Andrei Romanov is an independent historian and writer based in the Algarve, Portugal, twenty minutes from Sagres, where Prince Henry the Navigator established his headquarters for Atlantic exploration.
Born in Bucharest, Romania, Romanov holds a degree in International Economic Relationships and brings over 15 years of professional experience in international trade, European affairs, and geopolitical strategy to his historical research. He reads Portuguese, English, and Romanian, and conducts primary research in Portuguese archives, museums, and historical sites.
His work has been published in Ancient Origins, Global Maritime History, The Markaz Review, and Touchstone, and he has articles under peer review at Itinerario, the International Journal of Maritime History, History of European Ideas, and the e-Journal of Portuguese History.
Masters of the Ocean Sea is rated 5 stars by Readers’ Favorite and 4.9 out of 5 stars on Amazon. It is held in the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and is under review by the International Journal of Naval History.
He lives on Portugal’s southern coast, within sight of the Atlantic that once carried caravels into the unknown.
About Masters of the Ocean Sea: The Epic Saga of the Portuguese Explorers Who Redrew the Map of the World
In the 15th century, Portugal, a small kingdom on the edge of Europe, launched a campaign of maritime exploration that would change the world forever. Using wooden ships, primitive instruments, and an extraordinary amount of courage, Portuguese navigators sailed past the edge of the known world, mapped the coast of Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and opened the sea route to India.
Masters of the Ocean Sea tells the story of how they did it. Drawing on primary sources from Portuguese archives, this book examines the financial, navigational, and political mechanics of the Age of Discovery. It is a story of adventure, ambition, greed, and violence and of the moment when the world got bigger. Available in ebook and paperback worldwide.
The interview
Fill in the blank: “People will like your book if they like…”
Adventure, navigation, and the moment when the world got bigger.
If you’ve ever looked at an old map and wondered how anyone figured out where they were going without GPS, satellites, or even accurate clocks, this book is for you.
If you’ve ever stood at the edge of the ocean and thought about the first person who decided to sail past the horizon without knowing what was out there, this book is for you.
And if you love stories about how a small country on the edge of Europe managed to redraw the entire map of the world in less than a century, using wooden ships, rudimentary instruments, and an extraordinary amount of courage, this book is definitely for you.
How did you plot out the content of your book?
I didn’t plot it the way a novelist would. I followed the sources. I spent months researching, reading account books, voyage logs, and royal letters from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I visited museums, walked the beaches where the first slave auctions happened, and stood in the chapel at Sagres where Prince Henry the Navigator is said to have planned his expeditions.
The structure of the book follows the chronology of Portuguese expansion from the first cautious voyages down the African coast to the moment Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and opened the sea route to India. But within that chronology, I organised the material thematically: navigation, finance, politics, and the human cost. I wanted readers to understand not just what happened, but how it happened, the practical mechanics of building an empire with wooden ships.
Did you write in timeline order or have any specific process for getting your first draft down?
I wrote it in three months during the summer of 2025, and I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it. I wrote chronologically, starting with Prince Henry and ending with the establishment of the Portuguese Estado da Índia.
I wrote obsessively every morning until the first draft was done. Then I spent another three months formatting, revising, and preparing it for publication.
The obsessive part is important. I’m not a professional historian. I don’t have a PhD. I had to teach myself how to read fifteenth-century Portuguese account books, use palaeography guides, and cross-reference sources.
But I had 15 years of experience in international trade and European affairs, and I realised I could read those account books the way I read modern trade documents as financial instruments, as records of risk and return. That was the key. I approached the Age of Discovery as a venture capital program run by the Portuguese Crown, and suddenly the sources made sense.
Do you have any writing rituals?
Coffee. Cigars. Night silence.
I write at night, when the world is quiet and there are no interruptions. I can talk about cigars for two hours without repeating myself, it’s a ritual, a way of thinking, a companion to the writing process.
When I’m stuck, I walk. I walk to the cliffs at Sagres, to the fortress, to the spot where the caravels would have been loaded and launched. I stand there and think about the fact that I’m writing about events that happened right here, in this place, six hundred years ago.
That proximity matters. I’m not writing about a distant, abstract history. I’m writing about the town I can see from my window.
Where did you write this book?
In the Algarve, in Quarteira, twenty minutes from Sagres. I moved to Portugal in 2025, and I didn’t move here to write a book.
I moved here because I’d been researching Portuguese maritime history for years and wanted to be close to the archives and sites. But once I was here, once I was living on the same coast where the caravels were built, walking the same beaches where the explorers departed, standing in the same churches where they prayed before sailing into the unknown, I realised I had to write it.
The book didn’t exist. The book I wanted to read was a narrative history of Portuguese exploration that was rigorous about the sources but written for general readers, that took the financial and navigational mechanics seriously but didn’t bury the human drama.
That book wasn’t on the shelf. So, I wrote it.
How important was the setting of your book in telling the story that you wanted to tell?
Critical. The Portuguese Age of Discovery is inseparable from Portugal’s geography. This is a small country on the edge of Europe, with a long Atlantic coastline and almost no natural resources. It had no reason to become a global maritime empire except that it had the ocean.
I write about Sagres, where Prince Henry established his headquarters. I write about Lagos, where the first European slave auction happened in 1444. I write about Lisbon, where the Casa da Índia, the royal agency that managed all trade with Asia, kept records of every voyage, every cargo, every profit and loss.
I’ve stood in all of those places. I’ve walked the beaches. I’ve visited the archives. I’ve touched the stone padrões, the navigational markers the Portuguese planted on foreign shores to claim territory.
The setting isn’t just background in this book. Setting is the story. The ocean is a character. The wind is a character. The coast of Africa, appearing slowly over the horizon after weeks at sea, is a character.
You can’t write about the Age of Discovery from a desk in a landlocked city. You have to stand at the edge of the ocean and feel what it would have been like to sail past the edge of the known world.
What are your passions/hobbies outside of writing?
I was a bodybuilder before I was a historian. I was the Romanian National Champion in 2009, and I competed at the European and World Championships until 2015.
Bodybuilding taught me discipline, patience, and the ability to work toward a goal for years without immediate gratification. Those are the same skills you need to write a 392-page history book.
Outside of writing, I love languages. I speak English, Portuguese, and Romanian fluently, and I read historical sources in all three. Language is a research tool for me. If you can’t read the original documents, you’re always working at second hand.
I also love walking. The Algarve has some of the most beautiful coastal trails in Europe, and I walk them constantly, thinking, planning, and working through problems in the book or in the articles I’m writing for academic journals.
I also love travel. I’ve been all over Europe, to Iran, Egypt, Russia. I like going to places where history is still visible in the streets, in the architecture, in the way people talk about the past.
And I grow hot peppers. Carolina Reaper, Trinidad Scorpion, Habanero Red. I also play pool.
If Hollywood bought the rights to your book, would you want it to be turned into a movie or series? Any casting preferences?
A series. Absolutely a series. There’s too much material for a single film.
The Portuguese Age of Discovery spans a century, from the conquest of Ceuta in 1415 to the establishment of the Estado da Índia in the early 1500s. You’d need at least eight episodes to do it justice.
For casting, I want Portuguese actors in the lead roles. This is a Portuguese story, and it should be told by Portuguese voices. But honestly, what I’d want most from a series is the commitment to showing the navigation. The wind. The sails. The moment when a pilot realises he’s drifted off course and has to recalculate using a cross-staff and dead reckoning. The financial meetings in Lisbon, where the king decides whether to fund another voyage.
The drama of the Age of Discovery isn’t just battles and storms. It’s the quiet, grinding work of figuring out where you are when there are no landmarks and no one has ever been here before.
Who would you most want to read your book? They can be living or dead.
Prince Henry the Navigator. I’d want to sit down with him and ask, “Did I get it right?” Did I understand what you were trying to do?
Henry is one of the most misunderstood figures in history. He’s been mythologised as a visionary, a scientist, a man ahead of his time. But the sources paint a more complicated picture.
He was a prince who needed money and military glory. He was a crusader who believed he was fighting a holy war. He was a pragmatist who realised that if you sent ships south along the African coast, they came back with gold and slaves.
I’d want him to read the chapter where I describe the financial architecture of his expeditions, the partilha system, the way he distributed risk among investors, and the way he turned exploration into a profitable venture. And I’d want to know if he ever imagined that the navigational methods his pilots developed would eventually carry Portuguese ships all the way to Japan.
Have you made any public appearances to promote your book?
Not yet, but I have a podcast interview coming up with Ancient Origins, one of the largest ancient history platforms in the world. Dr. Ioannis Syrigos, the CEO, invited me for a video podcast. We’ll talk about the book, the research, the archive work, and what it’s like to live twenty minutes from Sagres while writing about Prince Henry the Navigator.
I’m also open to speaking at maritime museums, historical societies, and universities. I’ve already had the book accepted into the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and I’m in conversation with other institutions. If anyone reading this wants me to come talk about Portuguese exploration, navigation, or the financial mechanics of early modern empire-building, I’m available.
How do you measure the success of your writing career?
Whether the work is being taken seriously. I’m an independent historian. I don’t have a PhD. I don’t have institutional backing.
I published Masters of the Ocean Sea myself because I couldn’t wait for a traditional publisher to decide whether it was marketable. But the book is now held in the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, one of the world’s most important maritime research libraries. It’s under review by the International Journal of Naval History. It has a 5-star review from Readers’ Favorite and a 4.9-star rating on Amazon.
I have articles published in Ancient Origins, Global Maritime History, The Markaz Review, and Touchstone, and I have four articles under peer review at major academic journals. That’s success. Not bestseller lists. Not movie deals. The fact that the work is being read, cited, reviewed, and held in research libraries, where historians will encounter it for decades.
I wrote the book I couldn’t find on the shelf. Now it’s on the shelf. That’s what success looks like.
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