Thank you for visiting sealegacy.com, a name symbolic of my professional service to the International Marine Industry. The year 2010, celebrated forty years since my first professional day onboard a Merchant Ship plying the waters of the North Atlantic, with an eager interest to learn the art of sea navigation. However, since 2010, I began my slow path to retirement from the maritime world, dedicating time to fulfill projects of personal interest.
While sealegacy.com presents a fair number of graphic material to satisfy a curious mind searching for a source of worldly knowledge, it falls short of a complete picture representative of all my endeavours as a professional maritime consultant. Given my professional responsibility to preserve an atmosphere of privacy and confidence to my clients, numerous projects are kept from public presentation. Certainly, my past involvement with State-Flag representation and consultancy together with matters of international rules and regulations, involving ship owner and government clients, formulate a forbidden source for public presentation, yet a great source of information to impress potential client, showing my ability to solve difficult problems. The preservation of honour and professional integrity impose restrictions when business marketing shows a need of exposure to potential clients.
Influenced by individuals of great honour and integrity, my career stayed the course, bringing forth Mr. George Mason (ABS), Mr. Andrew Moore (BV) and Captain Babur Ataman, all honourable members of the global maritime community, as well as my ancestral grandfather, Alvaro Martins Homem, Knight of the Order of Christ, serving the House of Prince Dom Henrique, the Navigator; all exemplifying a wake of excellence with participation in a global society pioneered by my grandfather, along with other Great Navigators that formed the Era of Discoveries.
Furthermore, when the topic of historical excellence emerges to accentuate truth and fairness of individuality, it is with great pleasure that I assume the role of researcher. A mannerism, perhaps a dedication that I acquired when Doctor Luciano da Silva entered my life, with an attitude to bring to the surface the overall contribution and truth about the Great Navigators emerging from an empire of knowledge and discovery, Portugal my country of origin.
Reflective of an ancestry dating back centuries, my birthplace the City of Angra do Heroísmo, Island of Terceira, Açores, today a museum, selected by UNESCO as a world historical site, preserves a collection of historical splendour emerging from the reality of human behaviour dismissive of an artificial life seen in today’s Western World. Within one of its cathedrals, the remains of several Great navigators, rest in peace with a view overlooking the immense Atlantic Ocean; Alvaro Martins Homem, Paulo da Gama, João Vaz Corte Real, and several other men and women that plied the oceans of the world in times when no other dared to navigate.
The struggle to follow a maritime career conducive with a positive contribution to human life, leaves me with reservations that mostly it is in vain, better, my contributions helped create a center of greed and oppression, easily identified by the unevenness of world wealth distribution.
Contemporary love for the computer influenced my career, with an imagination that it was for the better of humankind, beginning with my participation with the likes of William A. Plice III, the originator of GHS and president of Creative Systems, Inc., a company that I helped reorganize following the breakup from AutoShip. As Vice-President of Creative Systems, Inc., my exposure to sophisticated software programming led to creations of my own, involving ship operations and onboard stability software in association with my old friend, Steven Hollister, president of Newave Systems.
Without a doubt, the usage of a computer to accelerate human creations accentuates an impressive intellectual breakthrough, yet with human repercussions. The usage of computers for the production and guidance of weapons and equipment of mass destruction is impressive, yet abusive when significance to the purpose for human life enters the question, indicating a determined desire to suffocate a peaceful coexistence with nature. Today, in a direct contrast to my childhood years, dreaming about a life at sea, I see our youth engulfing themselves in the modern world of computerized gadgets and illegal drugs where dreams of adventure and a natural coexistence are paralysed. Parents, supportive of the new computerized era, insist that their children are an intellectual “cut above” demonstrated by their dedication and ability to use computers. Instead, failing to understand the development of artificial intelligence, an adaptive and resultant of computer science, where the contemporary software user is enticed to use the computer to the heights of addiction and pervasion. Exposing children to this type of indoctrination is a deprivation of intellectual and physical good health.
The construction of floating palaces to transport the wealthiest of individuals to the likeness of an artificial god, created to satisfy human decadence, entered my realm of professional naval architect with institutionalized mannerism of race deprivation; those that have and those that will never have. Whenever, a commonly recurring entertainment episode, depicted within a variety of Hollywood styled cinema, showing a “food fight”, it serves as a constant reminder of the many garbage compactors placed onboard the modern floating palaces where the leftover food stock is enough to feed a poor nation. Within cruise ship construction and operations, food wastage insults the very nature of our soul, if one actually exists.
A comparative analysis of contemporary life with archived historical data, presents a realistic outlook of human life and perhaps its intended purpose. With so many Western cultures claiming a stressful existence, it is puzzling to witness multitudes of people ignore historical lessons, and commit the same horrendous mistakes, well depicted throughout history. The decadent nature of the human being continues to manifest itself today, as in past centuries, yet with a greater power to destroy. The preservation of the intellectually corrupt emerges as the dominant force that stimulates the masses into decadence and defeat, of the human creature able to perform better. Politicians, academics, religious leaders and minority forces of power, impose a challenge to the masses, with no winners. Parenting a human being into maturity to discover that intellectual ability stalemates, dwelling on absurd concepts of god, as an example, paraphrases the old saying; we know that we don’t know. Moreover, the human failure to grasp the reality of being drives the masses to extreme, with figments of its own creation designed to entertain and retard positive development. Settling down to a conscious clear level realizing that within our genetic parameters all the answers already exist, it is with disappointment that my life fails to entice the masses into a progressive and positive journey of discovery dwelling on factual evidence. Ignoring perplexed theories emerging from political correct organizations could form the start of a journey to a better life followed by a dedication to create a less destructive human world. Obviously, the ultimate challenge, reaching intellectual excellence, is to disprove that humans are genetically designed to destroy and bring forth evidence that produces a change.
While the life of a deep sea mariner, maintains an uplifting attitude to refrain from subjugation of human origin, it does not, however, prevent disappointment and embarrassment. Canada, my country of dual citizenship, where a Luso-Canadian identity marks my cultural background, fails me with repeated disappointment and embarrassment.
Canada, a Portuguese word, well displayed on ancient nautical charts of North America, showing territorial boundaries separating Portuguese Crown land from land settled by French colonies, dating back to the late fourteen hundreds, has since undergone an Anglo-Saxon cover up, reaching contemporary times, with an explanation that it derives from one of the languages spoken by native people of the New World (North America). Entertaining the thought that various navigators crossed the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean before the Portuguese, it was the navigators originating from the House of Dom Henrique, Administrator of the Order of Christ, that first carried the news of the existence of the New World to the shores of Europe, with enough scope to involve the majority of Kingdoms forming 14th, 15th and 16th century Europe. This feat of world discovery involved the following Portuguese navigators;
Captain Alvaro Martins Homem - prior to 1450
Captain João Vaz Corte Real – prior to 1450 and 1487
Captain Gaspar Corte Real – 1487 and 1501
Captain Miguel Corte Real – 1487
Captain João Fernandes Labrador – 1492
Captain Pedro de Barcelos – 1492
Captain Alvaro Fagundes – 1520
Captain João Martins – 1588
Boundary lines and territorial names are clearly drawn and written on the maps that survived the ages, supporting the undisputed presence of the Portuguese on the formation of Canada before any other European. A decade later the French followed suit, colonizing the territories to the west of the Saguenay River. The characteristic of the Saguenay River, located on the Province of Quebec, Canada, play an important part on the origin of the name canada as applied to the nation’s name, Canada.