Saturday, July 8, 1497. Lisbon.

Four ships set sail toward the unknown. On board: 170 men, three years' worth of provisions, cannons, and astronomical instruments. The goal: to reach India by sea, rounding the southern tip of Africa. It is a route that has never been sailed before.

Soldier Álvaro Velho records everything.

A diary of Vasco da Gama's first voyage is the eyewitness account of one of the most determined expeditions in history. No mythologizing in hindsight, but direct reporting: the day the drinking water ran out, the battles along the Mozambican coast, the negotiations in Calicut that repeatedly came to nothing?and yet the passage that changed the world of trade forever.

Velho writes without embellishment. His diary shows what navigation was like when maps were unreliable and the currents stronger than the ship. How encounters with foreign peoples shifted from cautious barter to armed conflict, sometimes within a single day. And how a fleet that grew ever smaller?due to disease, storms, and the burning of the supply ship?still accomplished what it had to.

This is the Historica edition: the complete diary in modern English, supplemented with historical appendices on the ships, the crew, and the routes Vasco da Gama sailed. Accessible to everyone, indispensable for anyone who wants to understand how the modern world took shape.

HISTORICA

Great stories, rediscovered.