Da Gama, Vasco ___ 1469c-1524 ___ Portuguese ___ sailor

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Da Gama was born in Sines, Portugal. His father was Estêvão da Gama, commander of the local fort. In 1492, Vasco da Gama was sent by King John to the south of the country to take revenge against the French, who had been seizing Portuguese ships. Estêvão da Gama was chosen by King John to lead a Portuguese fleet to India, but then both men died, and Vasco de Gama was appointed for the mission by King Manuel. In 1497, da Gama sailed from Lisbon with four ships; he rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and, with the aid of a pilot found on the east coast of Africa, reached Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the Malabar coast of India. Unable to establish a colony because of opposition from the local Muslims, da Gama returned to Portugal, where his voyage was celebrated as a great success. Around 1500, da Gama married Catarina de Ataíde who bore him six sons. In 1502, he undertook a second journey to try and secure the trading colony which had been established in the interim by Pedro Carbal, but which had been wiped out in a massacre. Da Gama successfully laid siege to Calicut and concluded favourable peace treaties with the native rulers. Again, he returned in triumph, but then fell into a dispute over his rewards. In 1519, he was appointed Count of Vidigueira; and, in 1524, after Manuel's death, King John III appointed him as Portuguese Viceroy in India. He set sailed for a third time, to try and restore administrative order to the Portuguese holdings. However, he fell ill at Cochin and died in December that year.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
The Diary Review - Cloves, cumin, ginger

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1497-1499 ___ maritime military exploration India

WEB TEXT LINKS
substantial excerpts
etext
googlebooks

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
 

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama 1497-1499
 

May 2005, September 2008, March 2013
Please email if you have any corrections, additions or comments, or if you've found the site useful. Thank you.

IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.