Porto Santo Island is a Portuguese island 43 kilometres (27 mi) northeast of Madeira Island in the North Atlantic Ocean; it is the northernmost and easternmost island of the archipelago of Madeira, located in the Atlantic Ocean west of Europe and Africa. It appears that some knowledge of Atlantic islands, such as Madeira, existed before the discovery and settlement of these lands, as the islands […]
Islands and islets Madeira (740.7 km2), including Ilhéu de Agostinho, Ilhéu de São Lourenço, Ilhéu Mole (northwest); Porto Santo (42.5 km2), including Ilhéu de Baixo ou da Cal, Ilhéu de Ferro, Ilhéu das Cenouras, Ilhéu de Fora, Ilhéu de Cima; Desertas Islands (14.2 km2), including the three uninhabited islands: Deserta Grande Island, Bugio Island and Ilhéu de Chão; Savage Islands (3.6 km2), archipelago 280 km south-southeast of Madeira […]
The archipelago of Madeira is located 520 km (280 nmi) from the African coast and 1,000 km (540 nmi) from the European continent (approximately a one-and-a-half hour flight from the Portuguese capital of Lisbon).[30] It is found in the extreme south of the Tore-Madeira Ridge, a bathymetric structure of great dimensions oriented along a north-northeast to south-southwest axis that extends for […]
On 31 December 1916 during the Great War, the German U-boat, SM U-38, captained by Max Valentiner, entered Funchal harbour on Madeira; it torpedoed and sank three ships: CS Dacia (1,856 tons), SS Kanguroo (2,493 tons) and Surprise (680 tons), bringing the war to Portugal by extension. The commander of the French gunboat Surprise and 34 of her crew (including 7 Portuguese) died in the attack. TheDacia, a British cable-laying vessel, had previously undertaken war work off […]
