Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi
Genoese explorers and merchants Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi are best known for their 13th-century attempt to sail around Africa in one of the first recorded voyages from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic since the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE. Ugolino commanded the two-galley expedition, which he had organised in conjunction with Tedisio Doria.
The expedition left Genoa in May 1291, intending to reach India "by the Ocean Sea." While the expedition was focused on commercial interests, two Franciscan friars travelled aboard the galleys, which sailed down the Morocco coast to Cape Nun, at 28º 47' N. After that, nothing was heard of them.
At least two expeditions subsequently left Genoa in search of the two brothers, who became the subjects of legends suggesting they circumnavigated Africa and found their way to the mythical Christian king Prester John's legendary kingdom.
- Lancelotto Malocello was reputedly seeking the brothers when he set sail from Genoa in 1312. Malocello ended up remaining in the Canary Islands, where the island of Lanzarote is named for him.
- Ugolino's son Sorleone de Vivaldo set out in search of his father and reputedly reached Mogadishu on the Somali coast.
- The Libro del Conoscimiento, a travelogue written by an anonymous Spanish friar in the second half of the 14th century, contains a passage referring to a Genoese man named Sor Leone in the city of Magdasor "searching for his father who had left in two galleys".
- In 1455, Antoniotto Uso di Mare, sailing with Cadamosto, claimed to have met, the survivors of the Vivaldo expedition's last descendant near the mouth of the Gambia.
- The voyage may also have inspired Canto 26 of Dante’s Inferno, where Ulysses’ last voyage ends in failure in the Southern Hemisphere.
