Vasco da Gama's Voyage to India (1497–1499): Sea Route Opened

Vasco da Gama’s voyage of 1497–1499 was the first direct sea journey from Europe to India. Leaving Lisbon in July 1497 with four ships, the Portuguese commander rounded the Cape of Good Hope, sailed up the coast of East Africa and reached Calicut (Kozhikode) on India’s Malabar Coast in May 1498. The voyage opened a sea route that allowed Portugal to trade directly in Asian spices and laid the foundations of a Portuguese empire in the Indian Ocean.

Background: Portugal’s search for a sea route

For most of the 15th century Portuguese navigators had been working their way south along the coast of Africa, encouraged first by Prince Henry, often called the Navigator, and then by King John II. Their aims combined trade in gold and enslaved people, a search for Christian allies against the Muslim powers, and the hope of reaching the spices of Asia.

Pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and other spices were expensive in Europe because they passed through many hands: Indian and Southeast Asian producers, Arab and Gujarati merchants, Egyptian authorities and finally Venetian traders. A direct sea route promised enormous profits.

In 1488 Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa, proving that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were connected. At about the same time the agent Pêro da Covilhã travelled overland to India and East Africa and gathered information about Indian Ocean trade. After Columbus claimed to have reached Asia by sailing west in 1492, and the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 secured the eastern route for Portugal, King Manuel I ordered a new expedition.

The fleet

The fleet left Lisbon from the beach of Restelo on 8 July 1497. It had four vessels: the São Gabriel, commanded by Vasco da Gama; the São Rafael, under his brother Paulo da Gama; the smaller caravel Berrio, under Nicolau Coelho; and a storeship. Estimates of the crew vary from about 148 to 170 men, including interpreters and a number of convicts taken for dangerous tasks.

Vasco da Gama, born around 1469 in Sines, was a nobleman with military and naval experience but had not made a major voyage of exploration before. Why he was chosen is not fully known.

Much of what we know comes from an anonymous journal, the Roteiro, written by a member of the expedition and often attributed to Álvaro Velho.

The voyage out

After stopping at the Cape Verde Islands, da Gama did not follow the African coast. Instead he made a great arc through the South Atlantic, using the prevailing winds, and spent around three months out of sight of land, a far longer open-sea passage than Columbus’s crossing in 1492.

The fleet reached St Helena Bay, on the west coast of South Africa, in early November 1497 and rounded the Cape of Good Hope on 22 November. On Christmas Day it passed a coast that da Gama named Natal.

Moving north along the East African coast, the Portuguese entered a world of wealthy Swahili trading cities connected to Arabia, Persia and India. At Mozambique Island and Mombasa relations quickly turned hostile. At Malindi, in April 1498, the ruler welcomed them as allies against his rival Mombasa and provided an experienced pilot.

With the monsoon winds behind it, the fleet crossed the Arabian Sea in about 23 days and on 20 May 1498 anchored off the coast near Calicut.

In Calicut

Calicut was a major port of the spice trade, ruled by a Hindu king known to the Portuguese as the Zamorin (Samoothiri). Its markets were dominated by Muslim merchants with links across the Indian Ocean.

According to the Roteiro, when one of the convicts was first sent ashore, he met two merchants from Tunis who spoke Castilian and Genoese and asked what had brought the Portuguese so far. The reply, as recorded, was that they had come to seek “Christians and spices”, a phrase that sums up the expedition’s aims.

The Portuguese at first believed many of the Hindus they met were Christians, mistaking Hindu temples and images for churches and saints. The Zamorin received da Gama, but the gifts he had brought, such as cloth, hats, coral, washbasins and honey, were judged too poor for a royal court. Muslim merchants were suspicious of the newcomers, and negotiations were tense. Da Gama managed to acquire some pepper and other spices, but no trade treaty was concluded. Relations worsened when Portuguese agents ashore were briefly detained over customs dues. Before sailing, da Gama seized several local people as hostages and took some of them to Portugal, an early sign of the coercion that would mark later Portuguese dealings on the Malabar Coast. He also carried a letter from the Zamorin to King Manuel, which, according to the Roteiro, asked for gold, silver, coral and scarlet cloth in exchange for spices and gems.

