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Unknown Seas: The Portuguese Captains and the Passage to India

Page 31

by Ronald Watkins


  With his brother near death, Vasco set out at once for home as well, but it soon became clear that Paulo would never make it. Instead, Vasco diverted course and sailed to the island of Terceira in the Azores, as he did not wish to bury his brother at sea and he hoped for a miracle once Paulo was on land. Paulo da Gama died the day after reaching the Azores and was buried at the church in Angra. His crew gravely ill and dying, even this ship in need of repairs, Vasco remained there in mourning.

  During the two years the Vasco da Gama expedition had been absent not a single word of its fate had reached Portugal. It was assumed by many during the passage of the time that the ships and men were lost. Still, the expedition had been fitted for a three-year voyage, so there were those not prepared as yet to declare the attempt a failure.

  Manuel availed himself of the pleasures of his new Spanish wife as he sought to produce an heir. He continued to issue corrections to his initial expulsion order against Jews and, while still imposing cruel and all but unimaginable hardships on them, had the effect of permitting many Jews to remain and contribute to the national economy since most of the essential fluid wealth was held by Jews or Jews forcibly converted, the so-called Christãos novos. But some of the most valuable Jews left anyway. These included Abraham ben Zacuto, who had pronounced the stars favourable to the attempt to reach India and provided invaluable assistance to the expedition. He, like others, including at least one royal physician, moved on.

  During the period of the India expedition the heir to the Spanish throne died, placing Manuel’s wife, Isabella, next in line. In the summer of 1498, while Vasco was engaged with the Zamorin and Arab merchants in Calicut, the couple journeyed to Spain to obtain formal recognition of her claim. While there in August, Isabella gave birth to a son, Miguel da Paz, but died during labour. The infant’s claim to the Spanish throne was recognized, but only on condition that the child remained behind to be raised by his grandparents, Isabella and Ferdinand. In March 1499 the Portuguese Cortes met to debate the troubling Portuguese succession and reached the conclusion that a Portuguese heir reared as a Spaniard should not stand, at least not without substantial concessions from Spain. While negotiations were under way with the Spanish monarchy the infant died, and Spanish succession passed to the son of a daughter married to the Emperor Maximilian. In late 1500 Manuel was to marry the fourth daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and with her he had ten children, one of whom, born in 1502, became his heir to the Portuguese crown, John III.276 It was in this climate and with such adverse concerns of state that word of Coelho’s arrival was received. The Portuguese court was jubilant on learning of the success. An exuberant Manuel declared ‘even greater joy than when he learnt that he was to be King of Portugal’.277

  The king wasted no time in acting. Just two days after Coelho arrived in Lisbon and confirmed the success of the expedition, Manuel dispatched a letter to the parents of his deceased wife, to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Six and a half years earlier Christopher Columbus had lectured the then Portuguese sovereign on his discovery of India by sailing west. Now Manuel had his opportunity to inform the Spanish monarchs of the true discovery of the sea route to India.27

  Even before Vasco da Gama had reached Portugal, Manuel had modified his titles and placed a globe on his sceptre. The king was now to be henceforth known as ‘Dom Manuel, by the Grace of God King of Portugal and of the Algarves on this side of and beyond the sea, in Africa, Lord of Guinea and of the Conquest, the Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India’. The enthusiastic and exaggerated letter read, in part:

  Most high and excellent Prince and Princes, most potent Lord and Lady!

  Your Highnesses already know that we had ordered Vasco da Gama, a nobleman of our household, and his brother Paulo da Gama, with four vessels to make discoveries by sea, and that two years have now elapsed since their departure. . . . [I]t has pleased [God] in His mercy to speed them on their route. From a message which has now been brought to this city by one of the captains, we learn that they did reach and discover India and other kingdoms and lordships bordering upon it; that they entered and navigated its sea, finding large cities, . . . great populations among whom is carried on all the trade in spices and precious stones. . . . Of these they have brought a quantity, including cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and pepper, as well as other kinds, . . . also many fine stones of all sorts such as rubies and others. And they also came to a country in which there are mines of gold . . .

