The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco Da Gama (25 page)

When they resumed, the ships steered to the southwest—a heading that took them into the very center of the Atlantic.

On every previous known voyage, every captain—up to and including Bartolomeu Dias—had kept his ships close to land as they labored down the African coast. Not this time. Perhaps the Portuguese had set out on secret missions—so secret that no trace of them survived—to unravel the wind patterns of the South Atlantic. Perhaps they had realized that square-riggers were much less well equipped than caravels to sail against the southeast trade winds and the north-going current. Or perhaps it was a mix of happenstance and intuition that led Vasco da Gama to head for the open ocean in search of the great wind wheel that would whirl him in a counterclockwise arc to the southern tip of Africa. If so, it was an astonishingly risky move. If he sheered off at the right moment, he would catch the westerlies that would speed him to his destination. If he got it wrong, he would be buffeted back up the coast of Africa—or even worse, he could be blown off the known face of the earth.

Gama’s men had no choice but to trust their commander. Their only companions were the great flocks of herons that kept pace with
the fleet until they flapped off at night toward the faraway coast. One day a whale caused great excitement by surfacing nearby; perhaps, as on another voyage, the sailors made a racket with drums, pans, and kettles in case it decided to turn playful and capsize the ships. Otherwise they went about their tasks, and gradually they adjusted to the daily routine of life at sea.

Half hour after half hour, day and night, the sand ran in the hourglasses. Each time the ship’s boy turned the glass the ship’s bell rang; after eight bells, the watch changed. The departing seaman of the watch handed over to the new team by chanting an ancient ditty:

“The watch is changed, the glass is running! We shall have a good voyage if God is willing.”

Each day on board began with prayers and hymns. Every morning, on the boatswain’s orders, the deckhands pumped out the water that had seeped into the bilges, swabbed down the salty decks, and scraped the woodwork. The sailors adjusted the rigging, repaired tears in the sails, and made new lines from frayed ropes, while the gun crews cleaned their cannon and tested them with some target practice. To prepare to fire, they first loaded a stone ball into the long barrel, then rammed a powder charge into a cylindrical metal chamber. They wedged the open tip of the chamber into the breech end of the barrel, and put a smoldering stub of rope to a touchhole. It was best to keep one’s distance when firing, as King James II of Scotland discovered in 1460:

And while this Prince, more curious than became him, or the majesty of a King, did stand near hand the gunners when the artillery was discharged, his thigh bone was dug in two with a piece of a mis-framed gun that brake in shooting, by the which he was stricken to the ground and died hastily.

With no mishaps and enough precharged chambers ready to be wedged in place, a slow but steady rate of fire could be maintained.

While the guns boomed, the servants and cabin boys polished the officers’ steel armor and washed and mended their clothes. Belowdecks, the storekeeper kept a daily check on the equipment and provisions. The galley boy cooked the single daily hot meal over a sand-filled firebox on the deck, and the men ate the results off wooden trenchers with their fingers or pocketknives. Every crew member, from the captains down, received the same basic daily rations: a pound and a half of biscuit, two and a half pints of water, and small measures of vinegar and olive oil, together with a pound of salt beef or half a pound of pork, or rice and cod or cheese instead of the meat on fasting days. Delicacies like dried fruit were reserved for the top brass and would prove vital in preserving their health.

The officers passed on orders from the quarterdeck, the part of the main deck abaft the mainmast, or climbed the ladder to the poop deck that formed the roof of the sterncastle to get a better view. Meanwhile the pilots calculated their position and corrected their course. With the simple instruments at their disposal, it was a laborious business. As the ships sailed south, the angle of the Pole Star above the horizon declined, and by a fairly simple calculation their latitude could be established. To calculate the angle the pilots used a smaller, simplified version of an instrument that had evolved over the centuries for celestial observation. The mariner’s astrolabe consisted of a brass circle suspended from a ring at the top to ensure it stayed as vertical as possible on the swaying deck. The alidade, a sight bar that pivoted from the center of the circle, was aligned with the star—assuming it was not obscured by clouds—and the altitude was read off a degree scale marked around the circumference. It was a recent invention, and since it was made of light sheet brass it tended to swing in a strong wind, which made accurate readings exasperatingly tricky to take.

