THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT ALSO TO LOOK AT KIP FENN, A MAJOR NOVEL ABOUT THE 21st CENTURY
- freely available on this site
Da Gama, Vasco ___ 1469c-1524 ___ Portuguese
___ sailor
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Da Gama was born in Sines, Portugal.
His father was Estêvão da Gama, commander of the local fort.
In 1492, Vasco da Gama was sent by King John to the south of the country
to take revenge against the French, who had been seizing Portuguese ships.
Estêvão da Gama was chosen by King John to lead a Portuguese
fleet to India, but then both men died, and Vasco de Gama was appointed
for the mission by King Manuel. In 1497, da Gama sailed from Lisbon with
four ships; he rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and, with the aid of a pilot
found on the east coast of Africa, reached Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the
Malabar coast of India. Unable to establish a colony because of opposition
from the local Muslims, da Gama returned to Portugal, where his voyage was
celebrated as a great success. Around 1500, da Gama married Catarina de
Ataíde who bore him six sons. In 1502, he undertook a second journey
to try and secure the trading colony which had been established in the interim
by Pedro Carbal, but which had been wiped out in a massacre. Da Gama successfully
laid siege to Calicut and concluded favourable peace treaties with the native
rulers. Again, he returned in triumph, but then fell into a dispute over
his rewards. In 1519, he was appointed Count of Vidigueira; and, in 1524,
after Manuel's death, King John III appointed him as Portuguese Viceroy
in India. He set sailed for a third time, to try and restore administrative
order to the Portuguese holdings. However, he fell ill at Cochin and died
in December that year.
One
biography link
DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1497-1499 ___ maritime military
exploration India
WEB TEXT LINKS
etext
ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
Journal of the First Voyage of
Vasco da Gama 1497-1499
May 2005
THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
Please
email if you have any corrections, additions or comments. |
IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS:
1) The first line of basic information
may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different
names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or
uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown,
or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British'
a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was
compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts
were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if
they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates
and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with
caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are
only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies.
4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges,
and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising.
I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some
variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited
myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their
original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the
titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries. |