GAMA, VASCO DA, 1ER CONDE DA VIDIGUEIRA

Additional reading There is no autobiography of Vasco da Gama. Portuguese chroniclers wrote at length about his voyage of 149799, and some of them must have had access to secret documents since destroyed. The only one translated into English is that of Gaspear Correa (c. 14901565) from his Lendas da India; see The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama, and His Viceroyalty, ed. by Lord Stanley of Alderley (1869, reprinted 1963). The only firsthand account of the first voyage has also been printed in English in E.G. Ravenstein (ed.), A Journal [by an Unknown Writer] of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama, 14971499 (1898, reprinted 1963). A later and more definitive edition has been printed in Portuguese in Abel Fontoura da Costa (ed.), Roteiro da Primeira Viagem de Vasco da Gama, 14971499 por Alvaro Velho, 3rd ed. (1969). An outstanding synthesis of the background of Vasco da Gama's achievements is found in John H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration and Settlement, 14501650, 2nd ed. (1966). For brief accounts together with English translations of extracts from early documents, see John H. Parry (ed.), The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents (1968). The unique manuscript copy of the three Roteiros (sailing directions) of Vasco da Gama's Arab pilot, Ahmad ibn Madjid, has not been fully translated and printed in English, but see A.G.R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean Before the Coming of the Portuguese (1971). For the definitive Portuguese translation of the Arab text, see T.A. Chumovsky (ed.), Trs Roteiros desconhecidos de Ahmad ibn Madjid (1960).