  As we are aware that your Highnesses will hear of these things with much pleasure and satisfaction, we thought well to give this information. . . . [T]here will be an opportunity for destroying the Moors of those parts. Moreover, we hope, with the help of God, that the great trade which now enriches the Moors, . . . shall, in consequence of our regulations be diverted to the natives and ships of our own kingdom, so that henceforth all Christendom, in this part of Europe, shall be able, in a large measure, to provide itself with these spices and precious stones. . . .

  Written at Lisbon, July 1499.278

  As the Portuguese man, Vasco da Gama, had returned with residents of India, as well as a sampling of spices and gems, there could no longer be the slightest doubt but that the Spanish man, Christopher Columbus, who had twice returned with primitives, displays of exquisite feathers, exotic plants and a bit of gold dust, had not reached India. The Treaty of Tordesillas, negotiated just four years earlier, had given Spain the West, Portugal the lands to the East. Where Spain had failed, Portugal had succeeded, or to put it on the personal terms that existed, Manuel had triumphed where Ferdinand and Isabella had failed.

  If any measures were taken by Manuel to keep the invaluable information just received secret, they were largely ineffective. Literally within days detailed communications were streaming from Lisbon bearing the news of the Portuguese success and comprehensive information from the communications to the king and from those who had taken part in the expedition. The letters are remarkable not for their occasional inaccuracy but for the wealth of knowledge so quickly acquired.

  Venetian merchants living in Lisbon dispatched letters home to report this astounding and, for them, depressing event. One, written by Guido di Messer Tomaso Detti, reviewed the implications to the Venetian spice trade, concluding that he and his colleagues should hereafter ‘become fishermen’. The letter also said:

  [T]his is an excellent finding and this King merits great commendation from all Christians, and certainly all the Kings and great and powerful lords who are sea-powers should always send out to find and give news of unknown things because it brings honour and fame, reputation and riches, and in fine, because of it they are praised by all men. And to such men it is well that Lordship and State is given . . . And thus we may say: the King of Portugal should be praised of all men.279

  Another wrote of these events, ‘As soon as the news [of Gama’s return] reached Venice, the populace was thunderstruck, and the wiser among them regarded the news as the worst they could have received.’280

  It was understood that henceforth the flow of wealth from the spice trade would largely bypass the Italian city-states and enter Europe through Lisbon. The centre of European economic power had permanently shifted from the Mediterranean westward to Portugal and, within a short time, to Spain as well, with the conquest of the Aztecs and Incas and the exploitation of the Americas.

  But as yet the hero, Vasco da Gama, had not reached Portugal. A resident of the island of Terceira had sailed on a caravel as soon as Vasco arrived there with his dying brother. He bore the news to the king of the Captain-Major’s location and reported that the crew with him was ‘sick and dying’. Weeks passed with no other word reaching the nation. During the interim Manuel basked in the glory of his success and made plans as to how he would spend the enormous wealth that would soon be his. Of Vasco at Terceira, Correa writes, ‘[W]hen the ships were provided with all that was necessary, they departed for Lisbon, and Vasco da Gama was so afflicted by the death of h
is brother, that it very much diminished his satisfaction with the great honours that he hoped for on coming to the King’s presence.’

  Some three to six weeks after Coelho’s modest caravel had entered the small harbour at Cascais bearing the stupendous news of triumph, Vasco da Gama at last arrived in Belém, from where he had sailed two years earlier, surrounded by an armada of ‘many vessels’which had accompanied him from Terceira to bask in his glory and share in the celebrations. On landing Vasco gave thanks at the same chapel where he had knelt with his brother and officers.

