Bays
Original title: Baías
Discusses the geographical terms for coastal inlets and reserves the name 'bay' in the archipelago for those of Funchal and Porto Santo, calling the rest 'enseadas'.
It does not seem easy to draw an exact and rigorous distinction between the meanings of such terms as golfo, baía, enseada, angra, abra, calheta, etc. Dictionaries and geographical treatises reveal this difficulty, for they disagree when they try to fix the meaning of these words. Differing in part from the classification adopted for Madeira by various authors (Frutuoso, Azevedo, Nóbrega Soares, Sarmento, Loureiro, Meneses etc.), we shall say that, of the inlets along the coast of the whole archipelago, only those of Funchal and Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’) deserve in our view the name of bays, and we give the rest the generic name of coves (enseadas).
In this article
Place
Places mentioned · 03- Baías · Subject
Funchal
The Baías entry discusses the geographical terms for coastal inlets in the archipelago. It reserves the name 'bay' for those of Funchal and Porto Santo and calls the rest 'enseadas'.
- Bay of Funchal
Funchal. One of the two inlets the Elucidário considers true bays.
The Bay of Funchal, between Ponta do Garajau and Ponta da Cruz, is the widest bay in the archipelago and the island's main anchorage, whose exposure to southerly gales caused many wrecks. The Elucidário notes it was surveyed by Vidal in 1843, that the Surprise was torpedoed there, and that it had never been studied oceanographically.
- Bay of Porto Santo
Porto Santo. The other inlet deemed a true bay.
The other inlet deemed a true bay.
People
People mentioned · 02-
Author cited on the classification of Madeiran inlets.
- Gaspar Frutuoso1522–1591
Chronicler cited among authors who classified Madeira's coastal inlets.