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Todos os Santos Bay is an indentation in the Brazilian coastline located in the state of Bahia.
It is the second largest bay in the world (after the Gulf of Bengal) and the largest in Brazil. It covers 1,233 km² and has an average depth of 9.8 metres, reaching up to 42 metres, with diving visibility of between 10 and 20 metres.
It gave rise to the name of the captaincy, province and current Brazilian state. The federative unit, however, kept the letter ‘h’ in the noun, according to the spelling of the Portuguese language at the time.
To give you an idea of the size of this bay, it is roughly the size of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second largest metropolis.
Video documentary on the Baía de Todos os Santos
History of Todos os Santos Bay
The wide and deep bay enchanted navigators, pirates and colonisers, as well as arousing the interest of the Portuguese government because it was an excellent natural anchorage, a strategic defensive site, with pristine waters and fertile land.
It was named in 1501 when a Portuguese expedition, led by Gaspar de Lemos and accompanied by Américo Vespúcio, the Italian cartographer and writer who would give his name to the entire American continent, was sent to map the new lands discovered a year earlier by Pedro Álvares Cabral.
It was 1 November, All Saints’ Day in the Catholic tradition.
By custom, landforms were named after the saints of the days on which they were identified – and so the bay was given this name.
The strategic importance of Todos os Santos Bay, associated with the existence of hills and landforms to the east (a relief that would allow for the medieval custom of fortifying cities), was decisive in Tomé de Sousa later choosing the region to found, by order of the king of Portugal, the city that would be the seat of the first capital of the Portuguese colony – Salvador.
Thecradle of Portuguese colonial civilisation in the Americas, the Baía de Todos os Santos was home to the largest export port in the Southern Hemisphere in the 16th century, from where Bolivian silver and Brazilian sugar were shipped to European metropolises, with the port of Salvador receiving the most African slaves in the New World.
The bay also has cultural importance, being a landmark for the founding of Salvador, Brazil’s first capital, and playing a central role in the formation of the Recôncavo Baiano, one of the richest regions in history and culture in the country.
The Bay was a strategic point for Portuguese colonisation, serving as a natural port for the export of sugar and silver, as well as being the place where most African slaves arrived in the colonial period.
Characteristics of Todos os Santos Bay
Todos-os-Santos Bay is made up of three smaller bays:
- the first, which could be called Itaparica Bay, consists of the vast and elongated Itaparica Island and the western coast;
- the second, which could be called Baía de São Francisco, with its deltaic aspect, contains numerous islands (the largest of which is Ilha dos Frades);
- the third, which could be called Salvador Bay, also has the appearance of an old delta and is located in the eastern part, being the most important, not only because of its greater depth, which allows for deep draft navigation, but also because it bathes the state capital.
Many stretches of its banks are low and have the typical vegetation of mangroves.
The most important of these is the Paraguaçu River, which descends from the escarpments of the Baiano Plateau (Chapada Diamantina) and, after a 520-kilometre course, reaches the bay through a sinuous and steeply sloping valley.
The large Todos-os-Santos Bay is the natural communication route between the city of Salvador and the other centres of settlement in the Recôncavo, and there is a lot of sailing on its waters, both by small steamboats and sailboats.
Islands in Todos os Santos Bay
The Bay of Todos os Santos was designated as an environmental protection area – APA Baía de Todos os Santos – by State Decree 7.595 (of 5 June 1999).
It includes the waters of the bay and its islands. It covers the municipalities of Cachoeira, Candeias, Itaparica, Jaguaripe, Madre de Deus, Maragogipe, Salinas da Margarida, Salvador,Santo Amaro, São Francisco do Conde, Saubara, Simões Filho and Vera Cruz.
Bahia.ws – Tourism and Travel Guide to Bahia, Salvador and the North East