  A partial explanation for Vasco’s late arrival lies with what he did next. Rather than go immediately to his sovereign and receive the rewards awaiting him as well as the adulation of the Portuguese people, Vasco sent word that he remained in mourning at the loss of his brother and would report to Manuel when that was over. He now remained in Belém and for nine days prayed a novena for Paulo. On hearing of the great captain’s arrival Manuel dispatched the Count of Porto Alegre and other nobles to receive him.

  The return of Vasco da Gama and those seamen who had survived with him completed the single greatest ocean expedition in world history to that point, and one that still ranks among the two or three greatest sailing feats in human history. For what it meant to the future of mankind it stands alone. The world as it had been was no more; the consequences for Portugal, Europe and Asia to this day are nearly incalculable.

  Word of Vasco’s return spread throughout Lisbon, its environs and the nation with something akin to the speed of light. Pealing church bells could be heard for miles across the countryside. The excitement at what he and his crew had accomplished was all but unbearable. Celebrations, both intended and spontaneous, occurred everywhere. In part the joy was not just at the success but because people could see with their own eyes seamen ‘who seemed to be as though men risen from the dead’.281

  From the day Coelho arrived in Lisbon, the surviving members of the expedition had returned to loved ones, visited with friends, been toasted in the tascas and fêted as heroes throughout the city. They had sold off those modest amounts of spices they had managed to acquire at an enormous profit. Again and again they told the story of their two-year adventure, regaling small gatherings and throngs with stories of derring-do and descriptions of the fascinating, all but unbelievable, sights to which they had been witness.

  The surviving seamen, officers and priests told of the incredible and utterly daring volta da Guiné, that magnificent feat of seamanship that had inaugurated their voyage to India, of the three-month, 3,370-mile sweep through the central and south Atlantic, out of all sight of land, only to arrive within scant miles at their destination on the southwestern coast of Africa. They told of their first encounter with the Bushmen of South Africa and the eventual hostility they overcame. They told rapt audiences the difficulties they had faced in rounding the tip of Africa through violent waters and contrary winds, how time and again their ships were thrown back, how seamen had demanded that the captain break off the attempt, but how their Captain-Major had pledged he would not return to Portugal without doubling Africa and reaching his goal.

  The survivors told of the fat cattle they had eaten in Mossel Bay, then of how the Hottentots there had destroyed the king’s pillar once they set sail and had been afraid to confront them when they stopped in the same bay on their return. They told of the treachery of the sultan on Mozam-bique Island, of the attempts to seize their ships and slay them, of the failed blandishments to lure them close to shore, of the battle they had fought before the plank barrier, of finally filling casks under hostile eyes and imminent threat of attack. They related their kind reception at Malindi, how the regent and king had seen to their every need and provided them with the essential pilot to reach India.

  And they told of the peaceful three-week sailing across the Indian Ocean, their sails filled with the steady flow of the monsoon, carried through the tranquil waters as if by the Hand of God. They told of first setting eyes on India as Moses had beheld the Promised Land. They told of the port of Calicut, filled with hundreds of ships from throughout the East. They related the opulence they had witnessed and the abject poverty, told of the friendly ‘Christians’who welcomed them everywhere, and of the Hindu women eager to lie with men of fair skin. They recounted the constant treachery of the Moors.

  They described the marketplace, the cheap and readily available spices and gems. They told of their departure when it appeared some of their number would be held captive ashore but of how their Captain-Major had cleverly got them back aboard ship. They related the attacks that followed thereafter, then the three-month-long, deadly sailing back to east Africa that nearly ended the enterprise, their struggle with scurvy and burial at sea, their salvation again in Malindi and elsewhere, how their numbers were reduced to sail just two ships. Finally, they told of the rounding of Africa again and swift return home by God’s grace.

  Throughout their telling one theme emerged repeatedly: without Vasco da Gama it would not have happened. There could be no doubt but that the success of the expedition owed everything to the cunning, tenacity, bravery and skill of its Captain-Major. Time and again a single error on his part would have brought disaster, as again and again their captain had seen to the success of the mission. No treachery could succeed against him, no attack nor the wile of the Moors. At every turn the Captain-Major had been the better and without him they would surely have died long ago or been cast in irons.

