Bartolomeu Perestrelo

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Bartolomeu Perestrelo (c. 1395-1457) (also called Pedro Moniz Perestrelo), pron. IPA: [baɾtulu'meu pɨɾɨʃ'tɾelu], was a Portuguese navigator and explorer that, together with João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, discovered the Madeira Islands (1419-1420).

Nobleman of Genoese origin, he was granted, as hereditary fief (capitania), the island of Porto Santo and, together with his fellow fleet commanders, started the colonization of the islands.

One of his daughters, Felipa Perestrelo e Moniz (born c. 1455), around 1479 married Christopher Columbus, who lived in Madeira and Porto Santo. As part of the dowry, Columbus received all of Perestrello's charts of the winds and currents of the Portuguese possessions on the Atlantic, and these charts may have assisted with Columbus' discovery of the New World.

A legend attributeS the responsibility for the poor vegetation of Porto Santo, in which on the occasion of his first disembarkation in the island. He took one pregnant doe-rabbit who escaped, thus overrunning the island in a few years.