In the spring of 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral embarked on a momentous voyage, setting sail from Cape Verde with a fleet comprising thirteen ships and crews.

Accompanying him were a cadre of nobles, including Nicolau Coelho, Bartolomeu Dias, his brother Diogo, and Duarte Pacheco Pereira, renowned author of the Esmeraldo.

The expedition boasted nine chaplains and a staggering twelve hundred men.

Steering southwest across the vast Atlantic, the intrepid explorers caught a glimpse of land on April 22, 1500.

They disembarked, laying claim to this newfound territory on behalf of Portugal.

Little did they know that this coastal expanse would later burgeon into the Portuguese colony of Brazil.

Yet, the expedition harbored ambitions that reached far beyond the Brazilian coast.

Their true objective was to unlock the coveted sea trade routes to the resplendent empires of the East.

Since the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Europe's access to these distant lands had been severed.

Cabral, recognizing the urgency of bridging this divide, veered away from Brazil's coastline and charted a course southeast, retracing the Atlantic's embrace and circumnavigating the Cape of Good Hope.

In July 1500, Cabral's fleet reached the enchanting shores of Sofala on the East African coast. Undeterred, their journey continued eastward, culminating in a momentous landing in Calicut, India, in September 1500.

Here, the intrepid Portuguese traders engaged in fruitful exchanges, acquiring the coveted spice of pepper and establishing a historic milestone—the initiation of European sea trade with the majestic empires of the East.

The Ottoman occupation of Constantinople, once a formidable barrier, now yielded to the unfettered flow of European commerce, forever reshaping the world's interconnectedness.

The Preparation of the Second India Armada (1500)

Following Vasco da Gama’s successful but fraught voyage to India (1497–1499), King Manuel I of Portugal immediately ordered the assembly of a larger, better-armed fleet to consolidate Portugal’s presence in the Indian Ocean trade and improve diplomatic relations with the rulers of the East.

This new fleet, the Second India Armada (1500), was designed to correct the mistakes of Gama’s expedition and to secure Portuguese dominance in the spice trade.

Fleet Composition and Leadership

• The Second Armada consisted of 13 ships and 1,500 men, making it significantly larger than Gama’s fleet.
• Unlike Vasco da Gama, who was from the Order of Santiago, this expedition was led by Pedro Álvares Cabral, a nobleman and master of the Order of Christ.
  • Cabral had no prior naval or military experience, and his appointment was primarily political.

Key Figures on the Expedition

• Sancho de Tovar – Exiled Castilian nobleman, designated vice-admiral and successor if something happened to Cabral.
• Pedro Escobar – Experienced navigator placed in technical command of the fleet.
• Nicolau Coelho – Veteran of Gama’s 1497 expedition, leading a ship again.
• Pêro de Alenquer – Veteran pilot from Gama’s first voyage.
• Bartolomeu Dias and his brother Diogo Dias –
  • Bartolomeu was the first to round the Cape of Good Hope in 1488.
  • Diogo had served as a clerk on Gama’s voyage.
  • They were assigned a special mission to Sofala in East Africa, while the rest of the fleet sailed for Calicut.

Ship Ownership and Financial Backing

• Most ships were crown-owned, but some were privately financed:
  • Luís Pires’s ship was outfitted by Diogo da Silva e Meneses, Count of Portalegre.
  • The Anunciada, captained by Nuno Leitão da Cunha, was owned by D. Álvaro of Braganza, cousin of the king, and financed by Italian merchants:
    • Florentine bankers Bartolomeo Marchionni and Girolamo Sernigi.
    • Genoese financier Antonio Salvago.

Mission and Special Passengers

• Ten ships were destined for Calicut (Malabar, India).
• Two ships (commanded by the Dias brothers) were sent to Sofala in East Africa.
• One ship was designated to be burned and scuttled along the way (a common practice to leave a vessel for emergency repairs or reinforcements).

Notable Individuals on Board

• Gaspar da Gama – A Goese Jew captured by Vasco da Gama in 1498, now serving as translator and intermediary.
• Four Hindu hostages – Taken by Vasco da Gama in 1498 during negotiations in Calicut.
• The Sultan of Malindi’s ambassador – Returning home after having traveled to Lisbon with Gama.
• Twenty Portuguese degredados (convicts) – Deployed as forced explorers.
  • Their sentences could be reduced by being abandoned on foreign shores to explore inland on the Crown’s behalf.
  • Known names: Afonso Ribeiro, João Machado, Luiz de Moura, António Fernandes (also a ship carpenter).
• The First Portuguese Christian Missionaries to India
  • Eight Franciscan friars and eight chaplains, led by Fr. Henrique Soares of Coimbra.

