Vasco Da Gama Quotes

“Whilst the food we eat nowadays has much to be grateful to the likes of Marco Polo, Alexander the Great and Vasco De Gama, who would have introduced the tangy flavours of South Africa’s Rainbow Cuisine on his way around the Cape of Good Hope to India, Arabic cuisine, with spices of cinnamon, cloves, saffron and ginger was a lot more enterprising than Western cooking at the time. The medley of colours that the spices offered the food had mystical meanings to the Arabs”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“Vasco da Gama, on a cruise to India and back, encouraged his men to rinse their mouths with urine, which did nothing for their scurvy and can’t have done much for their spirits either.”
― Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life

“When Vasco da Gama breached the Indian Ocean, the playing field had just been vacated by the one force capable of repelling him.”
― William J. Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

“The standoff had already lasted five days. "It was a Monday, the 3rd of October 1502," wrote Tomé Lopes: "a date that I will remember every day of my life." By now Gama's soldiers had removed all the weapons they could find from the Arab ship. It was a sitting duck, and the admiral ordered his men into their boats. Their task was simple. They were to tow the Mîrî out to sea until it was safely away from the Portuguese fleet. Then they were to set it alight and burn it with everyone on board. The soldiers marched onto the Mîrî, set fires across the decks, and jumped back into the boats as the flames licked and the smoke billowed. Some of the Muslims rushed to smother the fires, and one by one they stamped them out. Others dragged out several small bombards they had managed to hide from the search party, and they hurriedly set them up. The pilgrims and merchants ran to grab anything that could serve as ammunition, including fist-sized stones from the piles of ballast in the hold. There was clearly no chance of surrender, and they were determined to die fighting rather than burn to death. When the soldiers in the boats saw the fires go out they rowed back to light them again. As they approached, women and men alike fired the bombards and hurled the stones. The Europeans cowered under the hail of missiles and beat a fast retreat. From a distance they tried to sink the Mîrî with their bombards, but the guns carried on the boats were too small to inflict real damage. The Muslim women tore off their jewelry, clutched the gold, silver, and precious stones in their fists, and shook them at the boats, screaming at their attackers to take everything they had. They held up their babies and little children and desperately pleaded with the Christians to take pity on the innocents. One last time, the merchants shouted and gestured that they would pay a great ransom if their lives were spared. Gama watched, hidden from sight, through a loophole in the side of his ship. Tomé Lopes was stunned: shocked by the admiral's refusal to relent, and amazed that he was willing to turn down such wealth. There was no doubt in his mind that the ransom would have been enough to buy the freedom of every Christian prisoner in Morocco and still leave great treasure for the king. Bergamo and his fellow factors were no doubt wondering just how much of their profit would go up in smoke. Yet there were plenty of zealous Christians among the crews who had no more qualms than their Crusader forebears about killing peaceful merchants and pilgrims. The dehumanizing notion that their enemies in faith were somehow not real people was too deeply ingrained to be shaken. Like holy warriors before and after, they avoided looking into the whites of their victims' eyes and got on with their godly business.”
― Nigel Cliff, The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages Of Vasco Da Gama by Nigel Cliff

“Ouvi, que não vereis com vãs façanhas,
Fantásticas, fingidas, mentirosas,
Louvar os vossos, como nas estranhas
Musas, de engrandecer-se desejosas:
As verdadeiras vossas são tamanhas
Que excedem as sonhadas, fabulosas,
Que excedem Rodamonte e o vão Rugeiro
E Orlando, inda que fora verdadeiro.

Por estes vos darei um Nuno fero,
Que fez ao Rei e ao Reino tal serviço,
Um Egas e um Dom Fuas, que de Homero
A cítara par' eles só cobiço;
Pois polos Doze Pares dar-vos quero
Os Doze de Inglaterra e o seu Magriço;
Dou-vos também aquele ilustre Gama,
Que para si de Eneias toma a fama.”
― Luís Vaz de Camões, Os Lusíadas

“But at the end of three days the Brahman arrived in an Indian boat, and went to the captain-major's ship, and came on board, and made a great salutation to the captain-major, saying : " Sir, as I bring you a good message, I did not ask leave to come on board. The Zamorim sends you this letter. Order it to be read, and give me an answer, as I wish to return imme-diately." The captain-major asked him of what race he was. He said that he was a Nair and a Brahman. The captain-major ordered a scribe of the King of Cochym, who was in the ship, reckoning cargo, to read the letter, and he read it. The captain-major then sent the Brahman, with the letter, to the King of Cochym, in the skiff, and the Indian boat with the rowers remained at the ship. When the King heard the letter, he laughed to himself without answering anything, and sent it back to the ship. The captain-major summoned before him the rowers of the Indian boat, and ordered them to sit down on the ground, and told them not to get up, or he would order them to be executed; and he ordered their hands to be tied together, and told them to look well at everything. He then ordered the Brahman to be taken by the arms by two Negroes, that he might not fling himself into the sea, and said to him: " Brahman, tell me what the Zamorim ordered you to do." He replied that the King had not told him anything, except to deliver that letter and return immediately with the answer. The captain-major told him to swear by the head of the Zamorim that he spoke the truth, and he would not swear. Then he ordered him to be tied to the bits, and sent for an iron shovel full of embers, and ordered them to be put close to his shins, until large blisters rose upon them, whilst the interpreter snouted to him to tell the truth about what he came for, and what orders he had received, but he would not speak. The captain-major let him remain thus, and the fire was brought closer by degrees, until he could not bear it, and he said ho would speak the truth, and he confessed all that the King had said to him, and had ordered him to look and see; and he said that now that he had spoken the truth, let him order him to be killed, since he would not return to Calecut, for if they did not kill him, he should kill himself by his own hands. The captain-major questioned him why he would not return to Calecut, and would kill himself in order not to go thither. He said: "I do not deserve to live since I have discovered the King's secret." The captain-major said: " If, then, you will kill yourself, who will carry the answer to the King?" He replied, the Negro boatmen would carry it. Then the captain-major ordered the Negroes of the Indian boat to be unbound, and a white cloth to be given to each of them, telling them to row hard and return quickly. He then ordered the upper and lower lips of the Brahman to be cut off, so that all his teeth shewed, and he ordered the ears of a dog on board the ship to be cut off, and he had them fastened and sewn with many stitches on the Brahman instead of his, and he sent him in the Indian boat to return to Calecut.”
― Gaspar Corrêa, The three voyages of Vasco da Gama and his viceroyalty from the Lendas da India. Accompanied by original documents