IVVASCO DA GAMA

(1460?-1524)

O qual Vasco da Gama era homem prudente e de bom saber e de grande animo para todo bom feito.—Gaspar Correa,Lendas da India.

King João II pressed on vigorously with the discovery of the west coast of Africa. The year of his accession was not ended before Diogo de Azambuja set out with ten ships (1481), and after his return the King assumed the title of “Lord of Guinea.” Diogo Cam in 1484 and 1485 carried the discovery still further, past the River of Crabs (Cameroons), past Congo and Angola to Walvisch Bay, and two years later Bartholomeu Diaz rounded the Cape, and with that the problem of the sea-route toIndia was practically solved, so that King John died (October 1495) in sight of the promised land. Indeed, the departure of the ships which Vasco de Gama was destined to command was only delayed by the King’s death. He had given “orders for such wood to be cut in wood and forest as the carpenters and builders should desire, and this was brought to Lisbon, where at once three small ships were begun.”

In appointing Vasco da Gama, a knight of his household, to the command King Manoel showed that he knew the value of the men who had grown up in the stern school of João II. The Gamas were a distinguished family of the south of Portugal; they had already rendered good service to the State—Vasco himself may have had a part in the work of discovering the coast of Africa—and if they were at times quarrelsome and unruly their loyalty and courage were never in doubt. In 1497 the meekest of them, Paulo, Vasco’s eldest brother, was in trouble for havingwounded a judge at Setubal,[5]and received the King’s pardon before he sailed as captain of one of the ships.

Vasco, a man of medium height and knightly bearing, was bold and daring in enterprise, patient and determined in adversity, but harsher and more irascible than his brother. It is a curious instance of the continuous if often slight connection between the two nations of seafarers, the English and the Portuguese, that Vasco da Gama had English blood in his veins. The name of his mother, Isabel Sodré, which survives in Lisbon’sCaes do Sodré, was a corruption of Sudley, her grandfather having been Frederick Sudley, of the family of the Earls of Hereford. Vasco was born probably in 1460, in the little sea-town of Sines, of which his father wasAlcaide Môr, and in honour of which Vasco later is said to have been in the habit of firing a salute as he passed.

The third captain appointed by King Manoel was Nicolao Coelho.

The three ships, of about a hundred tons,São Gabriel(Vasco da Gama),São Raphael(Paulo da Gama), andSão Miguel[6](Nicolao Coelho), after solemn procession and leave-taking of the King, on July 8, 1497, sailed down the Tagus from Belem and rounded Cape Espichel to the south. The crews averaged little over fifty men, being perhaps 170 in all, including six convicts in each ship to be cast ashore in order to spy out the land at different points. Bartholomeu Diaz, bound for the fortress of São Jorge da Mina, accompanied them as far as the Cape Verde Islands.

In November they reached the bay of St. Helena where Vasco da Gama was slightly wounded in an affray with the natives. Hitherto their voyage had been prosperous; but they encountered heavy storms both before and after rounding theCape of Good Hope, and it required all Vasco’s resolution and Paulo’s persuasiveness to keep the crews to their voyage. The mutinous crew of theSão Gabrielhad counted without its host, and found Gama little less formidable than the storms of these unknown seas. Not if he were confronted with a hundred deaths, he said, and not if the ships were all filled with gold, would he go back a single yard; but he did not wholly disregard the murmurings of the men, for he clapped the mate and pilot of his ship in irons, to hold them as hostages, and, as they were the only persons who knew anything of the art of navigation, the crew was effectually cowed.

At Christmas they reached the land which to this day bears the Portuguese name, Natal, of the time of its discovery. Passing slowly north along the coast, they arrived towards the end of January at the Zambezi River, and in this shelter made a stay of several weeks; but scurvy among the crew forced them again to sea, and in the beginning of March they reached Mozambique.Here, as at Mombasa a month later, the natives received them with every appearance of friendship, but made a treacherous if rather courageous attempt to seize their ships. The King of Melinde, a little further north, was friendly and loyal, and here the Portuguese obtained pilots for the voyage to India.

The passage lasted less than a month, and on May 18 they sighted Asia, the end and object of their enterprise, and came to anchor off Calicut on the 21st. Calicut was a few miles distant, and Vasco da Gama, although implored by his brother not to risk his person by disembarking, started on the overland journey. It required some courage, for among the native sightseers who crowded round the Portuguese there were not a few armed and covertly hostile Moors.

