Portuguese navigator whose voyages to India (1497-99, 1502-03, 1524) opened up the sea route from western Europe to the East by way of the Cape of Good Hope and thus ushered in a new era in world history. He also helped make Portugal a world power. Life.
The third son of Estêvão da Gama, a nobleman who was commander of the fortress of Sines on the coast of Alentejo province in southwestern Portugal, Vasco was born in about 1460. Little is known of his early life; he may have studied at the inland town of Évora—somewhere he learned mathematics and navigation. In 1492 King John II of Portugal sent him to the port of Setúbal, south of Lisbon, and to the Algarve, Portugal's southernmost province, to seize French ships in retaliation for French peacetime depredations against Portuguese shipping—a task that Vasco rapidly and effectively performed.