Strategic Goals of the Second Armada

1. Establish Permanent Trade Relations in India

   • Cabral was instructed to secure better commercial terms with Calicut, avoiding the diplomatic failures of Gama’s first mission.
   • The fleet carried lavish gifts and letters for the Zamorin of Calicut and other eastern rulers.

2. Expand Portuguese Influence Along the African Coast

   • The Dias brothers’ mission to Sofala aimed to establish Portuguese control over East African trade routes.

3. Strengthen Portuguese Naval Presence in the Indian Ocean

   • The fleet was well-armed, prepared to defend Portuguese interests against Arab and Indian resistance.

The Significance of Cabral’s Mission

• This expedition ultimately led to the accidental discovery of Brazil, when Cabral deviated westward in the Atlantic and sighted land in April 1500.
• It also paved the way for future Portuguese dominance in the Indian Ocean, ensuring that Portugal would control the lucrative spice trade for the next century.

The Second India Armada, much larger and better prepared than Gama’s fleet, marked the next phase of Portugal’s maritime empire, reinforcing its global ambitions and commercial power.

Cabral's instructions are several-fold.

The priority is to secure a treaty with Zamorin's Calicut, the principal commercial entrepôt of the Kerala spice trade and dominant feudal city-state on the Malabar coast of India.

Calicut had been visited by Vasco da Gama's first armada in 1498, but failed to impress the elderly ruling Manivikraman Raja Zamorin ('Samoothiri Raja') of Calicut, and no agreements had been signed.

Cabral's instructions are precisely to succeed where Gama had failed, and to this end is entrusted with magnificent gifts to present to the Zamorin.

Cabral is under orders to establish a factory in Calicut, to be placed under Aires Correia, the designated factor for Calicut.

The second priority, assigned to the brothers Bartolomeu Dias and Diogo Dias, is to search out the East African port of Sofala, near the mouth of the Zambezi river.

Sofala had been secretly visited and described by the explorer Pêro da Covilhã during his overland expedition a little over a decade earlier, and he had identified it as the end-point of the Monomatapa gold trade.

The Portuguese crown is eager to tap into this gold source, but Gama's armada had failed to find it.

The Dias brothers are instructed to find and establish a factory at Sofala under designated factor Afonso Furtado.

To this end, instructions are probably also given to secure the consent of Kilwa (Quíloa), the dominant city-state of the East African coast and putative overlord of Sofala.

Like Sofala, Kilwa had been visited by Covilhã, but overlooked by Gama.

A minor objective includes the delivery of a group of Franciscan missionaries to India.

It is said that Vasco da Gama had misinterpreted the Hinduism he saw practiced in India as a form of 'primitive' Christianity.

He believed its peculiar characteristics were a result of centuries of separation from the mainstream church in Europe.

Gama recommended that missionaries be sent to India to help bring the practices of the 'Hindu church' up to date with Roman Catholic orthodoxy.

To this end, a group of Franciscan friars, led by Fr. Henrique Soares of Coimbra, has joined the expedition.

Finally, the Second Armada is also a commercial spice run.

The crown and private merchants who have outfitted the ships expect full cargoes of spices to return to Lisbon.

Cabral's fleet of thirteen ships had set out from the Tagus on March 9, 1500, reaching the Cape Verde island of São Nicolau on the 22nd in the middle of a storm. (One of the ships, either the privately outfitted ship of Luís Pires or the crown ship of Vasco de Ataide was either too damaged by the tempest to continue, and returned to Lisbon, or was lost around Cape Verde, respectively.)

From Cape Verde, Cabral strikes southwest.

The reasons for this unusual direction have been speculated upon endlessly.

The most probable hypothesis is that Cabral was simply following the wide arc in the South Atlantic to catch a favorable wind to carry them to the Cape of Good Hope.

Pedro Cabral's fleet, after nearly thirty days of sailing (forty-four since departure), finds the first indications of nearby land on April 21 and sights the Brazilian coast the following day, seeing the outlines of a hill they name Monte Pascoal, some sixty kilometers south of modern Porto Seguro, Bahia.

The following morning, the armada anchors at the mouth of the Frade river and a group of local Tupiniquim Indians assembles on the beach.

Cabral dispatches a small party, headed by Nicolau Coelho, in a longboat ashore to make first contact.

Coelho tosses his hat in exchange for a feathered headdress, but the surf is too strong for a proper landing and opening of communication, so they return to the ships.

Strong overnight winds on prompt the armada to lift anchor and sail some ten leagues (forty-five kilometers) north, finding harbor behind the reef at Cabrália Bay, just north of Porto Seguro.

The pilot Afonso Lopes goes sounding in a rowboat.

He spies a native canoe, captures the two Indians on board, and brings them back to ship.