The return voyage

Da Gama left Calicut at the end of August 1498, against the advice of local sailors, before the favourable monsoon. The crossing of the Arabian Sea took nearly three months instead of a few weeks. Scurvy ravaged the crews; around 30 men died on this leg alone, and there were too few left to sail all the ships.

Near Mombasa the São Rafael was burned in early 1499. The Berrio, under Nicolau Coelho, reached Portugal first, on 10 July 1499. Paulo da Gama fell ill and died in the Azores, where Vasco stayed with him. Vasco da Gama reached Lisbon in late August or early September 1499; sources differ on the exact date.

Only about 55 men are thought to have returned, out of a crew of up to 170.

Consequences

King Manuel I rewarded da Gama with the title Admiral of the Indies and a pension, and added “Lord of the conquest, navigation and commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India” to his own titles. The cargo of spices is often said to have been worth many times the cost of the voyage, although precise figures are not reliable.

Portugal moved quickly. In 1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral led a fleet of 13 ships to India, reaching Brazil on the way. In 1502 da Gama returned to India in command of a heavily armed fleet; this second voyage was marked by great violence, including the burning of a ship carrying Muslim pilgrims and the bombardment of Calicut.

Over the next decades the Portuguese built a network of fortified bases, winning the Battle of Diu in 1509, taking Goa in 1510 and Malacca in 1511. They did not monopolise the spice trade, which continued through the Red Sea, but they changed the balance of power in the Indian Ocean.

Da Gama returned to India for a third time in 1524 as viceroy and died in Cochin on 24 December 1524.

Myths and facts

Myth: da Gama discovered India. India was an ancient centre of civilisation and trade, well known to Europeans through classical writers, merchants and travellers. What da Gama achieved was the first recorded voyage by sea from Europe to India and back.

Myth: the Indian Ocean was an empty sea waiting for Europeans. Da Gama entered one of the busiest trading worlds on Earth. Arab, Persian, Gujarati, Swahili, Malay and Chinese merchants had crossed it for centuries using the monsoon winds, and his fleet could only cross the Arabian Sea with the help of a local pilot.

Myth: Ahmad ibn Majid guided da Gama to India. This story appears in later Arabic and European writings, but it is not supported by the Portuguese sources from the voyage, and most modern historians reject it.

Myth: the voyage brought Portugal instant control of the spice trade. The first voyage was small and its trade disappointing. Portuguese power in the Indian Ocean was built over the following decades through repeated armed fleets, fortresses and treaties, and even then Asian and Middle Eastern merchants continued to carry much of the trade.

Key people

• Vasco da Gama (c. 1469–1524): commander of the expedition, later Count of Vidigueira and viceroy of Portuguese India.
• Paulo da Gama (died 1499): his elder brother, captain of the São Rafael, who died on the way home.
• Nicolau Coelho: captain of the Berrio, first to bring news of the success to Lisbon.
• Manuel I of Portugal (1469–1521): the king who sent the expedition.
• The Zamorin of Calicut: the ruler of the city-state, whose name is not recorded in the Portuguese journal.

Timeline

• 1488: Bartolomeu Dias rounds the southern tip of Africa.
• 1497, 8 July: The fleet leaves Lisbon.
• 1497, 22 November: The Cape of Good Hope is rounded.
• 1498, April: The fleet reaches Malindi and hires a pilot.
• 1498, 20 May: Arrival near Calicut.
• 1498, late August: Departure from Calicut.
• 1499, 10 July: The Berrio reaches Portugal.
• 1499, late August or September: Vasco da Gama arrives in Lisbon.
• 1502: Da Gama’s second, violent voyage to India.
• 1524, 24 December: Da Gama dies in Cochin.

Why it matters

Da Gama’s voyage connected Europe and Asia by sea for the first time. It began a century of Portuguese power in the Indian Ocean, changed the routes of global trade and opened an era of European commercial and military intervention in Asia. In Portugal the voyage became a national epic, celebrated in Luís de Camões’s poem The Lusiads (1572).