Vasco da Gama

Da Gama was a Portuguese mariner and nobleman born around the 1460s. Sailors had spent decades trying to reach the Indies, losing thousands of lives and dozens of ships to wrecks and attacks. In 1497 he led the voyage that finally did it, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and sailing from Malindi to Kozhikode, where he landed on 20 May 1498. The route sidestepped the contested Mediterranean and the dangerous Arabian Peninsula; the outward and return legs were the longest ocean voyages ever completed at the time. Portugal seized a commercial monopoly on pepper, cinnamon, and the rest of the spice…