Many of the crew that he recruited were convicts whose lives, he believed, were expendable. Along with the experienced navigators, he looked for men that were tough enough to withstand the harsh conditions of life at sea. He recruited a crew of 170 men that included some of Portugal’s most experienced navigators. His fleet consisted of two new ships that were built specifically for the expedition and two refurbished ships that were equipped with better cannons than the new ones. 2įor the expedition, da Gama turned to Dias to help him plan and organize the trip. Although da Gama was an inexperienced explorer, he was appointed to lead the expedition to discover a sailing route to India. A few years later, in 1497, da Gama was appointed to command a ship by King Manuel. He wanted to open a route for Portugal to make money trading spice and thereby establish Portugal as a major maritime and colonial power. When King Manuel rose to power in 1495, he decided to revisit the possibility that Dias’s new route opened the potential to sending a Portuguese fleet to Asia around Africa. In 1487, on a voyage funded by Portugal, Bartholomeu Dias found that the Indian and Atlantic Oceans were linked and discovered a passage around the Cape of Good Hope. In 1492, King John II sent da Gama to a port south of Lisbon, known as Setubal, and to Algarve to seize French ships in retaliation to the French destroying Portugal shipping. Under the direction of King John II, da Gama was appointed commander of a ship with the intention of finding a sailing route to India. He joined the Portugal navy as soon as he was old enough to join. He was the third son of Esevao da Gama, also a navigator, that was the commander of the fortress of Sines on the coast of Alentejo. Vasco da Gama, the first European to sail around the continent of Africa to Asia, was born into a noble Portuguese family around 1460 in Sines, Portugal.
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