Who Was Vasco da Gama?

Vasco da Gama

Having crossed the Vasco da Gama bridge, I was inspired to find out more about the man it was named after, as while the name was very familiar, upon scanning my brain for relevant information I discovered that there was none. This felt a bit embarrassing as he is obviously one of the most famous Portuguese in history. So off I went a-Googling and found it: Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese explorer who was the first European to reach India by sea, in 1498.

I was unimpressed. That’s nothing on what Columbus did in discovering America, is it? Well, yes, historians say, it was actually a greater feat because of the distances and treacherous waters involved.

Da Gama's route to India

Let’s take the first of these. For some reason my intuition told me that a trip from Spain or Portugal to America would be longer than one to India, but how wrong I was. Even as the crow flies, we are looking at approximately 6,000 km to America and 8,000 km to India. When crossing the Atlantic, one can do a pretty good impression of a crow flying, but getting to India requires a trip across the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal at Egypt, then round the Middle East and across (close to the green and yellow lines marked above). And when it dawned on me that the Suez Canal was only built in the 1800s, I realised that da Gama had to sail down the Atlantic to the most southerly point of Africa (the Cape of Good Hope, near present day Cape Town, England 0 – 0 Algeria), then back up the eastern side of Africa past Madagascar and then across the Indian Ocean (the black line above – he was directed by a previous explorer to do that big loop out into the Atlantic to avoid a difficult area off the Western coast of Africa) . In fact, da Gama’s return journey was longer than the distance around the equator.

Da Gama leaves for India in 1497

So yes, technically a much greater feat than that of Columbus. But what I discovered next was a much better argument: da Gama was actually trying to get to India, and did. Columbus actually found America by accident when trying to get to India. Not only that, but Columbus wasn’t even the first European to discover America anyway – apparently that was Leif Erikson (not the one in the High Chapparal but a Viking) a whopping 500 years earlier. Actually, when you think about it, Columbus was a bit of a loser. I got to wondering why the Spanish glorified him the way they did when he really cost them a lot of money, was rubbish and wasn’t even Spanish. I suppose they had to make out he did well to justify the decision to hire him, a bit like when Real Madrid signed Ronaldo (the original goofy one, not the winker).

Da Gama’s success in reaching India was incredibly significant because it opened up trade routes across the whole of Asia, under Portugal’s control, helping to make this little country arguably the wealthiest and most powerful in Europe for almost a century to follow.

Da Gama arrives in Calicut, India, in 1498

At this point I was almost getting behind the “Vasco da Gama deserves his place in history” idea when I discovered that he was a bit of a naughty boy. He arrived in India assuming that these “natives” would be terribly impressed with a few silks and not realise the value of what they had to trade. The Indians, used to all manner of spices and gems, were not at all stupid or impressed, and da Gama was sent away with a flea in his ear. It was left to the leader of the next excursion, Cabral, to tempt the Indians into a trade agreement with some decent swaps. This angered Muslim merchants whose trade it was that the Portuguese were attempting to steal, and they killed 50 of Cabral’s men. Cabral retaliated by killing around 600 Muslim sailors and torching some villages. Da Gama headed up the next visit and took the retribution even further by committing some barbaric acts. After attacking several Muslim ports along the east African coast, he continued the terror against Muslim shipping off the Malabar Coast, burning a ship with 400 Muslim pilgrims on board who were returning from Mecca. Da Gama kept the fires burning for four days to ensure that every last man, woman and child had died. He then moved further up the Indian coast, dismembering 30 fishermen. Most charming of all, when the Indian’s high priest was sent to da Gama for talks on expelling the surviving Muslims from India, da Gama ordered the priests’ lips and ears to be cut off and sewed a pair of dog’s ears to his head before returning him to his leader.

So there we have it, Vasco da Gama, the man that not just our bridge but also monasteries and towers are named after. Rubbish at trading, a bit of a psychopath but definitely a better sailor than Columbus.