In the minds of the Portuguese, the East had long been connected with the empire of the Christian Prester John, the half mythical ruler of Abyssinia, and they expected to find the majority of the nativesChristians. Accordingly they were easily duped here (as indeed they had been in Africa) and Vasco da Gama and his companions on the way to Calicut worshipped in a Hindu pagoda. The images on the walls were unlike those of the saints to which they had been accustomed in Portugal. Some of them had four arms, the teeth of others protruded a whole inch from their mouths, and their faces were hideous as the faces of devils. Like Little Red Ridinghood, one of the Portuguese, João de Sá, was in the most serious doubt when he saw these figures, and, as he knelt down, in order to avoid any mistake, he said aloud “If this is a devil I worship the true God.” And Vasco da Gama looked across at him and smiled.

A che guardando il suo duca sorrise.

This does not tally well with the character of the disciplinarian, despotic Gama, as it is usually represented. But these qualities developed later.

The Portuguese were as ignorant aboutthe King of the country as about its gods. For the Samuri of Calicut was no simple King of Melinde, but a great potentate accustomed to traders and to foreign civilisations. It was not without difficulty that Gama obtained an interview, and when he succeeded, the King, all aglow with jewellery, seated chewing betel, a page on either side, and his chief Brahman behind his chair, was fully a match for the haughty Gama. From one of his bracelets gleamed a priceless stone of a thumb’s thickness, his necklace was of pearls almost of the size of small acorns, and from a gold chain hung a heart-shaped jewel surrounded by pearls and covered with rubies, and in the centre a great green stone, an emerald, of the size of a large bean, belonging to the ancient treasure of the Kings of Calicut. His golden trumpets were longer by a third than those of the King of Portugal.

It appears that the Portuguese had brought no present worthy of so great a monarch. The same historian, Correa,who thus vividly describes the King’s appearance, also gives a detailed account of the present. It consisted, he says, of “a very delicate piece of scarlet, and a piece of crimson velvet, and a piece of yellow satin and a chair richly upholstered with brocade, with silver-gilt nails, and a cushion of crimson satin with tassels of gold thread, and another cushion of red satin for the feet, and a very richly wrought gilt ewer and basin, and a large and very beautiful gilt mirror and fifty red caps with buttons and veils of crimson silk and gold thread upon them, and fifty gilt sheaths of Flemish knives, which had been inlaid in Lisbon with ivory.”

The King should have been satisfied, but probably this present, if it ever existed, had dwindled in gifts to natives of Africa on the way. The question in the King’s mind was that asked once of Telemachus: Had they come as peaceful traders, or were they pirates?

Vasco da Gama, faced by a reception so courteous yet so insulting, maintained aproud, serene attitude, as he had when on his way to the palace—he is represented advancing slowly, waiting for the crowds to be cleared out of his way—and as he did later when placed under arrest by the Catual, or Governor of the city. By his resolution during the dangers and obstacles of the voyage and by his calm behaviour in Calicut he justified the King’s choice and his subsequent fame.

The Samuri himself was far more favourably inclined to the new-comers than were the Moors, who naturally resented the appearance of other traders. The Portuguese were greatly helped throughout by a Mohammedan who had learnt Spanish at Tunis, but, although Gama brought home specimens of pepper, ginger, cloves, musk, benjamin, and other spices as well as pearls and rubies, his visit to Calicut, which ended with the high-handed measure of seizing and carrying off several natives, was unsuccessful, since it resulted in no treaty of friendship or commerce.

At the end of August they started onthe homeward voyage, but remained for some time off the coast of India, and in the Indian Ocean lay becalmed for many days, during which the crew again suffered terribly from scurvy, a considerable number dying. The remnant of the crews struggled on in their three ships towards Portugal; at Cabo Verde, Coelho separated from the others and carried the news to King Manoel (July 1499). Paulo da Gama was worn out by anxiety and exertions, and Vasco sailed with him north-west to the Azores, where, in the island of Terceira, Paulo died. It was not till the end of the summer that Vasco da Gama reached the Tagus.

It is said—although Coelho’s earlier arrival contradicts the story—that a Terceira trader, Arthur Rodriguez, about to sail from his island to Algarve, saw two ships at anchor and asked whence they were. “From India,” came the answer. At these magic words he set sail, not, however, to Algarve, but due East, and in four days cast anchor in the harbour of Cascaes.The King was at Sintra, and had just sat down to supper when Rodriguez hurried in with the good news.

When the few survivors[7]arrived at Lisbon (September 1499) they were given a splendid reception, and Vasco da Gama was never able to complain that his services went unrewarded. He was granted the coveted title of Dom, and became hereditary Admiral of India, while his pensions (300,000 réis a year) and facilities of trade with India made him one of the richest men in the realm. So powerful did he become in Sines that the Order of Santiago interfered, with the result that Gama was obliged to leave his native town and in 1507 went to live at Evora.[8]In November 1519 the Duke James of Braganza sold him the town of Vidigueira, of which Gama became first Count.

