List of notable crossings of the Atlantic Ocean

Ra II, a ship built from papyrus, was successfully sailed across the Atlantic by Thor Heyerdahl proving that it was possible to cross the Atlantic from Africa using such boats in early epochs of history.

This is a list of notable crossings of the Atlantic Ocean.

• Around 600–400 BC, Hanno the Navigator explored West Africa and possibly reached and crossed the Gulf of Guinea and the equator.
• Around 980–982, Norse explorer Erik the Red discovered Greenland, geographically and geologically a part of the Americas.
• Around 1000, Norse explorer Leifur Eríksson, son of Erik the Red, made landfall at Vinland, tentatively identified with the Norse archeological site at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland on the Atlantic coast of Canada.
• Around 1010, Norse explorers and spouses Þorfinnur karlsefni Þórðarson and Guðríður víðförla Þorbjarnardóttir led an expedition to Vinland where they begat their son Snorri Þorfinnsson, the first European born in the Americas outside of Greenland.
• In 1419 and 1427, Portuguese navigators reached Madeira and Azores, respectively.
• From 1415 to 1488, Portuguese navigators explored the Western African coast, crossed the Equator, and reached the South Atlantic, the Southern Hemisphere, and the Cape of Good Hope in the southern tip of Africa, entering the Indian Ocean.
• In 1492, Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean and landed on the Bahamas, Cuba and Hispaniola. He made three additional voyages over the next few years, during which he explored the Caribbean coast from Honduras to Venezuela as well as numerous Caribbean islands. These explorations, along with Columbus's attempts to establish a permanent settlement on Hispaniola, led to the European colonization of the Americas and a period of Columbian Exchange that permanently altered human cultures and the environment on both sides of the Atlantic. The establishment of the first transatlantic trade route provided a significant source of revenue to the Crown of Castile, leading to the development of the Spanish Empire. Communicable diseases, unintentionally brought from the Old World to the New World by Europeans, devastated the Amerindian populations, causing the deaths of an estimated 80-95% of the native population of the Americas within 150 years of Columbus's arrival.^[1] Columbus also hoped to enslave the native residents of Hispaniola and transport them to Europe;^[2] although unsuccessful in this endeavour, his efforts marked the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade that displaced an estimated 11-20 million people from Africa to the Americas over the next several centuries.^[3]
• From 1496 to 1498 John Cabot made three voyages to North America from Bristol, landing in Newfoundland and/or possibly the Canadian Maritimes.
• In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral reached Brazil.
• In 1519 Ferdinand Magellan sailed from Spain to the South Atlantic, navigating the straits named after him and entering the Pacific Ocean.
• In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, in the service of the King Francis I of France, discovered the United States of America's east coast.
• In 1534, Jacques Cartier entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence and reached the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.
• In April 1563, Nicolas Barre and 20 other stranded Huguenots were the first to build a (crude) boat in the Americas and sail across the Atlantic. They sailed from Charlesfort, South Carolina to just off the coast of England where they were rescued by an English ship. Though they resorted to cannibalism, seven men survived the voyage, including Barre.^[4][5]
• In 1764, William Harrison (the son of John Harrison) sailed aboard HMS Tartar, with the H-4 time piece. The voyage became the basis for the invention of the global system of Longitude.
• In 1858, Cyrus West Field laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable (it quickly failed).
• In 1865, Brunel's ship the SS Great Eastern laid the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable.
• In 1870, the small City of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) became the first small lifeboat to cross the Atlantic from Cork to Boston with two crew, John Charles Buckley and Nikola Primorac (di Costa).^[6]
• In 1896, Frank Samuelsen and George Harbo from Norway became the first people to ever row across the Atlantic Ocean.
• On 15 April 1912 the RMS Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg with a loss of more than 1,500 lives.^[7]
• On 7 May 1915 the RMS Lusitania was torpedoed en route to Queenstown, Ireland, at the loss of 1,198 passengers.
• 1914–1918, during the Atlantic U-boat campaign of World War I, more than 2,100 ships were sunk and 153 U-boats destroyed.
• In 1919, the American NC-4 became the first seaplane to cross the Atlantic (though it made a couple of landings on islands and the sea along the way, and taxied several hundred miles).
• Later in 1919, a British aeroplane piloted by Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight, from Newfoundland to Ireland.
• In 1921, the British were the first to cross the North Atlantic in an airship.
• In 1922, Portuguese aviators Sacadura Cabral and Gago Coutinho were the First aerial crossing of the South Atlantic on a seaplane connecting Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro.
• In May 1927, Charles Nungesser and François Coli in their aircraft L'Oiseau Blanc (The White Bird) mysteriously disappeared in an attempt to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York.
• In 1927, Charles Lindbergh made the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight in an aircraft (between New York City and Paris).
• In 1931, Bert Hinkler made the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight across the South Atlantic in an aircraft.
• In 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first female to make a solo flight across the Atlantic from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland to Derry, Northern Ireland.
• 1939–1945, during World War II, the Battle of the Atlantic resulted in nearly 3,700 ships sunk and 783 U-boats destroyed.^[8]
• In 1952, Ann Davison was the first woman to single-handedly sail the Atlantic Ocean.
• In 1965, Robert Manry crossed the Atlantic from the U.S. to England non-stop in a 13.5-foot (4.1-meter) sailboat named "Tinkerbell".^[9] Several others also crossed the Atlantic in very small sailboats in the 1960s, none of them non-stop, though.
• In 1969 and 1970 Thor Heyerdahl launched expeditions to cross the Atlantic in boats built from papyrus. He succeeded in crossing the Atlantic from Morocco to Barbados after a two-month voyage of 6,100 km with Ra II in 1970, thus conclusively proving that boats such as the Ra could have sailed with the Canary Current across the Atlantic in prehistoric times.^[10]
• In 1980, Gérard d'Aboville was the first man to cross the Atlantic Ocean rowing solo.
• In 1984, Amyr Klink crossed the south atlantic rowing solo from Namibia to Brazil in 100 days.
• In 1984, five Argentines sail in a 10-meter-long raft made from tree trunks named Atlantis from Canary Islands and after 52 days 3,000 miles (4,800 km) journey arrived to Venezuela in an attempt to prove travellers from Africa may have crossed the Atlantic before Christopher Columbus.^[11][12]
• In 1994, Guy Delage was the first man to allegedly swim across the Atlantic Ocean (with the help of a kick board, from Cape Verde to Barbados).
• In 1998, Benoît Lecomte was the first man to swim across the northern Atlantic Ocean without a kick board, stopping for only one week in the Azores.
• In 1999, after rowing for 81 days and 4,767 kilometres (2,962 miles), Tori Murden became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by rowboat alone when she reached Guadeloupe from the Canary Islands.
• In 2003 Alan Priddy and three crew members made a record crossing of the North Atlantic in a RIB from Newfoundland to Scotland, via Greenland and Iceland, in 103 hours.

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