The 170 men on board carried instructions to open a sea route from Europe to Asia, to unlock the age-old secrets of the spice trade, and to locate a long-lost Christian king who ruled over a magical Eastern realm. Ten months earlier, the little fleet had set sail from Lisbon, the Portuguese capital, on a mission to change the world. The Portuguese certainly knew about India, and to reach it they had embarked on the longest and most dangerous voyage known to history. The Indians had never heard of Portugal, a sliver of a country on the far western fringe of Europe. The visitors, though, had the advantage over their hosts. “We are from Portugal,” one of the sailors called back.īoth spoke in Arabic, the language of international trade. “What nation are you from?” the Indians’ leader shouted when they were under the side of the nearest ship. As they rowed closer they could see that great crimson crosses were emblazoned on every stretch of canvas. The alarm was raised on the beach, and groups of men dragged four long, narrow boats into the water. There was something at once thrillingly modern and hulkingly primeval about these alien arrivals, but for sure nothing like them had been seen before. Huge square sails billowed toward the darkening sky, each vaster than the last and each surmounted by a bonnetshaped topsail that made the whole rig resemble a family of ghostly giants. The wooden hulls were weathered a streaky gray, and long iron guns poked over the sides, like the barbels on a monstrous catfish. The two biggest were fat-bellied as whales, with bulging sides that swept up to support sturdy wooden towers in the bows and stern.

The light was fading when the three strange ships appeared off the coast of India, but the fishermen on the shore could still make out their shapes. The New York Times 'He possessed a visionary cast of mind bordering on derangement he saw himself spearheading a holy war to topple Islam, recover Jerusalem from “the infidels” and establish himself as the “King of Jerusalem.” ' Excerpt Nigel Cliff, author of Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations. This hour On Point: the epic voyages and long echoes of Vasco da Gama. The face-to-face meeting, again, with Islam. The ships, the voyages, the mystery, the confusing Hindus for Christians. A new history takes the pittance we learn in grade school and gives us the whole, amazing saga of Vasco da Gama. Da Gama found what they were looking for.Īround the tip of Africa, across the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea. 'A chegada de Vasco da Gama a Calicute em 1498,' by Alfredo Roque Gameiro (1864-1935).Ĭhristopher Columbus sailed west, looking for the Indies. The man who found the Indies when Columbus did not and brought Europe face-to-face again with Islam. Twitter facebook Email This article is more than 10 years old.

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