Cannanore Kerala India

Cabral, while in Cochin, receives missives from the rulers of Cannanore further north, another of Calicut's reluctant rivals, and …

Cabral's fleet, heading north, takes a wide sweep to avoid Calicut, and pays a quick visit to Cannanore.

Cabral is warmly received by the Kolathiri Raja of Cannanore who, eager for a Portuguese alliance, offers to sell the Portuguese spices on credit.

Cabral accepts the cargo but pays him nonetheless (not a splendid cargo—only low-quality ginger, as it turns out, but Cabral is appreciative of the gesture.)

His ships now filled with spices, Cabral decides not to visit Quilon, as he had earlier promised, but to make way back home to Portugal.

In late January, Cabral takes aboard an ambassador from Cannanore, and starts his ocean crossing back to East Africa.

On the way, the Portuguese capture a Gujarati ship, replete with a magnificent cargo.

They steal the cargo, but spare the crew, once they realize they are not Arabs.

The two-month delay between the Third Armada's reputed arrival in India (August) and their first recorded activities in India (November) is unusual and been subject to some speculation.

As suggested by Correia, the Third Armada seems to have simply lingered in the area between Batecala and Mount d'Eli,to do some trading and maybe some piracy too, before heading south to Cannanore.

On the other hand, it has been hypothesized that during this interlude, Nova might have launched some exploratory ventures in the area during, in particular taken a wide swing far south, below Cape Comorin, to see if he could locate the fabled island of 'Taprobana' (Ceylon), the world's main source of cinnamon.

Arriving in Cannanore in November, the Third Armada is well received by the Kolathiri Raja of Cannanore, who immediately urges João da Nova to load up his ships with spices from the city's markets.

Nova sidesteps the offer courteously, noting that he must first collect the supplies already acquired by the Portuguese factory in Cochin.

Nonetheless, before setting off, Nova drops off a few agents, with instructions to initiate arrangements to purchase spices (principally ginger and cinnamon) in the Cannanore markets, to be picked up later.

It is sometimes said that Nova established the Portuguese factory in Cannanore at this point.

However, the factor he leaves behind is Paio Rodrigues, is a private agent of D. Álvaro of Braganza and the Marchionni consortium, not an employee of the Casa da India (the crown trading house).

The Casa (and thus the Portuguese Crown) will only install a factor in Cannanore during the following expedition.

While in Cannanore, João da Nova receives an embassy from the Zamorin of Calicut.

Accompanying them is Gonçalo Peixoto, a Portuguese survivor of the previous year's massacre, who had remained stuck in Calicut for the past year.

In his letter, the Zamorin expresses his sadness at the Calicut Massacre of December 1500, blaming it on old hatreds between Muslims and Christians that he never understood, and that he, a Hindu prince, has only a desire for friendship and peace with Portugal.

He reports that the ringleaders of the riot have already been rounded up and punished, and invites Nova to Calicut to collect the wares left behind in the Portuguese factory and receive compensation.

He also proposes to dispatch a pair of his own ambassadors with Nova's fleet back to Lisbon, to make a final treaty with King Manuel I of Portugal.

The Kolathiri Raja of Cannanore is impressed, and recommends that Nova take up the offer.

However, Gonçalo Peixoto warns Nova not to believe a word of it, that the Zamorin is luring him into a trap, and is currently preparing a war fleet in Calicut.

Nova decides not to reply to the Zamorin's entreaty.

Peixoto, seeing no reason to return to Calicut, joins Nova's fleet.

Correia reports this event differently.

He asserts that Peixoto had not come and that Nova had taken up the offer from the Zamorin's emissary to Cannanore and sailed to ...

Nova immediately sets sail back to Cannanore to see if the agents he left there have had any more success, but they are facing much the same problem: Portuguese merchandise is going unsold, and the spice merchants are demanding payment in silver.

The Third Armada's mission is on the verge of failure, when the Kolathiri Raja of Cannanore intervenes, and places himself as security for the sale of spices to the Portuguese on credit.

This breaks the deadlock and allows the Portuguese to finally load up at the spice markets.

Having loaded up with the all spices they can obtain on credit in Cannanore (plus whatever cargoes they have managed to steal by piratical attacks on Malabari ships), Nova prepares the Third Armada to leave India.

However, as he is about to set out of Cannanore, João da Nova's Third Armada is cornered in the bay by a fleet dispatched by the Zamorin of Calicut, composed of nearly forty large ships, plus some one hundred and eighty small paraus and zambuks, carrying an estimated Malabari force of seven thousand armed men.

The Raja of Cannanore urges João da Nova to stay under his protection and avoid a fight, but Nova, noticing the landside breeze in his favor, decides to attempt a breakout.

After a few rounds of cannon open a little hole in the Calicut line, Nova orders his four ships into a column formation and charges through it, cannon blasting on either side.

The powerful Portuguese cannonades and carracks' height foil Malibari attempts to throw grappling hooks and board the Portuguese quartet.

As the Portuguese column continues out to sea, Nova continues firing his cannon relentlessly at his pursuers.

The Calicut fleet, less seaworthy, begins to splinter and lag behind.

As the Third Armada pulls away, the prospect of a grapple dims, and the battle is limited to a ranged artillery duel.

The Malabari ships quickly realize their Indian cannon cannot match the range and speed of reloading of the Portuguese cannon, and begin to turn away.

At this point, Nova gives a brief chase, before finally breaking up the engagement on January 2, 1502.

