The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco Da Gama (38 page)

Great numbers Died every day thereof, and there was nothing to be seen but Bodies a flinging over-board, and the most part Died without help, some behind Chests, having their Eyes and the Soles of their Feet eaten up with Rats. Others were found dead in their Beds, after having been let Blood and moving their Arms, the veins opened, and their Blood ran out: Oftentimes after having received their Allowance, which might be about a Pint of Water, and putting it near them to Drink, when a-dry, their Companions rob’d these poor Sick Wretches of this little Water, they being asleep, or turned to the other side. Sometimes being under Deck in a dark place, not seeing one another, they would fight among themselves, and strike one another, if they caught any about to Steal their Water; and thus, oftentimes were they deprived of Water, and for want of a little Draught they miserably died, without any one offering to help them to never so little, no not the Father the Son, nor the Brother the Brother, so much did every Man’s particular Thirst compel him to Rob his Companions.

Racked by pain and far from home, dozens of simple, zealous men died fearful, lonely deaths within days of their symptoms appearing. The end came as a release. As Crusaders for Christ, they had been told they would pass away without the stain of sin. Their eyes squeezed shut against the blinding light, the softer life of a place free from suffering beckoned them on. Their comrades threw their bodies into the sea, with less and less ceremony as more and more succumbed.

In the tropical heat, new diseases assaulted the weakened survivors. Fevers left them shivering and delirious. Abscesses and tumors grew on infected skin. A toxic fungus infected the bread and brought on vomiting and diarrhea, followed by painful spasms, hallucinations, and mania, and finally dry gangrene, dropsy, and death. Among the most terrifying afflictions was one that, a sailor reported, “breaks out at the Fundament like an Ulcer, and is presently full of Worms, which Gnaw as far as the Belly, and so they die in great misery and torment: There hath been no better remedy found for this Disease,” he added, “than the Juyce of Lymon, in washing therewith the Fundament; for that obstructs the worms
breeding there.” There was no privacy on board a ship; now there was no dignity, either.

As Christmas approached, only seven or eight sailors were left fit to man each vessel. Few believed they would survive much longer, and the iron discipline that Vasco da Gama had rigorously enforced utterly broke down. The men shouted out to the saints, vowing to reform their ways if they were saved and begging them to spare their lives. They demanded that the captain-major return to Calicut to submit to God’s will rather than let them rot away on the open sea. Gama and his fellow captains had lost all track of where they were, and in desperation they finally agreed to turn back, if a favorable wind allowed.

At the last possible moment the weather changed, and with it the mission’s fortunes. “It pleased God in his mercy,” recorded the Chronicler, “to send us a wind which, in the course of six days, carried us within sight of land, and at this we rejoiced as much as if the land we saw had been Portugal.”

The date was January 2, 1499. A few more days, a couple of weeks at most, and three ghost ships would have been cast adrift on the pitiless ocean blue.

B
Y THE TIME
the ragged fleet neared the coast of Africa it was already night. They lay to, and the next morning they reconnoitered the shore, “so as to find out whither the Lord had taken us, for there was not a pilot on board, nor any other man who could tell on the chart in what place we were.” As far as they could see, an unvarying thin green ribbon of vegetation stretched between the vastness of the sea and the sky.

A debate ensued. Some of the men were certain they were still three hundred leagues from the mainland, among some islands off Mozambique; one of the prisoners they had taken there had told them the islands were very unhealthy and rife with scurvy, which made all too much sense.

While the argument was still raging, the watchkeepers sighted
a city. It turned out to be the ancient Somali port of Mogadishu, which had once been the dominant Muslim entrepôt on the East African coast. Tall houses surrounded a magnificent palace, and four castles defended the perimeter walls. In their perilous state the explorers did not dare try their luck, and after making their feelings known by firing off repeated rounds from the bombards, they continued south along the shore.