  Now finished with his devotions, as Vasco himself was seen on the streets of Lisbon, he was cheered as a conquering hero and, because he had been the instrument through which God had fulfilled the destiny of the Portuguese people, he was revered. Just thirty years old, Vasco da Gama was elevated to a position nearly that of a living God.

  Contemporaneous records of the royal greeting no longer exist, probably destroyed in the devastating Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Royal festivities are known to have been declared as Vasco made his way from Belém to the palace in Lisbon. A solemn Mass was held at Sé de Silves, the national cathedral. Vasco and his captains presented themselves to Manuel in ceremonies as lavish as those at their departure and received initial honours and awards. The surviving members of the crew, it is recorded, were amply rewarded. Manuel remembered his promise to the widows and orphans of those men who had lost their lives on the voyage, issuing a proclamation that they should come forward, though he parsimoniously granted them only half their due, just as he did to Paulo’s family. Manuel distributed clothing from his personal wardrobe and gave royal horses to the officers of the expedition. There was more, according to Correa, for ‘with these grants and salaries all remained rich and satisfied’.

  Vasco presented personal gifts to his crew to take to their wives or families as well as presenting gifts from India to the king. These included ambergris, musk, which had been highly prized by the late queen, and Chinese porcelain as well as certain gems and necklaces. At his first private meeting with Manuel, Vasco asked that Nicolas Coelho be well rewarded, to which the king agreed, later granting a pension of 3,000 cruzados to the young man as well as captaincy of a ship in all future expeditions to India, which he could exercise or sell on to another.

  There was now time to assess the cost and inevitably the numbers vary. Some sources report as few as 44 of the original crew of nearly 180 survived; others record the figure as 54. Also, the figure of between 170 and 180 for the original crew is at best an estimation. Some historians place the figure at 148, others at little more than 100. A Venetian merchant writing from Lisbon reported that 55 men died on the return voyage alone. If accurate, this would mean 25 more deaths after the 30 that occurred on the deadly passage from India to the African east coast, a total loss of no fewer than 85 men.

  Certainly, no more than one third of the original crew had survived, a figure consistent with the toll taken of Bartholomeu Dias’s crew eleven years earlier. Those who did survive this first epic voyage to India were often broken in health and the
sight of such surviving seamen became increasingly common in Lisbon over the coming decades of conquest and empire.

  The voyage had traversed 23,000 nautical miles, a total distance greater than that around the world at the equator. On two occasions the ships had been out of sight of land for periods in excess of ninety days. Vasco da Gama had successfully completed the first voyage in the history of mankind connecting the West and the East by sea. The social and economic life of the world was to be profoundly altered by what he and his crew had accomplished.282

  Although Vasco had returned with specimens of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and pepper, as well as gems, most historians indicate the amount of actual spices as being no more than a ‘handful’. It is commonly held in Portugal today that all the spices would have fitted within a bread bin. A well-informed Italian living in Lisbon wrote that the expedition returned with ‘little and nothing of value’. Whatever the actual quantity, given the value of spices, it was sufficient to do more than repay the cost of the expedition.

  Of far greater importance was the knowledge returned from the East. The Roteiro and other documents metic-ulously prepared during the voyage were now in the hands of Manuel’s most trusted advisers and the junta. Scribes had prepared voluminous and detailed reports that accurately described exactly how the spice trade was conducted, its course from the far-off Spice Islands to India, and from there through Cairo into Europe.

  Included were market prices for spices, their origins and myriad trade routes, the war-making capability of every kingdom that played a role in the production or trade of spices and precious stones, even a basic primer for Malayalam, the language spoken in Calicut. Now it was all laid out, both as a commercial enterprise and as a potential military objective, if it came to that. An example of what Manuel and his junta read relates:

 

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