Little else is known about his early life, but in 1492 King John II sent da Gama to the port city of Setubal (south of Lisbon) and to the Algarve region to seize French ships in retaliation for French attacks on Portuguese shipping interests.Īfter Muslim traders killed 50 of his men, Cabral retaliated by burning 10 Muslim cargo vessels and killing the nearly 600 sailors aboard. Vasco da Gama’s Early Life and First Voyage to Indiaīorn circa 1460, Vasco da Gama was the son of a minor nobleman who commanded the fortress at Sines, located on the coast of the Alentejo province in southwestern Portugal. Two decades later, da Gama again returned to India, this time as Portuguese viceroy he died there of an illness in late 1524. Da Gama received a hero’s welcome back in Portugal, and was sent on a second expedition to India in 1502, during which he brutally clashed with Muslim traders in the region. After sailing down the western coast of Africa and rounding the Cape of Good Hope, his expedition made numerous stops in Africa before reaching the trading post of Calicut, India, in May 1498. The Portuguese nobleman Vasco da Gama (1460-1524) sailed from Lisbon in 1497 on a mission to reach India and open a sea route from Europe to the East.
Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Cliff, Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations (2011) and The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco Da Gama (2012). Hart, Sea Route to the Indies (1950, repr. Jayne, Vasco da Gama and His Successors (1910, repr. Corrêa, The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama and His Viceroyalty (1869, repr. See A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama (1898), the journal of one of Gama's subordinates G. Gama's voyage is the subject of Camões's epic The Lusiads.
In 1524 he was sent back to India as viceroy, but he died soon after his arrival. He was harsh in his methods and was not as good an administrator as many of the Portuguese captains who later went to the East, but he was the first, and he was honored with many tributes and the title of count of Vidigueria. With this force he attempted to establish Portuguese power in Indian waters and sought to secure the submission of a number of chiefs on the African coast. Gama dictated the instructions for Cabral's voyage (1500–1502) to India, and in 1502 he himself led a fleet of 20 ships on his second India voyage. This voyage opened up a way for Europe to reach the wealth of the Indies, and immediately Portugal gained great riches from the spice trade out of it ultimately grew the Portuguese Empire. With four vessels, he rounded the Cape of Good Hope, passed the easternmost point reached by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488, continued up the east coast of Africa to Malindi, and sailed across the uncharted Indian Ocean to Calicut. His epochal voyage (1497–99) was made at the order of Manuel I. väsh´kō dä gä´mə, c.1469–1524, Portuguese navigator, the first European to journey by sea to India.