Latest / The History of Portugal: The Small Nation That Built a Global Empire — Fexingo History / Portugal's First Voyage to India Vasco da Gama's Lost Logbook
Transcript
- Lucas: So, we've spent a lot of episodes talking about what Portugal did once they got to the Indian Ocean — the battles, the fortresses, the trade networks. But we've never really gone back to the very beginning: Vasco da Gama's first voyage in 1497. Luna: That's a huge gap actually. How did they even find their way? Lucas: Exactly. Because when da Gama left Lisbon in July 1497, he had four ships — the São Gabriel, the São Rafael, the Berrio, and a storage ship that was later scuttled. About 170 men total. They didn't even know if the Indian Ocean was connected to the Atlantic. They had theories, but no proof. Luna: So it was a genuine leap into the unknown — with scurvy and mutiny waiting. Lucas: Right. They took a huge swing out into the South Atlantic to catch the westerlies — that's the 'volta do mar' technique perfected by earlier explorers. They were out of sight of land for 96 days, the longest open-ocean voyage anyone in Europe had ever attempted. By the time they sighted the Cape of Good Hope, scurvy had already killed dozens. Lucas: And then, once they rounded the Cape and started up the east coast of Africa, they faced a trickier problem: navigation. They had the astrolabe and the quadrant, but those only worked when you could see the sun or the North Star. In the southern hemisphere, the North Star disappears, so they had to rely on solar readings and dead reckoning. Luna: I remember reading that they got completely lost around Mozambique. Lucas: They did. And that's where the voyage took a crucial turn. In what is now Mozambique, da Gama managed to recruit a pilot — a man known only as Malemo Cana from historical accounts. He was a Gujarati Muslim navigator, and he knew the monsoon routes across the Indian Ocean intimately. Without him, da Gama might never have reached India. Luna: So a local pilot essentially guided the Portuguese to their goal. Lucas: Exactly. But it wasn't smooth. After leaving Malindi — where they stopped for supplies and got a second pilot — they hit the monsoon and crossed the Indian Ocean in just 23 days, landing near Calicut on 20 May 1498. That's the first time a European fleet had reached India by sea. Lucas: And then came the first contact with the Zamorin, the ruler of Calicut. Da Gama had brought gifts meant to impress — but they were embarrassingly cheap. He offered striped cloth, hats, sugar, and honey. The Zamorin's court laughed at him. They were used to silk and spices from the Middle East and China. Da Gama had no gold, no silver, nothing of comparable value. Luna: That cultural misunderstanding must have set a terrible tone. Lucas: It did. The Zamorin was offended. Da Gama was frustrated. He ended up leaving Calicut without a formal trade treaty, but he did manage to load some spices — cinnamon, cloves, pepper — enough to prove the route was commercially viable. On the way back, they faced more hardships: scurvy again, and a hostile stop in Mombasa where they had to fight off local forces. Luna: I've heard that the return journey was even worse than the outbound leg. Lucas: Far worse. Only about 55 men survived out of the original 170. The São Rafael was abandoned because they didn't have enough crew left to sail both remaining ships. But the navigation was brilliant — they used the monsoon winds to speed across the Indian Ocean to East Africa, then rounded the Cape again and limped back to Lisbon in August 1499. Lucas: And here's something that's always fascinated me: the original logbook of da Gama's voyage is lost. We only know the details from a later copy made by a man named Álvaro Velho, who may have been a crew member. That manuscript, called the 'Roteiro da Primeira Viagem de Vasco da Gama', is our only detailed account. And it's full of gaps and ambiguities. Luna: So the primary source for one of history's greatest journeys is basically a secondhand copy. Lucas: Exactly. But it's still incredibly rich. For example, it mentions that da Gama stopped at a place he called 'Ilha do Ouro' — literally 'Island of Gold' — which might refer to parts of the Swahili coast. And it gives us the first European descriptions of Indian cities like Calicut and the social hierarchy there. Lucas: But I want to get into something that I think gets overlooked: the role of the Malindi pilot. Some historians argue that without local navigation knowledge, the Portuguese could not have crossed the Indian Ocean successfully. It challenges the narrative of European maritime superiority — they were really following already-established trade routes, guided by experts. Luna: That's a humbling thought — the 'discoverers' were actually being guided by the discovered. Lucas: Absolutely. And it's a thread we've seen in other episodes — the Portuguese reliance on local intermediaries, whether in Asia, Africa, or Brazil. Anyway, I think about this voyage a lot when I'm working on the show. It's a small part of a much bigger story, but it's the hinge on which everything else turns. Luna: It's incredible that we can still trace those steps so many centuries later. Lucas: Definitely. And if you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode — about Portugal's rise and fall — you know that these deep dives take a lot of time and research. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Luna: Yeah, it really helps keep the show running without ads or anything like that. Lucas: So back to the voyage. One of the most dramatic moments was when da Gama actually met the Zamorin. The Portuguese had presented themselves as ambassadors from a powerful king, but they had no real gifts to back that up. It's a classic case of overpromising and underdelivering, and it shaped Portuguese-Indian relations for decades. Luna: How did da Gama handle that embarrassment? Lucas: He tried to bluff. He claimed that his gifts were meant as a first sampling, and that future fleets would bring more valuable items. But the Zamorin wasn't buying it. He actually detained some of da Gama's men for a while, demanding better trade terms. Eventually, da Gama left under tension, but he managed to take a few hostages of his own to secure his men's release. Lucas: It was a rough start. But the sheer fact that da Gama returned to Portugal with spices worth 60 times the cost of the expedition meant that King Manuel I saw it as a huge success. Within months, a much larger fleet under Pedro Álvares Cabral was sent, and the Portuguese presence in India was locked in. Luna: So the first voyage was almost a failure commercially, but it proved the concept. Lucas: Exactly. And it also established a pattern: the Portuguese would use a mix of diplomacy, force, and local alliances. They learned from da Gama's mistakes — they brought better gifts next time, and they were more aggressive in demanding trade concessions. Lucas: There's also a strange footnote: da Gama was not an admiral or a seasoned commander at the time. He was a courtier, chosen by King Manuel because of his reputation for toughness and loyalty. His brother Paulo commanded the São Rafael. The whole thing was very much a family affair. Luna: I didn't realize his brother was along. Did Paulo survive? Lucas: He did, but he died on the return journey, just after they reached the Azores. Vasco was devastated. He actually stayed behind to bury his brother and let another commander bring the ships home. But the king honored him lavishly anyway — gave him the title 'Admiral of the Indies' and a huge pension. Lucas: So in the end, da Gama's first voyage is a story of grit, luck, and the willingness to learn from local knowledge. It's not a clean triumph — it's messy, full of near-disasters and misunderstandings. But it opened the door to everything that followed. Luna: It's almost a miracle it worked at all. Lucas: Right. And that's why it's so important to go back to the source — the Roteiro — and pick through those details. There's a moment in the log where da Gama describes seeing the lights of Calicut for the first time, and you can feel the relief and anticipation. It's a genuinely human document. Luna: I'd love to read that firsthand account sometime. Lucas: There are good English translations available. And it's worth it — you get a sense of the wonder and fear and ambition that drove these men across an ocean they couldn't even map. Lucas: Next time we might look at the immediate aftermath — how Portugal built on this voyage to create the Estado da Índia. But for now, I think we've given da Gama his due.