CHAPTER III 



THE NORMANS AND THE GENOESE 



THE name of Dieppe is apparently but a Frenchification 

 of the Scandinavian word Diep (deep), meaning a narrow 

 inlet. It early became a point of settlement for the 

 Normans, who fastened on the decaying power of the Franks 

 in the ninth and tenth centuries. From ports such as this 

 their princely rovers sailed round the coasts of Spain and Portugal 

 into the Mediterranean to found kingdoms in Naples and Sicily 

 and to attack the Saracens on the North Coast of Africa.^ Even 

 after the Duchy of Normandy had been fused once more into 

 the empire of France, the Norman adventurers continued their 

 explorations of the Atlantic coasts. The Canary Islands were 

 accidentally visited about 1334 by a Norman vessel driven off 

 the African coast by a storm. This shows, therefore, that as 

 early as 1334 the Normans were feeling their way down the 

 West Coast of Africa,^ 



• As early as 814 a.d., according to the Moorish historian Al Bakri, the 

 Normans or Norse rovers were pillaging the Morocco coast, and these attacks 

 continued during the ninth century. The Norse rovers were known to the Spanish 

 and North African Arabs as Maju. 



- In 1270 Lanciaroto (Lancelot) Malocello, a Genoese captain searching 

 vaguely for the Guinea Coast and the " River of Gold,'' discovered the easternmost 

 Canary Islands, probably Lanzarote (named after him) and Fuerteventura. It is 

 asserted that this Genoese captain was really of Norman descent from the French 

 family of Maloisel. In 1341 a Portuguese expedition spent four months among the 

 Canary Islands. Various Spanish expeditions between 1344 and 1395 attempted 

 with ill success to effect a permanent settlement. In 1402 Jehan de Bethencourt, a 

 Norman gentleman-adventurer, sailed from La Rochelle in the west of France, and 



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