– 1497
You
have to remember how little was known about our big old world, way back when, more
than 500 years ago. People couldn't have imagined how big and
especially how old the world was...and they didn't know how many
continents and large islands there might be, nor how large the seas
in between the lands were, nor what the best routes from Point A to
Point B might be.
When
we say “voyage of discovery”—we mean a voyage into the complete
unknown, a brave attempt to discover useful knowledge (and riches).
Portugal's
King John II knew a lot more than most, because Portuguese sailors
had been exploring Africa bit by bit, sailing ships farther and
farther south along the continent. Finally, in 1488, a captain named
Bartolomeu Dias had rounded the bottom of the continent and started
traveling north-east instead of south, as far as Fish River in what
is now South Africa. He reported seeing coastline stretching on and
on to the north-east...
The
next of Portugal's kings, Manuel I, sent out another expedition. He
chose Vasco da Gama as the captain—and he told him to travel all
the way to India, a land previously explored by overland travelers,
and to obtain trading rights for spices.
Vasco
da Gama led a fleet of four ships with combined crews of 170 men.
They sailed away from Lisbon on this day in 1497. They had no doubt heard
about Christopher Columbus's journeys to the “Indies” (although
Columbus hadn't actually reached the East Indies, as he had hoped),
but these ships were sailing south and east rather than west, and they were
determined to return successful.
In
actual fact, only 55 of the men returned at all, on just two of the ships.
Although the expedition met many dangers and difficulties, including
hostile Muslim traders and an unimpressed King of Calicut who
demanded more payment than the “trivial” gifts Gama gave him on
behalf of King Manuel I, the main reason so few men lived to
return was that Gama ignored the locals' knowledge of the monsoons
and tried to make an Indian Ocean crossing at the wrong time.
Earlier that year, the crossing eastward took just 23 days, but
fighting the monsoon winds, the westward crossing took 132 days. Many
of Gama's men died, and many of those who survived the crossing were suffering from scurvy.
After some recovery time, Gama led the two surviving ships back
around the Cape of Good Hope and eventually northward to Portugal.
Even
though Gama's relations with the King of Calicut were strained and
trading rights hadn't been established, Gama received a hero's
welcome back in Portugal. He had of course mapped out more unknown
lands and seas, he'd succeeded in reaching India from Europe by sea
(which had never been done before), and he had brought back spices
and other goods worth sixty times what the expedition cost!
Also
on this date:
