Abel Fontoura da Costa

'Abel Fontoura da Costa. (9 December 1869 – 7 December 1940) was a Portuguese colonial administrator, a military personnel and a politician.

He attended at the Royal Military College where he was enlisted as a marine in 1887 and became ranked as a sea and military captain. In 1901, he took part in marking the boundary between (Portuguese) Angola and the (Belgian) Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). He was responsible as minister of agriculture from 9 January to 18 August 1923 and a marine general in 1923. He held different positions at the Marine High School Command in 1923. He was also director at the Navy School of Physical Education of the Army in 1932 and DIrector of the Navy School from 1936 to 1959. He was governor of Cape Verde between 1915 and 1918.

He did not took academic curriculum, he lectured for a few years before he became a rector at the Lisbon Central Lyceum from 1907 to 1910. He was member of the Portuguese Academy of Science ahd History in 1935 and commissioner of the Naval Museum in 1936 and president of the Lisbon(ese) Football Association in 1910.

On March 11, 1919, he was made Commander of the Military Order of Avis, together with another former governor of Cape Verde Bernardo António da Costa de Macedo became Grand Officer, later he became a Grand Officer of the same order on October 19, 1920.

He died on 7 December 1940 just two days before his 71st birthday.

Decorations

He received decorations including:

• Commander of the Military Order of Avis of Portugal (11 March 1919)
• Grand Officer of the Military Order of Avis of Portugal (19 October 1920)

• "Fontoura da Costa - Hydrographic Institute". hidrografico.pt (in Portuguese). 
• "Cape Verde". rulers.org. 
• "Cape Verde". worldstatesmen.org. 
• "Centennial of the Portuguese Republic" (in Portuguese). City of Lisbon. 
• ^ "Cidadãos Nacionais Agraciados com Ordens Portuguesas" (in Portuguese). Presidency of the Portuguese Republic. Retrieved 1 August 2013. 

• Aplicação das tábuas de estrada e logaritmos de subtracção do método de Ste Hilaire (1889)
• Viagens nas regiões antárcticas (Voyages in the Antarctic Regions)
• O encontro da expedição de Nordenskiold pelo navio argentino Uruguay [About the Nordenskjold Expeditiion with the Argentine Navy in Uruguay] (1903)
• Tábuas Náuticas [Navy Boards/ (1907)
• Marinharia dos Descobrimentos (1933)
• La Science Nautique des Portuguais à l’époque des Découvertes [Portuguese Navy Sciences in the Age of Discovery] (1935)
• Às portas da Índia em 1484 [Ports of India in 1484] (1936)
• Sobre uma nova versão do descobrimento da Ilha de Santiago de Cabo Verde [About the New Version of the Discovery of the Island of Santiago de Cabo Verde] (1938)
• Cartas das ilhas de Cabo Verde de Valentim Fernandes: 1506-1508 [Maps of the Cape Verdean Islands by Valentim Fernandes] (1939)
• A Carta de Pêro Vaz de Caminha [A Map by Pero Vaz de Caminha]
• Roteiros portugueses inéditos da carreira da Índia do século XVI (1940)

Unfinished works related to the navy

• Livros de Marinharia do século XVI (Marine Books of the Sixteenth Century)
• Roteiro da primeira viagem de Vasco da Gama, by Álvaro Velho
• Collection of complete works by Pedro Nunes.