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His research work proved useful to Count Henry de Castries, who used it in his work Inédites de l’Histoire du Maroc. Moreover, he was an assiduous correspondent with Inocêncio Francisco da Silva, primarily dealing with questions related to articles for the Dicionário Bibliográfico Português (Portuguese Bibliographical Dictionary), work on which occupied him six to eight hours a day in addition to those hours he spent on other projects at the same time.
In 1903, when he published a manuscript of a nautical nature compiled in the middle of the 16th century, which he attributed to the pilot João de Lisboa, but which also contained remarks and notes taken from other pilots, Brito Rebelo coined the term “livro de marinharia” (Book of Seamanship). According to Luís de Albuquerque, similar manuscripts from then on were also given the same designation and, in the absence of an author who they could be attributed to, were considered, supposedly and expressly, to have been written by the pilots who were most frequently quoted in them even though some had chapters written after the death of the authors they were accredited to. This procedure was not explicitly adhered to by contemporary historians but over time it gradually became common practice.
In parallel to his intellectual life, Brito Rebelo was a citizen committed to certain areas of public life. Being the son of a soldier who had been involved in the struggles against the absolutists and who had been present when the liberal forces disembarked in Mindelo, he showed a sense of civic duty that was linked to the defence of patriotic values but also extended to problems involving emigrants from the Azores to the Sandwich Isles (Hawaii) where his fellow-islanders were very badly treated, and to the question of earthquake victims in the Azores.
In 1888 he was made a Commander of the Order of Aviz and in 1911, somewhat late in life, he became a correspondent member of the Portuguese Academy of Sciences. The “Master of Portuguese researchers of his time”, as he was referred to by António Baião (Catálogo […], 1933, s/p), Brito Rebelo died on 5 February 1920 in Lisbon. Although his death and historiographical labours had passed unnoticed by the general public, Brito Rebelo left a remarkable cultural legacy that has recently been brought to light in a study by José Damião Rodrigues and Francisco Silveira in which he is referred to as being one of the most important historians from the late 19th/early 20th centuries in the area of the Portuguese maritime discoveries.