Two days later the ships were drifting in a calm when a thunderstorm blew up from nowhere and tore the ties of the
São Rafael.
More trouble was in store: while the few able-bodied men were making repairs, a pirate spotted the stricken fleet and launched a raid from a nearby island. Eight packed boats bore down on the Portuguese, but the gunners leapt to their stations and a barrage sent the pirates flying back to their town. Perhaps to the crews’ relief, there was no wind and they were not ordered to give chase.

Finally, on January 7, the lookouts spotted the familiar bay of Malindi. Even—especially—in such dire straits, Gama would not risk mooring in the port, and the ships anchored off the city. The sultan immediately sent out a large welcoming committee with an offering of sheep and a message of peace and friendship. The captain-major had been expected for a long time, the Africans affably said.

Gama sent the ever-reliable Fernão Martins to shore in the sultan’s boat with urgent instructions to procure as many oranges as possible. They arrived the next day, along with an assortment of different fruits and plenty of water. The sultan ordered his Muslim merchants to visit the foreigners and offer them chickens and eggs. It was too late for the worst afflicted: many of the sick died off Malindi and were buried there.

The horrors of the journey had softened Gama, and he was struck by the kindness the sultan showed him and his men when they desperately needed help. He sent him a gift and begged him, through his Arabic translators, to give him an ivory tusk to present to the king of Portugal. As a sign of the friendship between the two
nations—one that would be clearly visible to their enemies—he also asked permission to place a pillar and cross on the shore. The sultan replied that he would do everything he was asked out of love for King Manuel. He had a prime spot prepared for the pillar, in front of the town and next to his palace, and as well as the requested tusk, he sent over a Muslim boy who dutifully declared that he wanted nothing more in life than to go to Portugal.

The Portuguese stayed at Malindi for five days, enjoying more of the sultan’s entertainments as best they could, “and reposing,” recorded the Chronicler, “from the hardships endured during a passage in the course of which all of us had been face to face with death.” They left on the morning of January 11, and the next day they sailed as quickly as possible past Mombasa.

When they were safely out of sight of the city they anchored in a bay, unloaded the goods from the
São Rafael
, and set fire to it. There were not enough hands left to sail three ships, and in any case the
Rafael,
which had not been repaired for many months, was on its last legs. The whole process took fifteen days, during which numerous Africans came out and bartered chickens for the sailors’ last few shirts and bracelets.

Two days after they resumed their journey, the two remaining ships passed a large island, six leagues from the mainland, that they had missed on the outward voyage. This, the boy from Malindi explained, was Zanzibar, one of the most important trading centers of the Swahili Coast. The explorers had never heard of it: there was a great deal more exploring left to do.

On February 1 the ships reached Mozambique during a heavy downpour. They avoided the town and anchored off the island where they had celebrated mass almost a year earlier. They said mass this time, too, and Gama decided to erect another pillar. The rain fell so hard that the landing party could not light a fire to melt the lead that was used to fix the cross on top, and the pillar stayed crossless.

A few days later the survivors left East Africa for the voyage
around the Cape. For all the rumors that large communities of Christians lived there, they had stayed frustratingly out of sight. Prester John remained as stubbornly elusive as ever. The Swahili Coast still guarded its secrets; only on another voyage would it yield up its greatest treasures.

A month later the Portuguese reached the bay where the captain-major had been shot in the leg. They stayed for more than a week, catching and salting anchovies, seals, and penguins and replenishing their water for the Atlantic passage. On March 12 they set out for home, but they made it only a dozen leagues before a fierce westerly wind sent them pitching back into the bay. As soon as the wind dropped they started again, and on March 20 they doubled the Cape of Good Hope. By now, the Chronicler recorded, “those who had come so far were in good health and quite robust, although at times nearly dead from the cold winds which we experienced.” After the tropical heat, the southern Atlantic felt like the chills that accompany a fever.

For twenty-seven days a following wind drove the two ships to within a hundred leagues of the Cape Verde Islands. They were back in home waters, but after everything they had been through a strange air of unreality clung to the familiar sights.

