Vasco da Gama, spurred by the discoveries…
December 1497 CE
Vasco da Gama, spurred by the discoveries of Christopher Columbus, and accompanied by Portuguese navigators, traders, soldiers, and missionaries, had set sail from Lisbon on July 8, 1497, and has followed the route pioneered by earlier explorers along the coast of Africa via Tenerife and the Cape Verde Islands.
After reaching the coast of present-day Sierra Leone, da Gama had taken a course south into the open ocean, crossing the Equator and seeking the South Atlantic westerlies that Bartolomeu Dias had discovered in 1487.
This course proves successful and on November 4, 1497, the expedition had made landfall on the African coast.
For over three months the ships had sailed more than ten thousand kilometers (six thousand miles) of open ocean, by far the longest journey out of sight of land made by this time.
By December 16, the fleet had passed the Great Fish River (Eastern Cape, South Africa)—where Dias had turned back—and sailed into waters previously unknown to Europeans.
With Christmas pending, da Gama and his crew give the coast they are passing the name Natal, which carries the connotation of "birth of Christ" in Portuguese.
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