The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco Da Gama (71 page)

306
“We all thought it was advisable”:
See Teyssier and Valentin,
Voyages de Vasco de Gama
, 328. Of the chroniclers, Barros says the fleet put in at a bay eight leagues south of Malindi; Castanheda says Gama briefly visited the city; Correia offers an elaborate description of Gama’s meeting with the sultan, who once more embraces him as a brother. All are contradicted by the eyewitness accounts.

306
“and we killed the people and burned the ships”:
Calcoen
, 26.
The Flemish sailor says the fleet headed northeast on the monsoon winds and arrived on August 21 off “a great city called Combaen.” The city was Cambay, an important Gujarati port for six hundred years; now known as Khambhat, its harbor has long ago silted up. Sailing down the coast, he says the fleet reached a city named Oan (likely Goa); it was there, he claims, that they captured and burned 400 ships. The attack is not corroborated in the other accounts. Matteo da Bergamo says the storm blew them to Dhabul (Mumbai); Lopes describes a similar place but calls it Calinul.

307
Rui Mendes de Brito:
The shipowner was likely a member of a family of “New Christians” who were prominent Portuguese gem dealers and merchant bankers. Rui Mendes is mentioned as a financier of armadas at Antwerp between 1504 and 1508, when the city was already becoming the main European entrepôt for Portugal’s spices. In 1512 a Diogo Mendes, possibly of the same family, moved permanently to Antwerp and became a fabulously rich spice baron; by the mid-sixteenth century the dynasty handled the lion’s share of the spice trade and controlled several stock markets. See Marianna D. Birnbaum,
The Long Journey of Gracia Mendes
(Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003), 15–22.

308
“the ships which carry the spices”:
Calcoen
, 27.

308
sambuk:
Different types of dhows were distinguished by their keel design rather than their purpose or their size, which could vary widely. Even the keel design evolved over time: sambuks, which were among the most successful of all dhows, later developed a square stern under Portuguese influence.

308
a full account of the horrors:
My account of the battle is based on Tomé Lopes’s blow-by-blow report, with additional details from the other eyewitnesses and the chronicles.

309
240 men:
The figure is given by the dependable Lopes, but estimates vary widely. Matteo da Bergamo and the anonymous Portuguese writer put the number at about 200; the Flemish sailor says 380 and the German sailor 600. Barros says 260, plus more than fifty women and children; Correia, exaggerating as usual, says 700.

309
Jauhar al-Faqih:
Lopes’s “Ioar Afanquy.”

310
“When I commanded this ship”:
See Lopes, “Navigazione verso le Indie orientali,” 701.

310
“We couldn’t even speak about this capture”:
See Teyssier and Valentin,
Voyages de Vasco de Gama
, 330. “On this subject there are moreover certain stories that it’s neither the time nor the place to reveal,” Bergamo darkly added.

310
“It was a Monday”:
See Lopes, “Navigazione verso le Indie orientali,” 703.

313
“with such vehemence”:
Ibid., 704.

314
“And so”:
Ibid., 705.

314
Almost all the rest:
On the return of the first ships to Lisbon, the Florentine merchant Francesco Corbinelli was told that Gama burned the
Mîrî
with all its gold but saved all the Muslim merchants. Unless he made a glaring mistake, at least one person was ashamed of Gama’s actions. Letter dated Lisbon, August 22, 1503; see Teyssier and Valentin,
Voyages de Vasco de Gama
, 354.

315
seventeen children:
The figure given by the anonymous Portuguese writer; Matteo da Bergamo says twenty. At least some were later given to the monastery at Belém as apprentice friars.

315
“was a demonstration of the manner”:
João de Barros, quoted in Subrahmanyam,
Career and Legend
, 208.

Chapter 15: Shock and Awe

317
“we knew his will”:
See Paul Teyssier and Paul Valentin, trans. and eds.,
Voyages de Vasco de Gama: Relations des expeditions de 1497–1499 et 1502–3
, 2nd ed. (Paris: Chandeigne, 1998), 329.

320
a fiendish conspiracy:
The Portuguese factors regularly complained that they were being charged inflated prices; in reality, they were often short on hard currency, their trade goods were seldom in demand, and they invariably refused to pay market rates.

