H - HONOURS AND REWARDS bestowed upon Vasco da Gama, 1499-1524

Summary

King Manuel has not infrequently been charged with a niggardly disposition, but whatever his conduct may have been in other instances there can be no doubt that he dealt most liberally with the navigator who was the first to sail a ship from a European port to India. This liberality had been called forth by the sensation produced by the discovery of an ocean highway to India, and the expectation that great wealth would pour into Portugal as a consequence; it was kept alive by the persistent importunities of the discoverer.

Vasco da Gama certainly did not undervalue the services he had rendered to the King. He considered himself entitled to a high reward, and in the end secured it. His ambition, from the very first, seems to have been to take his place among the territorial nobles of his native land. His father, Estevão da Gama, had at one time been Alcaide-mór of Sines, he himself had been born at that picturesque old fishing town, and his desire to be territorially connected with it was therefore only natural. The King was quite willing that this should be, but Sines belonged to the Order of S. Thiago, of which D. Jorge, Duke of Coimbra, a natural son of D. João II, was master; and although a papal dispensation had been received in 1501, which empowered the Order to exchange Sines for some other town, the Order refused to part with it (see Document 1).