Portuguese explorer Lopes Gonçalves, or Lopo Gonçalves, was the first European sailor to cross the equator: "No boiling waters, no harm. A medieval bugaboo had been banished from modern thinking". (John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers, p. 69).
In 1473 or 1474, during Fernão Gomes' five-year lease on the rights to explore the African coast, Gonçalves and Rui de Sequeira discovered that the coast trended south beyond Malimba. They followed it to Cape López, crossed 'the line' and reached Cape St Catherine (2°S).