320
“who as he well knew”:
See “Navigazione verso le Indie orientali scritta per Tomé Lopez,” in Giovanni Battista Ramusio,
Navigazioni e Viaggi
, ed. Marica Milanesi (Turin: Einaudi, 1978–1988), 707.

324
“because since the beginning of the world”:
Ibid., 712.

325
“A palm tree”:
Ibid., 714.

326
distributing the Muslim captives:
According to the German sailor, Gama asked the captives, through a Dutch Jew who
had been baptized in Portugal, whether they wanted to die as Christians or keep their own faith. Most, he insists, asked to be baptized, not because they thought it would save their necks but so they could breathe their last believing in the all-powerful God. The anonymous Portuguese account says thirty-two were hanged.

327
a letter from the admiral:
Barros reports the first part, Lopes the second. Gaspar Correia, typically, manages to make the episode even more ghastly. The fake friar, he says, was put in a boat with his ears, nose, and hands strung around his neck and a message to the Zamorin suggesting he make a curry out of them. The rest of the surviving prisoners were similarly mutilated and their body parts were thrown in the boat; then Gama “ordered their feet to be tied together, as they had no hands with which to untie them: and in order that they should not untie them with their teeth, he ordered them to strike upon their teeth with staves, and they knocked them down their throats; and they were thus put on board, heaped up upon the top of each other, mixed up with the blood which streamed from them; and he ordered mats and dry leaves to be spread over them, and the sails to be set for the shore, and the vessel set on fire.” More than eight hundred Muslims, Correia declares, were so murdered; more were strung up by their feet and were used by the Portuguese for target practice. Three of those begged to be baptized, and after they had prayed with a priest, Gama charitably strangled them so “that they might not feel the arrows. The cross-bow men shot arrows and transfixed the others; but the arrows which struck these did not go into them nor make any mark upon them, but fell down.” Correia’s story is uncorroborated and is almost certainly invented; even so, Gama’s gruesome actions have to be seen in the context of an age in which such claims were made not to indict the admiral but to glorify him and his Crusade. Henry E. J. Stanley, trans. and ed.,
The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama, and His Viceroyalty
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1869), 331–34.

333
“We kept asking ourselves”:
See Teyssier and Valentin,
Voyages
de Vasco de Gama
, 332–33.

333
“in this way”:
See Lopes, “Navigazione verso le Indie orientali,” 720.

334
Quilon:
Now known as Kollam; the burial place of St. Thomas, though, is traditionally held to be Mylapore, in southern Chennai.

334
the story went:
The legends are recounted in
The Book of Duarte Barbosa
, trans. Mansel Longworth Dames (London: Hakluyt Society, 1921), 2:97–99, 127–29. There are numerous variant versions; the episode of the martyrdom of the peacock likely derives from a Hindu or Buddhist story.

335
They had eventually arrived in Persia:
Most likely it was the Persians who first arrived in India. Missionaries belonging to the Persian Church or Church of the East, one of several denominations of Syriac Christianity that emerged from the fifth-century Christological controversies, reached the Malabar Coast and China in the sixth century; in the ninth century many Syriac Christians migrated to southern India. Tamerlane virtually wiped out Persian Christianity at the end of the fourteenth century; the Indian community was one of the few survivors, though it had split into two groups that followed different Syriac rites. In the seventeenth century it fell into further schisms as some St. Thomas Christians entered communion with Rome under Portuguese pressure and others rebelled against the Portuguese and broke with Rome, creating a patchwork of West Syriac St. Thomas Christians, East Syriac St. Thomas Christians, West Syriac Roman Catholics, East Syriac Roman Catholics, non-Syriac Roman Catholics, two Orthodox Syriac denominations, and others that still persists today.

336
“nearly 25,000 Christians”:
Calcoen: A Dutch Narrative of the Second Voyage of Vasco da Gama to Calicut
, trans. J. P. Berjeau (London: B. M. Pickering, 1874), 29.

Chapter 16: Standoff at Sea

337
“This Brahmin”:
See “Navigazione verso le Indie orientali scritta per Tomé Lopez,” in Giovanni Battista Ramusio,
Navigazioni e Viaggi
, ed. Marica Milanesi (Turin: Einaudi, 1978–1988), 724. Correia luridly and no doubt spuriously claims that Gama tortured the Brahmin with burning embers before cutting off his lips and ears and sewing dog’s ears in their place. The sources differ on the number and estate of the messengers, their mission, and their fates.

