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The state of Joao’s health, however, and concerns of state, prevented the fitting out of the intended expedition and it was not till ten years later, when Manoel had succeeded to the throne, that the preparations for the great voyage were completed, - hastened, doubtless, by Columbus’s discovery of America in the meanwhile.įor the supreme command of this expedition the king selected Vasco de Gama, who had in his youth fought in the wars against Castile, and in his riper years gained distinction as an intrepid mariner. That there was in truth such an ocean highway was confirmed by Dias, who shortly after returned (in 1487) with the report that when sailing southward he was carried far to the east by a succession fierce storms, past - as he discovered only on his return voyage - what he perceived to be the southern extremity of the African continent, and to which, on account of the fearful weather he had encountered, he gave the name of the Cape of Storms, an appellation which to the king, who was then elated with high hopes of enriching his kingdom by the addition of eastern possessions, appeared so inauspicious that he changed it to that of Cape of Good Hope. Neither of the landward travelers ever returned to his country but Covilham, who, in his fruitless search for a mythical sovereign, reached the Malabar coast and the eastern shores of Africa, sent back to Lisbon, along with the tales of the rich lands he had visited, this intelligence, "that the ships which sailed down the coast of Guinea ought to be sure of reaching the termination of the continent by persevering in a course to the south." King Joao was now seized with an ardent desire of reaching these eastern countries by the route indicated by Covilham. In the hope of making this discovery, Pedro Covilham and Affonso de Payva were dispatched eastward by land while Bartholomeu Dias, in command of two vessels, was sent westward by sea. His descent, according to the Nobiliario of Antonio de Lima, is derived from a noble family which is mentioned in the year 1166 but the line cannot be traced without interruption farther back than the year 1280, to one Alvaro da Gama, from whom was descended Estevao da Gama, Alcaide Mor of Sines, whose third son, the subject of this notice, was born probably about the year 1460.Ībout this period died Prince Henry, the Navigator, son of Joao I, who had spent his life in fostering the study of navigation, and to whose intelligence and foresight must be traced back all the fame that Portugal gained on the seas in the 15th and 16th centuries.Įxplorers sent out at his instigation discovered the Western isles, and unknown regions on the African coast, whence continually came reports (which by and by affected Da Gama’s history) of a great monarch, "who lived east of Benin, 350 leagues in the interior, and who held both temporal and spiritual dominion over all the neighbouring kings," a story which tallied so remarkably with the accounts of "Prester John" which had been brought to the Peninsula by Abyssinian priests, that Joao II steadfastly resolved that both by sea and by land the attempt should be made to reach the country of this potentate. Of Vasco’s early history little is known.