Diogo de Azambuja was a Portuguese knight of the Order of Aviz, a veteran of the succession wars in Castile and of Portugal's North African campaigns, when King John II gave him command of the 1481 expedition to build a fortified trading post on the Gulf of Guinea. He was not an architect by training; his task was logistical and military — land ten caravels and two transport ships carrying six hundred men and stone pre-cut in Portugal, secure a site from a wary local ruler, and see the walls assembled before the rains or resistance stopped him. He succeeded within about three weeks and stayed on as the fort's first captain. He later built a second Portuguese fort at Essaouira, on the Moroccan coast, in his seventies, and ended his career as a royal councillor.
