First voyage to India

Vasco da Gama · 1497 CE – 1499 CE · Earth

Sail round Africa to India ‘to make discoveries and go in search of spices’, in the words of the journal kept on board.

Historical context

In 1497 King Manuel sent four ships under Vasco da Gama ‘to make discoveries and go in search of spices’, in the words of the journal kept on board. Bartolomeu Dias had rounded the Cape in 1488, and the flagship’s pilot, Pero d’Alenquer, had sailed with him. At Calicut da Gama told the Zamorin that the kings of Portugal had sent ships towards India for sixty years to find the Christian kings there. The journal, kept by an unnamed member of the expedition and broken off in April 1499, dates events in the Julian calendar.

The voyage, step by step

1. Lisbon to the Cape

   8 July 1497

   On Saturday 8 July 1497 four ships leave Restelo, below Lisbon: the São Gabriel under Vasco da Gama, the São Rafael under his brother Paulo, the Berrio under Nicolau Coelho and a storeship under Gonçalo Nunes.

2. Rounding the Cape

   22 November 1497

   On Wednesday 22 November 1497, at noon, with the wind astern, the fleet at last doubles the Cape of Good Hope.

3. A pilot at Malindi

   14 April 1498

   After armed clashes at Mozambique and a tense stop at Mombasa, Vasco da Gama comes to Malindi on 14 April 1498 and takes on a pilot who knows the monsoon route.

4. Calicut reached

   20 May 1498

   On 20 May 1498 the fleet anchors off Capua, a few miles north of Calicut, the city of the Zamorin: the first Europeans, as Ravenstein put it, to come to India directly from a European port.

Outcome

Reached Calicut on 20 May 1498 and returned to Portugal in 1499 with samples of spices and precious stones, having lost the São Rafael, the storeship and, by the different counts, from about half to nearly two-thirds of the men.

Vasco da Gama

Portuguese navigator who opened the sea route from Europe to India around Africa.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama, 1497–1499Anonymous member of the expedition (the Roteiro), translated and edited by E. G. Ravenstein, with appendices · Hakluyt Society, London (First Series, no. 99); Project Gutenberg eBook 46440 · 1898
• Decada primeira da Asia: dos feitos que os Portugueses fezerão no descobrimento & conquista dos mares & terras do OrienteJoão de Barros (first published 1552) · Jorge Rodriguez, Lisbon; book 3, chapter 4, book 4, chapter 6 and book 5, chapter 3 · 1628
• The Career and Legend of Vasco da GamaSanjay Subrahmanyam (read through the archive.org copy’s search-inside excerpts) · Cambridge University Press · 1997
• Tohfut-ul-Mujahideen: An Historical Work in the Arabic LanguageShaikh Zayn al-Dīn, translated by M. J. Rowlandson, with the translator’s notes · Oriental Translation Fund, London · 1833
• Vasco da Gama — Wikipedia

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