Anonymous and Luis de Camoes · 1499 · sea

The first voyage to India by sea, 1497 to 1499, from the anonymous Roteiro kept aboard and from Camoes's Lusiads, which turned it into Portugal's national epic. Ninety-six days out of sight of land, a pilot picked up at Malindi, and Calicut reached on 20 May 1498 with two thirds of the men already dead.

1. 1
   Belem

   8 July 1497, and four ships leave the Tagus after a night's vigil in the chapel at Belem - the fleet Portugal had spent eighty years working toward, sent to reach India by sea and break the Venetian spice monopoly.

2. 2
   Sao Tiago

   Cape Verde, and the last provisioning - after which da Gama does something no one had done: instead of hugging Africa he stands out into the open Atlantic on a vast westward arc to catch the southern winds.

3. 3
   St Helena Bay

   Ninety-six days out of sight of land, the longest open-sea passage yet made by Europeans - and a landfall on the South African coast, where the first meeting with the Khoikhoi ends in a skirmish.

4. 4
   The Cape

   22 November 1497, round the Cape of Good Hope - which Dias had reached and turned back from nine years earlier, and which nobody had yet passed with any intention of continuing.

5. 5
   Mossel Bay

   The east coast, and the store ship broken up and burned - the point of no return, and the beginning of a coast no European chart had anything on at all.

6. 6
   Quelimane

   The Rio dos Bons Sinais, named for the good signs: local people wearing cotton and speaking of ships from the north - the first evidence that the Indian Ocean trade the fleet was looking for actually existed.

7. 7
   Mozambique Island

   The Swahili coast, and a sultan who receives them well until he works out they are Christians - after which the fleet leaves under fire, which sets the pattern for most of the rest of the voyage.

8. 8
   Mombasa

   A plot to seize the ships in harbour, discovered in time - and da Gama torturing two captives with boiling oil to get the details, which the Roteiro records without comment.

9. 9
   Malindi

   The one friendly port, whose sultan is at odds with Mombasa - and who provides the pilot who takes them across the Indian Ocean on the monsoon in twenty-three days.

10. 10
    Calicut

    20 May 1498, and the object achieved - and then the anticlimax: a Zamorin unimpressed by the gifts, Muslim merchants who see exactly what is coming, and a fleet that leaves without a treaty.

11. 11
    Angra do Heroismo

    The Azores, and Paulo da Gama dying of consumption ashore - his brother having left the fleet to sit with him, which is the one moment in the Roteiro that reads like a person rather than a log.

12. 12
    Lisbon

    September 1499, two ships of four and fifty-five men of a hundred and seventy - and a sea road to India that would make Portugal rich and rearrange the trade of the world within twenty years.