Each night the Pole Star rode lower in the sky until finally, about nine degrees above the equator, it touched the sea and disappeared over the horizon. To the novices who were spending their first nights under southern skies, it seemed as if the world had
suddenly flipped over. Even veterans paused to wonder before readjusting themselves to the unsettling new shape of the heavens. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to confront the problem of navigating south of the equator, and without the Pole Star as their guide they had learned to calculate their latitude by measuring the altitude of the sun at noon. Squinting directly at the sun—again, assuming clouds were not in the way—was not a pleasant task, and since no timepiece had been developed that was accurate at sea, numerous readings had to be taken to hit the meridian, the point when it was at the top of its arc. Besides, the sun was a much less reliable partner than the Pole Star. Since its ecliptic does not follow the celestial equator—in other words, since its path through the sky does not line up with the earth’s equator projected out into space—its meridian angle from the equator varies on each day of the year. A navigator who wanted to know his latitude by reference to the sun therefore needed to compensate for that variable. Again, the Portuguese had a head start. Gama’s ships carried with them the Rule of the Sun, a series of lengthy tables and detailed instructions that King John II’s committee of mathematicians had drawn up in 1484. The tables gave a figure for the declination of the sun—its angle from the equator at noon—on any given day, and the instructions told a navigator how to apply the figure to his reading. Faced with such a laborious series of tasks, many preferred to forgo celestial navigation and trust their gut instincts, but Vasco da Gama was a stickler for the rules.

So much for latitude; no useful way whatsoever had been found to determine longitude. The navigators relied on dead reckoning, which amounted to an informed guess about the speed of travel constantly adjusted by the direction shown on the compass. That all-important instrument was carried in a recess under the sterncastle, near to the spot where the tiller poked through the stern. The magnetized needle was attached to a card marked with the compass rose and set on a pivot in a round bowl; the apparatus was lit by a tiny oil lamp and was encased in a hooded wooden box.
Spare needles and cards and lumps of adamant to remagnetize the needles were carefully stashed away. As the officer of the watch shouted instructions to change course and the helmsman heaved on the heavy tiller to turn the rudder, he kept a close eye on the compass at his side. With his vision obstructed by sails and forecastle, sailors and deck equipment, it was often the only way he knew where he was headed.

Between carrying out their duties a few men read books, and more gambled with dice and cards. Some fished with hooks, nets, and harpoons, and cleaned, filleted, and salted any of the catch that was left over. Others struck up a tune or sang a sea song; a few kept dogs or cats, which hunted down the population of rats and mice that gnawed their way through the ship’s stores. Many merely ate and drank, lounged about, talked, argued, and occasionally brawled, lubricated by the wine ration of as much as two liters per man per day. All prayed. Cast on the unknown deep, with death always figuring on the horizon, the need for a beneficent god to guide their path was always in their minds. They prayed alone, while they worked, or in groups, sometimes led by the captain. They worshipped before the shipboard shrines, read prayer books and rubbed amulets, and observed holy days with lengthy devotions and festivities.

Each day ended with a religious service, and when it was over the night watches were set and the lanterns were hauled up the masts. The captain repaired to his cabin in the sterncastle, the officers to their bunks in the cabin below and in the forecastle. The rest of the men slept where they could—beneath the raised gang boards that ran between the castles, in the recess under the sterncastle, or on close tropical nights when the compartments smelled foul, in the open air; the top of the hatch, the only flat spot, was always in demand. On the much smaller caravel, where there was only one cabin and even less privacy, the men shifted even closer against one another.

