North Eastern Atlantic

These Atlantic waters lie west of the Douro and the northern Portuguese coast. At the river's mouth, Porto offered an outlet for goods carried down the valley, including wine brought in flat-bottomed rabelos. In the sixteenth century merchants and shipowners of Porto sought markets across the Atlantic and Europe while the crown concentrated much of its attention on the route from Lisbon around Africa to India. The open sea formed the passage between these coastal ports and their distant trading partners.