The first voyage.
Da Gama sailed from Lisbon on July 8, 1497, with a fleet of four vessels—two medium-sized, three-masted sailing ships, each of about 120 tons, named the "So Gabriel" and the "So Rafael," a 50-ton caravel, named the "Berrio," and a 200-ton storeship. They were accompanied to the Cape Verde Islands by another ship commanded by Bartolomeu Dias, the Portuguese navigator who had discovered the Cape of Good Hope a few years earlier and who was en route to the West African castle of So Jorge da Mina on the Gold Coast (now Ghana).
The fleet reached the island of Mozambique, the
inhabitants of which believed the Portuguese to be Muslims like themselves. Da
Gama learned that they traded with Arab merchants and that four Arab vessels
laden with gold, jewels, silver, and spices were then in port; he was also told
that Prester John, the long-sought Christian ruler, lived in the interior but
held many coastal cities. The Sultan of Mozambique supplied da Gama with two
pilots, one of whom deserted when he discovered that the Portuguese were
Christians.
The expedition reached Mombasa (now in Kenya) on
April 7 and dropped anchor at Malindi (also now in Kenya). After a 23-day run
across the Indian Ocean, the Ghats Mountains of India were sighted, and Calicut
was reached on May 20. There da Gama erected a Padro to prove he had reached
India. Welcomed by the Zamorin, the Hindu ruler of Calicut (then the most
important trading center of southern India), he failed, however, to conclude a
treaty—partly because of the hostility of Muslim merchants and partly because
the trumpery presents and cheap trade goods that he had brought, while suited
to the West African trade, were hardly in demand in India.
storm; the
"Berrio" reached the Tagus River in Portugal on July 10. Da Gama, in
the "So Gabriel," continued to Terceira Island in the Azores, whence
he is said to have dispatched his flagship to Lisbon. He himself reached Lisbon
on September 9 and made his triumphal entry nine days later, spending the
interval mourning his brother Paulo, who had died on Terceira.
To further da Gama's achievement, Manuel I
dispatched the Portuguese navigator Pedro lvares Cabral to Calicut with a fleet
of 13 ships. Later, the Hindus, incited by the Muslims, rose in arms and
massacred the Portuguese whom Cabral had left behind. To avenge this deed, a
new fleet was fitted out in Lisbon to be sent against Calicut and to establish
Portuguese hegemony in the Indian Ocean. At first the command was to be given
to Cabral, but it was later transferred to da Gama, who in January 1502 was
given the rank of admiral. Da Gama himself commanded 10 ships, which were in
turn supported by two flotillas of five ships each, each flotilla being under
the command of one of his relations. Sailing in February 1502, the fleet called
at the Cape Verdes, reaching the port of Sofala in East Africa on June 14.
After calling briefly at Mozambique, the Portuguese expedition sailed to Kilwa,
in what is now Tanzania. The ruler of Kilwa, the amir
Ibrahim had been unfriendly to Cabral; da Gama
threatened to burn Kilwa if the Amir did not submit to the Portuguese and swear
loyalty to King Manuel, which he then did.
Coasting southern Arabia, da Gama then called at
Goa (later the focus of Portuguese power in India) before proceeding to
Cannanore, a port in southwestern India to the north of Calicut, where he lay
in wait for Arab shipping. After several days, an Arab ship arrived with
merchandise and between 200 and 400 passengers, including women and children.
After seizing the cargo, da Gama shut up the passengers aboard the captured
ship and set it afire, killing all on board, the cruelest act of his career.
After da Gama formed an alliance with the ruler
of Cannanore, an enemy of the Zamorin, the fleet sailed to Calicut. The Zamorin
offered friendship, but da Gama rejected the offer and presented an ultimatum
that the Muslims be banished from the port. To show that he meant what he
threatened, da Gama bombarded the port and seized and massacred 38 Hindu
fishermen who had sailed out to his ships to sell their wares; their bodies
were then thrown overboard, to be washed ashore. The Portuguese then sailed
south to the port of Cochin, with whose ruler (an enemy of the Zamorin) they
formed an alliance. After an invitation to da Gama from the Zamorin had proved
to be an attempt to entrap him, the Portuguese had a brief fight with Arab
ships off Calicut but put them to full flight. On Feb. 20, 1503, the fleet left
Cannanore for Mozambique on the first stage of their return voyage, reaching
the Tagus on October 11.
The third voyage.
Da Gama had
married a lady of good family, Caterina de Atade--perhaps in 1500 after his
return from his first voyage--and he then appears to have retired to the town
of vora. He was later granted additional privileges and revenues, and his wife
bore him six sons. Until 1505 he continued to advise the King on Indian
matters, and he was created count of Vidigueira in 1519. Not until after King
Manuel died was he again sent overseas; King John III nominated him in 1524 as
Portuguese viceroy in India.
Arriving in Goa in
September, da Gama immediately set himself to correct the many administrative
abuses that had crept in under his predecessors. Whether from overwork or other
causes, he soon fell ill and died in Cochin in December. In 1538 his body was
taken back to Portugal. (E.M.J.C.)
There is no autobiography
of Vasco da Gama. Portuguese chroniclers wrote at length about his voyage of
1497-99, and some of them must have had access to secret documents since
destroyed. The only one translated into English is that of Gaspar Correa (c.
1490-1565) from his Lendas da India; see The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama,
and His Viceroyalty, ed. by Lord Stanley of Alderley (1869, reprinted 1963).
The only firsthand account of the first voyage has also been printed in English
in E.G. Raven stein (ed.), A Journal [by an Unknown Writer] of the First Voyage
of Vasco da Gama, 1497-1499 (1898, reprinted 1963). A later and more definitive
edition has been printed in Portuguese in Abel Fontoura da Costa (ed.), Roteiro
da Primeira Viagem de Vasco da Gama, 1497-1499 por Alvaro Velho, 3rd ed.
(1969). An outstanding synthesis of the background of Vasco da Gama's
achievements is found in John H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery,
Exploration and Settlement, 1450-1650, 2nd ed. (1966). For brief accounts
together with English translations of extracts from early documents, see John
H. Parry (ed.), The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents (1968). The
unique manuscript copy of the three Rotarius (sailing directions) of Vasco da
Gama's Arab pilot, Ahmad ibn Madjid, has not been fully translated and printed
in English, but see A.G.R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean Before
the Coming of the Portuguese (1971). For the definitive Portuguese translation
of the Arab text, see T.A. Chuminsky (ed.), Trs Rotarius decohesion de Ahmad
ibn Madjid (1960).