UNKNOWN SEAS: How Vasco da Gama Opened the East
by Ronald J. Watkins

"Stirring stuff... A fine read." Naval Review
"A gripping adventure narrative..." The Scotsman, 4 stars
"Watkins's account of the volatile cultural melange of India in the 15th century is fascinating..." The Guardian

Published in the United Kingdom by John Murray Publisher in November, 2003. Now available in the United States.
Nominated for the 2004 Mountbatten Maritime Prize in the United Kingdom.
Named the 2005 Book of the Year by The Portuguese Tribune.

"Though unaware of the winter seas and prevailing winds confronting him, in January 1493, Admiral Christopher Columbus ordered his two surviving caravels, the Pinta and Niña, to set sail so that he might carry the news of his discoveries to Spain." So begins the riviting tale of the greatest century in world history.

From 1419 until 1499 when Vasco da Gama returned to Portugal having completed the first voyage to India from Europe, the little nation of Portugal led the world in exploration and discovery. Bordered by its historic enemy, Spain, Portugal faces the Atlantic where, off the beaten path, it has lain since its founding in the early 12th century in quiet, beautiful isolation. However, for a brief time in history it was the center of the greatest explorations the world has ever seen. From those discoveries came to the Portuguese unimaginable wealth and a world-wide empire.

It was the Portuguese who opened the way into the Atlantic. They were the first to sail south down the west coast of Africa, the first Europeans to pass the equator, to double the African continent, the first to reach India by sea from Europe. They were the first Europeans to reach Ceylon, Sumatra, Malacca, and Timor; the first to find the mythical Spice Islands, the Moluccas. They were the first Europeans to reach and trade with both China and Japan by sea, the first to view Australia. And in the Americas they "discovered" Brazil. There is credible evidence they were the first to land on North America in 1500. The methodical Portuguese expeditions were all a part of a decades long, systematic exploration and discovery of the unknown world.

In their quest to reach India by sea, the Portuguese invented, or adapted, the latest advances in navigation and modified their ships repeatedly to the needs of the explorations. The reputation of the Portuguese spread throughout Europe with each passing year and each fresh, amazing discovery. When the explorations began, sailors from the Mediterranean nations and northern Europe gazed at the Portuguese caravels [caravelas] in Lisbon harbor with the exotic lines of their hulls and triangular shaped lateen sails [from the word latin] and observed that only a Portuguese vessel was capable of rounding Africa. Fifty years, and many accomplishments later, they allowed with awe that only a Portuguese vessel and a Portuguese crew were capable of reaching the East.

The story of the Portuguese explorations is not one of quaint men in picturesque wooden ships. It is a tale of passion, of blood and treachery, of incomparable bravery, of majestic sweeps of vision, of nation and empire building. It is a drama played across a world stage, in a time that will never be repeated for it was the last era when the physical world and its peoples were largely unknown, when each ship returned with new knowledge, when myth was finally separated from reality. It is no wonder "The Discoveries," as the Portuguese came to call them, filled so many with such hunger and compelled so much sacrifice.

The cost was enormous and in many ways is immeasurable. "God gave the Portuguese a small country as cradle but all the world as their grave," observed the 17th century Portuguese Jesuit, António Vieira. Indeed, the oceans of the world can be described as one vast watery grave for Portuguese seamen. Portugal's greatest modern poet, Fernando Pessoa, centuries later wrote of the sacrifice in the Message [Mensagem]:

O sea. How much of your salt
consists of Portugal's tears.
How many mothers have wept,
How many children in vain have prayed,
How many brides remained single
For you to become ours, o sea.

The vast sweep of the Portuguese discoveries during the 15th century is generally unappreciated for its consequences on the world at large. It is not too much to say that because of the Portuguese, the world as we know it, for better and for worst, came into being. The pivotal act of the Portuguese accomplishment was Vasco da Gama's discovery of the all-sea passage to India. The story of his first epic voyage forms the single greatest part of this account. Because of his accomplishment, Gama became the greatest Portuguese of all time. No king, no general or admiral, no cardinal or bishop, no writer, poet or artist, even comes close.

Though it was Vasco da Gama who actually reached India by sea, it is Christopher Columbus who is best remembered beyond Portugal. Both men changed the course of the world, but it is arguable who changed it more. Adam Smith wrote that, "The discovery of America and that of the passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind."

Contemporaries had no doubt which of the two accomplishments was the greater. New lands were being discovered routinely at the time and their full potential took several centuries to grasp. The Portuguese, and Gama, had opened the way East, and all of Europe appreciated the immediate and lasting implications of this achievement.

The first passage to India by sea was the equivalent in its time, not of a moon shot but of a mission to Mars. Gama sailed with the best vessels available, utilizing the latest technology, manned almost entirely by volunteers, many of them veterans of the earlier Dias expedition which had discovered the tip of Africa and opened the way East. To complete this voyage Gama sailed further than the distance around the world following the equator, an estimated 23,000 nautical miles.

Almost from the first, Vasco and his men were cast as Homeric heros and their expedition was portrayed as a national epic of Divine Providence. To whatever degree his place in history was determined by his actual behavior, he was elevated to near deity as the central figure in Portugal's great national epic, The Lusiads by Luis Camoens, which to this day is studied by every Portuguese student. The masterpiece has nearly single handedly etched this first voyage to India from Europe in the Portuguese national character as a triumph of the Portuguese people, through the device of Vasco da Gama, at the direction of and fulfilling the promise of God. While not yet 30 years old, Gama was elevated to a position nearly that of a living God.

The expeditions and the subsequent discoveries by the Portuguese of the 15th century are likely the singular greatest achievements in European, if not world, history. The epic voyage of Vasco da Gama is arguably the most significant in human history as it brought about the first meeting of men from the West with those of the East since Alexander the Great, and from it came permanent contact and interaction. The tenacity of the small nation of Portugal, the courage of its people, the commitment of its rulers over decades is nothing less than astounding. Because of them Europeans were no longer bound by the confines of their nations, barred from distant lands by a watery barrier. The ocean had become a highway across which they could explore, settle and exploit. One need only compare a map of the known world as viewed by Henry the Navigator to one prepared shortly after 1500 to understand what the Portuguese accomplished in less than a century. The words of Luis Vaz de Camoens are perhaps the most fitting memorial to the accomplishment of this people.

... [I]f there had been more of the World
They would have reached it.

---

The author, Ronald J. Watkins, has lived in Portugal, traveled in Mexico, Central America, Brazil, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand and India in the course of his work. He makes his home in Phoenix.

His struggle to protect his sources as he wrote Birthright, the saga of the Shoen family which founded and owned U-Haul International and of the then unsolved murder of Eva Shoen, received national media attention including an editorial in the Los Angeles Times, an appearance on NBC's PrimeTime! and was the subject of an episode of Under Scrutiny with Jane Wallace. Radio, television and newspapers across the country depicted and praised his steadfast refusal to name names.

In addition to his own works, the author has served as ghost writer, collaborator or editor for more than a dozen other books. He is founder and principal writer for Watkins & Associates.