339
“as if they were ready to fight”:
Ibid., 726.

340
Soon there were two hundred:
Matteo da Bergamo gives the figure. By the time the fleet was home the count of the enemy boats, according to the Florentine merchant Francesco Corbinelli, had grown to four hundred or even five hundred.

341
“You vile man!”:
See Lopes, “Navigazione verso le Indie orientali,” 728.

344
“otherwise he would cut off their heads”:
Ibid., 730.

344
little booty:
According to Castanheda there was plenty, including much porcelain and silver and a golden idol with emerald eyes and a huge ruby on its chest. Correia adds that the sailors found many women belowdecks, including some pretty girls whom Gama kept for the queen. Neither claim is credible.

345
“for the whole night the wind blew from the sea”:
See Lopes, “Navigazione verso le Indie orientali,” 730.

346
chains of unknown islands:
The Laccadives and Maldives. Nearer Africa the fleet sailed through the Seychelles, Comoros, and Amirante islands; the last were named after Vasco da Gama, Admiral of India.

347
“It seems to me”:
See Paul Teyssier and Paul Valentin, trans. and eds.,
Voyages de Vasco de Gama: Relations des expeditions de 1497–1499 et 1502–3
, 2nd ed. (Paris: Chandeigne, 1998), 338. For unknown reasons, here and throughout his letter the Italian merchant substitutes “Constantinople” for “Lisbon.”

348
The two ships left Mozambique:
Lopes says fifteen ships left Mozambique; if his figure is correct, the caravel that had been built there may have replaced the ship that had been lost off Sofala. The accounts disagree about some of the dates of departure and other details of the return journey; Lopes is my primary guide, but eyewitnesses on different ships fill out the story. Lopes and the German sailor left on June 16; though he later muddles his dates, the Flemish sailor almost certainly left with the same group. The Portuguese sailor left with Gama and the final convoy on June 22. Matteo da Bergamo put the finishing touches to his letters on April 18; with his usual confidence, he assured his employer that he expected to leave within six days and to outrun the other, less seaworthy ships on the way home. He dispatched his reports the next day and his
testimony ends there, but his patience was doubtless sorely tested one last time.

350
“needed no condiments”:
See Lopes, “Navigazione verso le Indie orientali,” 736.

350
“we found an island”:
Calcoen: A Dutch Narrative of the Second Voyage of Vasco da Gama to Calicut
, trans. J. P. Berjeau (London: B. M. Pickering, 1874), 32.

350
“from which we took flour and baked cakes”:
Miloslav Krása, Josef Poli[š]enskyâ, and Peter Ratko[š], eds.,
European Expansion (1494–1519): The Voyages of Discovery in the Bratislava Manuscript Lyc. 515/8 (Codex Bratislavensis)
(Prague: Charles University, 1986), 80–81.

351
“In every place that he has been”:
Letter dated Lisbon, August 20, 1503, quoted in Sanjay Subrahmanyam,
The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 225.

351
“Such a strong wind blew”:
Krása, Poli[š]enskyâ, and Ratko[š],
European Expansion
, 81. The German sailor says one ship returned on August 19, one on August 27, one on October 7, nine on October 10, and one on October 14. The old ship was wrecked off Lisbon on the 24th. “One small ship is still out,” the German adds, “and there are fears that it too was wrecked.” According to other sources, though, ships were still arriving as late as November.

353
“the Moors from Mequa”:
Grant letter of February 1504, quoted in Subrahmanyam,
Career and Legend
, 227.

Chapter 17: Empire of the Waves

354
the precinct of the Kaaba in Mecca:
While disguised as a pilgrim, Varthema teased a Meccan merchant about the effects of the Portuguese voyages: “I began to say to him, if this was the city of Mecca which was so renowned through all the world, where were the jewels and spices, and where were all the various kinds of merchandise which it was reported were brought there. . . . When he told me that the King of Portugal was the cause, I pretended to be much grieved and spoke great ill of the King, merely that he might not think that I was pleased that the Christians should make such a journey.”
Travelers in Disguise: Narratives of Eastern Travel by Poggio
Bracciolini and Ludovico de Varthema
, trans. John Winter Jones, rev. Lincoln Davis Hammond (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 82.