manoel de Sonza. An edition of this story, which has been translated into both French and Spanish, appeared at Lisbon in 1849.

See Ferdinand Denis, Ckroniqucs clicrahrcsques de FEspagnc ct Portugal; and Sismondi, Litttrature dumidi de V Europe.