August wore on, and the crews grew sick from the burning
heat. What food was left quickly went corrupt. The water began to reek, and the men held their noses while they drank. Strong odors were everywhere. Men hauling sails and anchors in the burning sun worked and slept in the same clothes for months on end. At sea their hair was never cut and seldom washed—seawater was too briny, and fresh water too precious—and their scalps teemed with lice. They squatted between the cables and gear on the forecastle and used an open box as a toilet, but their aim was at the mercy of the waves, storms made it impossible to maintain even that minimum of decorum, and the results invariably ended up being washed belowdecks. A passenger on a later Portuguese voyage to the East drew a painful picture of the worst moments:

Amongst us was the greatest Disorder and Confusion imaginable, because of the Peoples Vomiting up and down, and making Dung upon one another: There was nothing to be heard but Lamentations and Groans of those who were straightened with Thirst, Hunger, and Sickness, and other Incommodities, and Cursing the time of their Embarkment, their Fathers and Mothers, and themselves, who were the cause thereof; so that one would have thought they had been out of their Wits, and like Mad-men.

When the scorching heat and the storms and calms near the equator were behind him, a new scourge struck the hapless sailor. Hot rain fell in sheets along the African coast and, he complained,

afterwards turned to Worms, if that which was wet was not perfectly dried. It was a wonderful trouble to me, to see my Quilt wet, and Worms crawling all over. These rains are so stinking that they rot and spoil, not only the Body, but also all Cloths, Chests, Utensils, and other Things. And not having any more Cloths to shift my self withal, I was forced to dry upon me that which I wore, with my Quilt, by lying thereupon; but I was well fitted for that; for the Fever, with a great pain in the Reins, took me in such a manner, that I had a fit of Sickness, almost, the whole Voyage.

September passed, then October, with few distractions except for a school of whales and huge herds of seals that floated like smooth boulders on the waves. By now, though, the fleet had reached the southwesternmost point in its great loop around the Atlantic, and the westerly winds were driving it at full speed back to Africa. Finally, on Wednesday, November 1, clumps of gulfweed began to float past: a telltale sign that land was near.

That Saturday, two hours before daybreak, the night watch lowered the lead and line and sounded the depths. They measured 110 fathoms, or a mere few hundred feet of water. From the latitude, they reckoned they were a mere thirty leagues north of the Cape of Good Hope.

At nine o’clock in the morning the watchkeepers sighted land. The ships drew close together, and every man put on his best clothes. The mightily relieved crews ran up the flags and standards, and the gunners blasted off the bombards.

It had been a grueling journey. The men had not seen land for ninety-three restless days, and it was a desperately long time since they had had fresh water or food. Yet the unprecedented sweep of the ocean had paid off handsomely: by avoiding the contrary coastal winds and currents they had shaved precious weeks off the voyage. In the infancy of his command, Vasco da Gama had discovered the fastest and surest sailing route from Europe to the Cape of Good Hope.

It was the first bold move of a man who was determined to push himself and his crews to the limits to attain his otherworldly goal.

T
HE SHIPS TACKED
close to the coast, but the shoreline bore no resemblance to the charts and sailing instructions drawn up by Bartolomeu Dias. They stood out to sea again to catch the wind, and three days later they tacked back to land.

This time they found themselves in front of a wide bay backed by low-lying plains. Dias’s veterans had not seen it before, and the explorers named it St. Helena Bay.

On Vasco da Gama’s orders, the chief pilot set out in a boat to take soundings and find a safe anchorage. The bay turned out to be sheltered and crystal clear, and the next day, November 8, the fleet dropped anchor a short distance from the shore.

Four months at sea had already wreaked havoc with the ships. One by one they were run up into the shallows, and the arduous process called careening began. The stores were piled up against one side of the hold, and with some concerted tugging on cables the vessels were heeled over. The sailors climbed up ladders onto the exposed hull and scraped it clean of the barnacles that encrusted the wood like thousands of tiny volcanoes. They scrubbed off worms, snails, and weeds, and drove fresh oakum into the seams with a caulking iron. A fire was lit on the beach, and boiling pitch was poured along the seams. The same operation was carried out on the other side, then the ship was hauled back onto an even keel and towed out to sea. By now the ballast was sodden with foul bilgewater, reeking from the rubbish and ordure that had been washed belowdecks and crawling with rats, cockroaches, fleas, and lice. The noxious slurry was shoveled out and new ballast was tipped in. The decks were scrubbed and scraped, the sails were repaired, and the damaged spars and worn ropes were replaced with spares.