Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama opened the sea route from Europe to India and broke a trading system that had stood for centuries. Born at Sines in Portugal around 1460 into a minor noble family, he was the son of a knight of the Order of Santiago and had experience of naval command against French shipping before he was chosen. Bartolomeu Dias had rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Manuel I gave Gama four ships and about 170 men in 1497 to complete the passage. He sailed a wide arc into the South Atlantic, out of sight of land for ninety-three days, to catch favourable winds — a route that became standard. He rounded the Cape in November, worked up the East African coast, and at Malindi took on a pilot who knew the monsoon crossing to India. He reached Calicut in May 1498. The reception was cold: the goods he had brought — cloth, hats, coral, washbasins — were contemptible in a port trading in pepper and precious stones, and the Muslim merchants already established there had no reason to welcome him. He returned in 1499 having lost two ships and over half his men, mostly to scurvy. The cargo nonetheless repaid the voyage many times over. His second voyage in 1502 was punitive. He bombarded Calicut and, off the Malabar coast, intercepted the Miri, a ship returning from Mecca, and burned it with several hundred pilgrims aboard including women and children. He was made Viceroy of India in 1524 and died at Cochin that December.
- Lived: 1469 CE – 1524 CE
- Nationality: Portuguese
- Roles: navigator, explorer, viceroy
