Pero Vaz de Caminha · 1500 · sea

Pero Vaz de Caminha's letter to King Manuel I, written on a beach in Brazil on 1 May 1500 and filed unread in the royal archive for three centuries. The route is Cabral's fleet: thirteen ships bound for India that swung west into the Atlantic and made a landfall nobody had ordered.

1. 1
   Belem

   9 March 1500, and thirteen ships leave the Tagus for India - the largest fleet Portugal had sent anywhere, following da Gama's route with da Gama's advice and Bartolomeu Dias among the captains.

2. 2
   Sao Nicolau

   Cape Verde, and one ship parted company in the night and never rejoined - after which Cabral takes the volta do mar, the long westward swing into the Atlantic to pick up the southern winds.

3. 3
   Porto Seguro

   22 April 1500, and a mountain sighted and named Monte Pascoal - ten days ashore, a mass said on the beach, and Pero Vaz de Caminha writing the letter to King Manuel that is the first description of Brazil.

4. 4
   The Cape

   East across the Atlantic and into a storm off the Cape that sinks four ships in a single day - among them Bartolomeu Dias, drowned within sight of the headland he had been the first to round.

5. 5
   Mozambique Island

   The Swahili coast, six ships of thirteen - and the trading towns that da Gama had antagonised two years earlier, now dealing with a fleet that has learned to arrive with the guns run out.

6. 6
   Kilwa

   A sultan who declines a treaty, politely - one of the last such refusals to go unpunished, since the fleet has India to reach and is not yet in the business of bombarding people.

7. 7
   Malindi

   The friendly port again, and pilots for the monsoon crossing - the one relationship on the coast that Portugal managed not to ruin.

8. 8
   Calicut

   A factory established and then stormed by Muslim merchants with fifty Portuguese killed - and Cabral's response: two days of bombardment, ten captured ships burned in the roads, and the end of any pretence at trade.

9. 9
   Cochin

   South to a rival raja glad of an ally against Calicut - and a cargo of pepper, ginger, cinnamon and cloves loaded on terms that would make the voyage pay four times over.

10. 10
    Cannanore

    A last stop and a last treaty, and then the monsoon home - four ships of thirteen, but with enough in their holds to settle the argument about whether any of it was worth doing.

11. 11
    Lisbon

    July 1501, sixteen months out - and a letter in the royal archive, unread for three hundred years, that turns out to be the founding document of the largest country in South America.