The easy passage turned out to be too good to be true. There was one final hardship to come.

Before the ships could reach the islands they were becalmed again. The little breeze there was came from ahead, and they plied to windward as best they could. Thunderstorms rolled along the African coast and helped the pilots fix their position, but soon the skies darkened overhead and a violent tornado whipped up the seas. Though lightning crashed around them, the two vessels lost sight of one another.

Nicolau Coelho was still in charge of the
Berrio.
This time there was no assigned meeting place, and he set his course straight for home. On July 10, 1499, his tattered, leaking caravel limped into the fishing port of Cascais, on the cusp of the Atlantic just below
Lisbon. The Portuguese had long ago decided the fleet was lost, and they rushed to welcome the heroes home.

Coelho made his way to the king and reported the discovery of the sea route to India. The momentous mission had lasted 732 days. The ships had covered no less than 24,000 miles. It was by some way the longest voyage known to history, whether measured by time or by distance traveled.

Vasco da Gama’s ship arrived a few weeks later, its seams split and its pumps groaning to keep it afloat. Perhaps 170 men had set out; perhaps only 55 had returned alive.

The captain-major was not among those on board. On the return journey his brother had been seized by tuberculosis, and by the time the ships had become separated Paulo’s condition had taken a marked turn for the worse. Gama had waited a day for the caravel to reappear before setting a course for Santiago, the port where the fleet had reunited on the outbound voyage. As soon as he arrived he had put João de Sá, the former clerk of the
São Rafael
, in charge of repairing his flagship and sailing it home.

Gama chartered a small, fast caravel to speed his dying brother to Lisbon. Soon after they left, Paulo’s condition became desperate, and Vasco changed course for the island of Terceira in the Azores.

Paulo died the day after they reached the island. Vasco da Gama buried his beloved brother in the church of a Franciscan monastery, and the discoverer of the sea route to India slowly, sadly made his way home.

CHAPTER 13

A VENETIAN IN LISBON

O
N
A
UGUST
20, 1501, the newly appointed ambassador extraordinary of the Republic of Venice swept before the royal court of Portugal and launched into a long and extravagant eulogy to King Manuel I.

Until very recently, La Serenissima—the name, meaning “The Most Serene,” by which Venetians knew their republic—had barely deigned to notice the existence of Portugal. Yet two years earlier a letter had arrived in Venice that had made its citizens swallow their pride. The Venetian diarist Girolamo Priuli recorded its contents:

Letters of June arrived from Alexandria, which wrote that through letters from Cairo written by men who had come from India, it was understood that at Calicut and Aden in India, principal cities, there were arrived three caravels of the King of Portugal, which had been sent to enquire after the Spice Islands, and of which the commander was Columbus.

If the details were wide of the mark, the thrust was clear enough. Venice had a new competitor for its Eastern trade.

Priuli, like many of his fellow Venetians, greeted the news with a skeptical shrug. It would be incendiary news if it were true, he admitted, but he did not believe a word of it. Backward little Portugal had always been too busy haring after Prester John and dregs of African gold to think of challenging the greatest trading republic in the West. Soon, though, a flurry of enormously long and frantic
letters began to arrive at Italian merchant houses from their countrymen based in Lisbon. The Portuguese, a merchant named Guido Detti wrote home to Florence, had “found all the treasure and all the commerce in spices and precious stones of the whole world.” The news, he predicted—with more than a touch of satisfaction at a rival’s suffering—was “truly bad for the [Egyptian] Sultan, and as for the Venetians, when they lose the commerce of the East, they will have to go back to fishing, because by this route the spices will arrive at a price they won’t be able to match.” It was a fine discovery, he added, “and the king of Portugal deserves the hearty congratulations of all Christians. Certainly, every king and great lord, especially those whose lands border the sea, must seek after unknown things and expand our knowledge, because that’s how to win honor and glory, reputation and riches.”