After two days of fighting, the Third Armada has sunk five large ships and about a dozen oar-driven boats, inflicting a great deal of damage on the remaining Malabari vessels while sustaining very little damage themselves.

Although João da Nova had not come prepared for a fight, the two-day naval battle off Cannanore is perhaps the first significant Portuguese naval engagement in the Indian Ocean.

It is not the first clash between Portuguese and Indian ships—Vasco da Gama's First Armada and Cabral's Second Armada had their share—but these earlier encounters had been largely with poorly armed merchant ships, scrawny pirates and isolated squads, targets that a single, well-armed fighting caravel can see off without much difficulty.

This time, the Zamorin of Calicut had attacked directly, deploying the best his navy could offer against a small group of relatively lightly armed Portuguese merchant carracks.

The results are disheartening to the Malabari ruler.

The battle has made it abundantly clear the great disparity between European and Indian technology in ship design and artillery—a gap that, in subsequent years, the Portuguese will repeatedly exploit and the Zamorin of Calicut is desperate to close.

To nullify the Portuguese naval superiority, the Zamorin will have to stick to land or look abroad to the Arabs, the Turks and the Venetians.

The battle is also historically notable for being one of the earliest recorded deliberate uses of a naval column, later called line of battle, and for resolving the battle by cannon alone.

These tactics will become increasingly prevalent as navies evolve and begin to see ships less as carriers of armed men, and more as floating artillery.

In this respect, this encounter has been called the first 'modern' naval battle.

The Fourth Armada finally reaches Cannanore and delivers the Cannanore ambassador that had gone to Lisbon with Cabral's Second Armada.

The Kolathiri Raja of Cannanore invites Gama to come ashore for an elaborate reception, but Gama replies that he had sworn a personal oath not to set his foot on Indian soil again until his vengeance on Calicut was sated.

As a result, the rajah orders a wooden scaffold to be built over the seashore, where they can meet in person without violating the vow.

Gama presents the raja with royal letters and munificent gifts (a jeweled sword, a brocaded armchair) and discussions immediately begin.

A commercial treaty is negotiated, establishing a Portuguese crown factory in Cannanore, and arranging a fixed-price schedule, which the Raja personally guarantees, for the sale of spices to the Portuguese.

The negotiation for the commercial treaty does not go smoothly, particularly the fixed price clause.

The Kolathiri Raja protests that he has no power over market prices nor the right to dictate how private merchants dispose of their property.

Gama has to resort to feints and threats, then sails out of Cannanore in anger.

Barros credits the role of Paio Rodrigues, the Portuguese factor (private, not crown, an employee of the private employee of Don Álvaro of Braganza and the Marchionni consortium), that had been left behind in Cannanore by João da Nova's Third Armada at the beginning of the year.

After Gama storms off and orders sail out of the city, Paio Rodrigues mediates between the Kolathiri Raja and the Captain-Major and finalizes the treaty.

Correia points out this is the treaty where the Portuguese cartaz system is first introduced.

Henceforth, every merchant ship along the Malabar coast will have to present a certificate signed by a Portuguese factor (in Cannanore, Cochin, etc.), or else be subject to attack and seizure by a Portuguese patrol.

This licensing system will be subsequently adopted later on other Portuguese-controlled coasts (e.g., East Africa, Malacca, Brazil), with differing degrees of success, and will be largely maintained until the eighteenth century.

Gama’s fleet departs Cannanore on October.

Chroniclers differ a little on the subsequent sequence of events.

On arrival in Cannanore, Gama leaves Cabral's old factor Gonçalo Gil Barbosa, and two assistants, Bastião Álvares and Diogo Nunes.

With the permission of the Kolithiri Raja of Cannanore, Gama erects a small palisade around the factory.

Some two hundred armed men (others report merely twenty) are to remain with the factory.

Back in Lisbon, Vicente Sodré had been given a commission by King Manuel I of Portugal instructing him to lead a patrol of five or six caravels in the Gulf of Aden, and prey on the rich Arab prizes going in and out of the Red Sea.

Now, Vasco da Gama, realizing the vulnerability of Cochin and Cannanore, invokes rank as captain-major of the armada and orders Sodré to set that mission aside, and maintain his patrol on the Malabar coast, to defend the Portuguese factories and their Indian allies against any reaction by the Zamorin.

However, as soon as Gama leaves, Vicente Sodré invokes his regimento and orderes the patrol to leave India and follow him to the Red Sea.

The Portuguese factors in Cochin and Cannanore protest, citing evidence of imminent preparations for an attack by the Zamorin.

It said that two of the patrol captains refused to go along, and resigned the commands of their ships.

Vicente Sodré dismisses the rumors and takes the patrol with him.

The Zamorin, as promised, had reassembled his army by August and has resumed the siege of Cochin (or rather Vypin island, Cochin itself being a smoldering ruins).

Francisco de Albuquerque, receiving the alarming news at Cannanore, immediately rushes his fleet of eight ships—the three of the Fifth Armada, the four caravels of the old coastal patrol plus Campo—down to relieve Cochin.

Saldanha and Lourenço accompany Lopo Soares' armada down the coast to Cannanore, where Albergaria finally hears more detailed reports from the Cannanore factor Gonçalo Gil Barbosa about the battle of Cochin.

Lopo Soares sets sail towards it at once.

Lopo Soares and the sixth armada, after a brief stop in Cannanore, set sail back across the Indian Ocean in early January, 1505.