A large part of his triumph belonged toPrince Henry, to King João II, and to Bartholomeu Diaz, who was drowned in the following year off the Cape which he had been the first to round.

King Manoel, overjoyed at having attained the goal of nearly a century’s constant striving, now styled himself not only King of Portugal and the Algarves and Lord of Guinea but Lord of the Navigation, Conquest, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India; he sent word of the discovery to the Pope and all the princes of Christendom; and at Belem, on the right bank of the Tagus, whence the discoverers had set sail over two years before, he built the fine monastery of São Jeronimo, where now are the tombs of the King himself, of Dom Vasco, who brought him all this glory, and of Camões, who celebrated it in deathless verse.

The building stands in strange contrast to that of Batalha, where Prince Henry the Navigator lies buried. The pure Gothic of Batalha, with its magnificent plain pillars and soaring arches, spells heroicaspiration; the Manueline of Belem in its exuberance and rich profusion of detail bears traces of satisfied accomplishment, as though Portugal might now throw simplicity and austere endeavour to the winds.

Dom Vasco da Gama in February 1502 set sail a second time for India, and returned in September 1303 with the first tribute of gold from India. “As the King was then at Lisbon, Dom Vasco, when he went to see him, took the tribute which he had received from the King of Quiloa[9]. A nobleman in plain doublet with uncovered head went before the Admiral on horseback in great solemnity, carrying the gold in a large basin of silver, to the sound of drums and trumpets, and in company of all the gentlemen of the Court. And the King ordered a monstrance to be wrought of it, as rich in workmanship as in weight, and offered it to Our Lady of Bethlehem as first fruits of those victories of the East.”

The death of Paulo da Gama seems tohave killed the gentler strain in Vasco’s nature, and his many honours, titles, and estates rendered him more overbearing. It was on his second voyage to India, in October 1502, that he blew up a peaceful trading ship from Mecca with 380 (or by another account, 240) men on board, besides many women and children, after relieving it of all gold and merchandise. As to his overweening pride, he is said to have signed himself Count in a letter to the King before the title had been actually conferred.

Despite the crying need for a strong man to restore discipline in India after Albuquerque’s death, King Manoel did not send Dom Vasco out as Governor, and it was only in the reign of King João III, and when Gama was over sixty, that he left Lisbon, in April 1524, as Viceroy of India, with his sons Estevão and Paulo and a force of 3,000 men. He reached Goa in September and presently proceeded to Cochin. He was resolved to bring some measure of order and justice out of theconfusion and corruption of India; and whereas most other Governors on their arrival were too busily occupied in enriching themselves to pay careful attention to other matters, Gama bent his whole will to effect reforms.

The reforms were salutary, but they filled native and Portuguese alike with consternation and were decreed in a harsh, unconciliatory spirit. Gama came into conflict with the outgoing Governor, Dom Duarte de Meneses, and only reduced him to obedience by giving orders to bombard him in his ship.

The first three months of Gama’s vice-royalty proved that the task of reforming the rule of the Portuguese in India was work for a younger man, and on Christmas Day 1524, to the relief of the self-seekers, to the grief of those who cared for the future of their country, Dom Vasco da Gama died, exactly twenty-seven years after the sight of Natal had given him the first real promise of success in his earlier great adventure.

FOOTNOTES:[5]This may have been the occasion on which Vasco da Gama, closely wrapped in hiscapa, one night in the streets of Setubal refused to reveal his identity to the Alcaide going his rounds, declaring that he was nomalfeitor. The Alcaide’s attempt to arrest him failed.[6]Also apparently calledBerrio, after the pilot from whom it was bought (?). Since Berrio = New (Basqueberri) it was an appropriate name for a ship going to the discovery ofmares nunca dantes navegados.[7]It is said that only 55 out of the original 170 returned.[8]This apparently continued to be his home for twelve years, since a document of November 7, 1519, has “in the city of Evora in the house in which now lives the magnificent Lord Dom Vasco da Gama, Admiral of India.”[9]Now Kilwa; soon, perhaps, Quiloa again.

[5]This may have been the occasion on which Vasco da Gama, closely wrapped in hiscapa, one night in the streets of Setubal refused to reveal his identity to the Alcaide going his rounds, declaring that he was nomalfeitor. The Alcaide’s attempt to arrest him failed.

[6]Also apparently calledBerrio, after the pilot from whom it was bought (?). Since Berrio = New (Basqueberri) it was an appropriate name for a ship going to the discovery ofmares nunca dantes navegados.

[7]It is said that only 55 out of the original 170 returned.

[8]This apparently continued to be his home for twelve years, since a document of November 7, 1519, has “in the city of Evora in the house in which now lives the magnificent Lord Dom Vasco da Gama, Admiral of India.”

[9]Now Kilwa; soon, perhaps, Quiloa again.

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