The language barrier prevents questioning, but they are fed and given cloth and beads.

The cultural differences are staggering, fed with honey and cake, they spit them out and are deeply surprised with the sight of a chicken.

The next day a party led by Nicolau Coelho and Bartolomeu Dias goes ashore, accompanied by the two natives.

Armed Tupiniquim warily approach the beach, but on a signal from the two natives, lay down their bows, and allow the Portuguese to land and collect water.

A Franciscan friar goes ashore to celebrate the first known Christian mass on the American mainland, curiously watched by some two hundred Tupiniquim Indians.

For much of the week, interaction between the Portuguese and the Tupiniquim gradually increases.

There is a brisk trade in European iron nails, cloth, beads and crucifixes in return for American amulets, spears, parrots and monkeys.

There is only the slightest hint that precious metals might be found in the hinterlands.

Portuguese degredados are assigned to spend the night in Tupiniquim villages, while the remainder of the crews sleep aboard ships.

Cabral makes preparations to resume the journey to India.

The Portuguese pilots, assisted by the physician-astronomer Master João Faras and his astronomical instruments, determine that the land lies east of the Tordesillas line, prompting Cabral to formally claim Brazil for the Portuguese crown, bestowing upon it the name of Ilha de Vera Cruz ("Island of the True Cross"—later renamed Terra de Santa Cruz, "Land of the Holy Cross", upon the realization that it is not an island).

Cabral dispatches the supply ship back to Lisbon on May 2, with the Brazilian items and a letter to King Manuel I of Portugal composed by the factor’s secretary Pêro Vaz de Caminha to announce the discovery.

It also carries a separate private letter to the king from Master João Faras, in which he identifies the main guiding constellation in the southern hemisphere, the Southern Cross (Cruzeiro).

The supply ship will arrive in Lisbon in June.

Leaving behind a couple of Portuguese degredados with the Tupiniquim of Porto Seguro, Cabral orders the eleven remaining ships to set sail the next day and continue on their route to India via the Cape of Good Hope.

Cabral's armada, after crossing the Atlantic ocean from Brazil, reaches the Cape of Good Hope in late May.

The fleet faces headlong winds for six straight days.

Four ships are lost at sea in the process—including the Sofala-destined ship of Bartolomeu Dias.

The three others are the crown-owned ships of Aires Gomes da Silva, Simão de Pina and Vasco de Ataíde (if Ataíde had not been lost earlier at Cape Verde, he is certainly lost by this time; some scholars contend Pires was lost now, and Ataíde was lost earlier).

In any case, the fleet is reduced to seven ships.

Facing strong winds, the seven split into smaller groups, to meet again on the other side.

Cabral holds two ships together with his own.

Pedro Cabral's battered three-ship squadron reaches the Primeiras Islands, several leagues north of Sofala, on June 16, 1500.

Two local merchant ships, catching sight of Cabral, take flight.

Cabral gives pursuit—one of them runs aground and the other is captured.

Questioning quickly determines that these ships are owned by a cousin of the sultan Fateima of Malindi (who had received Vasco da Gama so graciously back in 1498), so they are released without harm.

Cabral's three-ship squadron hobbles on to Mozambique Island on June 22.

Despite the earlier quarrel with Gama, he is given an unexpectedly warm reception by the Sultan of Mozambique, and allowed to collect water and supplies.

Shortly after, three more ships of the Cabral’s fleet sail into Mozambique island and rejoin the expedition.

Only the ship of Diogo Dias, Bartolomeu's brother, remains missing.

As Dias's mission is for Sofala anyway, Cabral decides not to wait for it but rather to press on with his current fleet of six ships.

Cabral's fleet reaches the city-state of Kilwa, the dominant city of the East African coast, which Gama had never visited.

Afonso Furtado, who had been appointed factor for Sofala back in Lisbon and and mercifully escaped death (Furtado had been aboard Bartolomeu Dias's ship, but moved to the flagship just before the Cape crossing), goes ashore on July 26 to open negotiations with the strongman ruler, Emir Ibrahim.

There is no current ruling Sultan of Kilwa, the last one, al-Fudail, having been deposed around 1495 in a coup by his minister, Emir Ibrahim, who has since ruled Kilwa with a vacant throne.

A meeting is arranged between Cabral and Emir Ibrahim, conducted on a couple of rowboats in Kilwa harbor.

Cabral presents a letter from King Manuel I proposing a treaty, but Emir Ibrahim is suspicious and, for all the formal pleasantries, resistant to the overtures.

Cabral, feeling there is nothing to be achieved here and worried about missing the monsoon winds to India, decides to break off the negotiations and sail on.

The Cabral expedition, pressing north on August 2, avoids hostile Mombasa and finally reaches …