is believed to have delivered much of his primary material to the Venetian cartographer Grazioso Benincasa, as Benincasa went on to produce an atlas in 1468, depicting the West African coast with remarkable accuracy. The Navigationi were probably written in an effort to advertise his accomplishments, and rescue his family name. Upon his return, Cadamosto managed to recover some of his family's property from his Querini relatives and, a couple of years later, married Elisabetta di Giorgio Venier, a rich noblewoman but of frail health – she died without bearing him a child. He returned to commerce, with trading interests as far afield as Spain, Alexandria, Syria and England, and with fortune and connections restored, carved out a diplomatic and administrative career for the Republic of Venice alongside it. Cadamosto served as Venetian proveditor in Cattaro, then in Corone, and was sent on diplomatic missions to Dalmatia and Herzegovina. After the fall of Negroponte in 1470, Cadamosto was placed in charge of devising a plan for the defense of Albania against the Ottomans. In 1481, Alvise Cadamosto was elected captain of the Venetian Alexandria galley fleet, ending his naval career on the same ships where he started. He died in 1483, in the Polesine, while on diplomatic mission to Rovigo to assess the spoils acquired by the Venetian Republic after their victory over Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara in the War of Ferrara. (although in some accounts, the date of his death is sometimes given as early as 1477 and as late as 1488). The Navigazioni For historians of the Portuguese discoveries under Henry the Navigator, Alvise Cadamosto's accounts, the Navigazioni, have proven to be an invaluable document. Cadamosto's accounts, Gomes Eanes de Zurara's chronicle and the memoirs of Diogo Gomes, are practically all that remain of the contemporary written record of the Henrican discoveries. Indeed, until the publication of João de Barros's Decadas da Asia in 1552 (which drew on a manuscript draft of Zurara's chronicle), Cadamosto's Navigazioni was the only published work circulating in Europe about the Portuguese discoveries. Cadamosto emphasized the central role of Prince Henry, and was instrumental in building up the image of the Navigator Prince for posterity. Compared to the hagiographic Zurara and the fallible Gomes, historians have relished and lauded the reliability and detail provided by Cadamosto, giving a richer and clearer view of how the Henrican enterprise operated. Cadamosto's accounts are