Vasco da Gama Timeline

In December 1499, King Manuel I rewarded Vasco da Gama with the town of Sines as a hereditary fief – the town his father, Estêvão, had once held as a comenda.

The follow-up expedition, the Second India Armada, launched in 1500 under Pedro Álvares Cabral with the mission of making a treaty with the Zamorin of Kozhikode and setting up a Portuguese factory in the city.

Image source: Pedro Álvares Cabral

Around 1501, Vasco da Gama married Catarina de Ataíde, daughter of Álvaro de Ataíde, alcaide-mór of Alvor, a noblewoman connected by kinship with the powerful Almeida family; she was a first cousin of Dom Francisco de Almeida.

A royal letter dated October 1501 gave da Gama the personal right to intervene and exercise a determining role on any future India-bound fleet.

After da Gama's demand for the expulsion of Muslims from Kozhikode, the Zamorin sent the high priest Talappana Namboothiri – who had conducted da Gama to the Zamorin's chamber during his celebrated first visit in May 1498 – for talks. The 4th armada left India in early 1503.

Image source: Zamorin

On 30 January 1502, da Gama was awarded the title Almirante dos mares de Arabia, Persia, India e de todo o Oriente – an overwrought title reminiscent of the ornate Castilian title borne by Christopher Columbus.

Invoking his royal letter, da Gama took command of the Fourth India Armada, scheduled to set out in 1502, with the explicit aim of taking revenge upon the Zamorin and forcing him to submit to Portuguese terms. The heavily armed fleet of fifteen ships and eight hundred men left Lisbon on 12 February 1502.

On reaching India in October 1502, da Gama's fleet intercepted Mirim, a ship of Muslim pilgrims at Madayi travelling from Kozhikode to Mecca, in one of the most notorious episodes of the voyage.

Vasco da Gama arrived back in Portugal in September 1503, effectively having failed in his mission to bring the Zamorin to submission.

When King Manuel I decided to appoint the first governor and viceroy of Portuguese India in 1505, da Gama was conspicuously overlooked, and the post given to Francisco de Almeida.

Image source: Francisco de Almeida

Da Gama spent years attempting to take hold of Sines, an effort that estranged him from Lencastre and eventually prompted him to abandon his beloved Order of Santiago, switching over to the rival Order of Christ in 1507. His attempts to return to the favor of Manuel I yielded little.

Image source: Military Order of Christ

After Ferdinand Magellan defected to the Crown of Castile in 1518, Vasco da Gama threatened to do the same, prompting the king to undertake steps to retain him in Portugal and avoid the embarrassment of losing his own "Admiral of the Indies" to Spain.

Image source: Ferdinand Magellan

In 1519, after years of ignoring his petitions, King Manuel I appointed Vasco da Gama the first Count of Vidigueira by royal decree issued in Évora on 29 December, after a complicated agreement with Dom Jaime, Duke of Braganza, who ceded him the towns of Vidigueira and Vila dos Frades.

Image source: Count of Vidigueira

By his appointment letter of February 1524, John III granted Vasco da Gama the privileged title of "Viceroy", being only the second Portuguese governor to enjoy that title (the first was Francisco de Almeida in 1505).

Image source: Governor-General of India

Setting out in April 1524 with a fleet of fourteen ships, Vasco da Gama took as his flagship the famous large carrack Santa Catarina do Monte Sinai on her last journey to India, along with two of his sons, Estêvão and Paulo.

Image source: Santa Catarina do Monte Sinai

Da Gama contracted malaria not long after arriving and died in the city of Cochin in India on Christmas Eve in 1524, three months after his arrival. He was buried at St. Francis Church at Fort Kochi, but his remains were returned to Portugal in 1539.

Da Gama's sons Estêvão and Paulo immediately lost their posts and joined the returning fleet of early 1525, along with the dismissed Duarte de Menezes and Luís de Menezes.

Dom Paulo da Gama (having the same name as his uncle), son of the explorer, served as captain of Malacca from 1533 to 1534 and was killed in a naval action off Malacca.

Image source: Paulo da Gama

After his abortive 1524 term as Indian patrol captain, Dom Estêvão da Gama was appointed for a three-year term as captain of Malacca, serving from 1534 to 1539, which included the last two years of his younger brother Paulo's term.

Image source: Estêvão da Gama (16th century)

Da Gama's remains were returned to Portugal from St. Francis Church at Fort Kochi in 1539 and interred in the chapel at Vidigueira.

Dom Estêvão da Gama, son of Vasco, was subsequently appointed as the 11th governor of India from 1540 to 1542.

Dom Cristóvão da Gama, another son of Vasco, had been captain of Malacca from 1538 to 1540; nominated to succeed there, he instead joined the Ethiopian-Adal war and was executed by Ahmad ibn Ibrahim in 1542.

Image source: Cristóvão da Gama

Dom Álvaro de Ataíde da Gama, appointed captain of Malacca fleet in the 1540s, served as captain of Malacca itself from 1552 to 1554. Another son, Dom Pedro da Silva da Gama, held the same post from 1548 to 1552.

Image source: Vasco da Gama

Dom Francisco da Gama, 4th Count of Vidigueira, great-grandson of Vasco da Gama, served as viceroy (1597–1600) and again as governor (1622–1628) of India.

His male-line issue became extinct in 1735, when the 7th Count of Vidigueira, Dom Vasco Baltasar José Luís Gama died, leaving only one daughter, Dona Maria José da Gama, who inherited the Vidigueira estate.

The 1865 grand opera L'Africaine, composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer from a libretto by Eugène Scribe, prominently includes the character of Vasco da Gama. A 1989 production by the San Francisco Opera featured tenor Plácido Domingo in the role of da Gama.

Image source: L'Africaine

The 19th-century composer Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray composed an eponymous 1872 opera based on da Gama's life and exploits at sea.

Image source: Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray

In 1880, what were believed to be da Gama's remains and those of the poet Luís de Camões (who celebrated da Gama's first voyage in his 1572 epic Os Lusíadas), were moved to new carved tombs in the nave of the monastery's church, near the tombs of kings Manuel I and John III.

Image source: Jerónimos Monastery

By 1884, Teixeira de Aragão discovered documents suggesting the wrong remains had been exhumed from Vidigueira: da Gama's gravestone had been exchanged with that of his great-grandson Francisco da Gama, likely during restoration works in 1841. The casket moved in 1880 contained the bones of more than one person.

It was not until May 1898, during the celebrations of the fourth centenary of da Gama's arrival in Kozhikode, that the remains from the other tomb in the chapel of Vidigueira were moved to the Hieronymite monastery.

The wreck of the Esmeralda from da Gama's 1502–03 fleet was initially discovered in 1998 off the coast of Oman. In 2016, archaeologists formally identified the shipwreck.

Image source: Esmeralda (carrack)

Underwater excavations of the Esmeralda wreck took place between 2013 and 2015 through a partnership between the Oman Ministry of Heritage and Culture and Blue Water Recoveries Ltd., a shipwreck recovery company, confirming its identification announced in 2016.