Vasco da Gama Trivia
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50 free Vasco Da Gama trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Vasco da Gama left Lisbon in July 1497 with four ships and 170 men and came home two years later with two ships, about 55 men and the first sea route from Europe to India. This quiz covers that voyage in detail: the record run without landfall, the coast he named Natal, the Muslim disguise in Mozambique, the pilot hired in Malindi, the arrival at Calicut, the words 'Christians and spices', the Hindu statue mistaken for the Virgin Mary and the deadly return against the monsoon. It also covers what came after: the titles and the pension, the Fourth Armada and the burning of the pilgrim ship Mirim, the mutilated priest, the years in the political wilderness, the Magellan threat that won him a county, the viceroyalty and death in Cochin in 1524, the muddle over his bones, his sons in Malacca and Ethiopia, Camões's epic, Meyerbeer's opera and a wreck found off Oman. It suits history students, Age of Discovery buffs and quiz-night regulars. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Vasco da Gama, Os Lusíadas and the Cape Route, and each question shows its supporting sentence after you answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is Vasco da Gama most famous for?
The first sea route from Europe to India
The first sea route from Europe to India took da Gama round Africa in 1497-99 and let Portugal buy spices in Asia itself, cutting out the middlemen of the overland trade.
Q 02In which small port town in southwest Portugal was Vasco da Gama born?
Sines
Sines was governed by his father. The king later granted da Gama the town, but the knightly order that owned it refused to give it up, and he never became its lord.
Q 03Which Portuguese captain rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, a decade before da Gama sailed on to India?
Bartolomeu Dias
Bartolomeu Dias never saw India himself: in 1500 he sailed with the follow-up fleet and was lost in a storm off the very cape he had been first to round.
Q 04Which king dispatched two spies overland via Egypt in 1487 to scout India's spice markets ahead of a sea voyage?
John II of Portugal
John II of Portugal sent Pero da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva out posing as merchants; Covilhã reached India's spice ports years before any Portuguese ship, but was never allowed home himself.
Q 05Da Gama's 1497 fleet had two new carracks, a storeship and which kind of small, fast ship?
A caravel
A caravel, the Berrio, sailed with the two carracks and the storeship. It was the first ship home in July 1499, bringing the king the news that India had been reached by sea.
Q 06What was the name of da Gama's flagship on the first voyage?
São Gabriel
São Gabriel carried da Gama to India, but he did not sail it home: on the last leg he handed it to his clerk and took passage on another ship with his dying brother.
Q 07Which disease struck da Gama's crew on the return crossing of the Indian Ocean in 1498-99?
Scurvy
Scurvy had eased on the way out once the crew got oranges at Mombasa, so on reaching East Africa again da Gama sent straight ashore for more, though for many of the sick it came too late.
Q 08On the outward voyage in 1497, da Gama's fleet spent a record 13 weeks out of sight of land on which ocean?
The Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean: from Cape Verde da Gama swung far out to sea to pick up the winds that blow towards the Cape, rather than fight the currents along the African coast as earlier captains had.
Q 09Which stretch of African coast did da Gama name because he passed it at Christmas 1497?
Natal
Natal means Christmas in Portuguese. The name stuck for five centuries and survives in KwaZulu-Natal, the South African province that includes Durban.
Q 10When the Sultan of Mozambique first welcomed da Gama's crew in 1498, who did he take them for?
Fellow Muslims
Fellow Muslims is what the sultan took the strangers for. When the town learned they were Christians the welcome turned into a plot against them, and da Gama sailed off firing his cannon at the shore.
Q 11In which friendly East African port did da Gama hire the pilot who guided him across the Indian Ocean?
Malindi
Malindi's ruler, a rival of nearby Mombasa, saw the newcomers as useful allies: he supplied the pilot and sent an ambassador back to Portugal with the fleet.
Q 12Which famous Arab navigator is often, but wrongly, said to have piloted da Gama to India?
Ibn Majid
Ibn Majid was the most celebrated Arab navigator of the age and wrote a shelf of sailing guides, but researchers now doubt he ever met da Gama, let alone showed him the way.
Q 13Near which Indian port city, the Malabar Coast's great spice market, did da Gama's fleet anchor in May 1498?
Calicut
Calicut, today's Kozhikode, was the prize, yet after a whole summer of talks da Gama sailed home without the trade treaty he had been sent to win.
Q 21Which king rewarded da Gama with a pension and the title Dom on his return in 1499?
Manuel I
Manuel I lost no time in spreading the news: the same month the first ship came home, he wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Columbus's patrons, to say his captains had reached India.
Q 22Which grandiose title did Portugal's king give da Gama?
Admiral of the Seas of Arabia, Persia and India
Admiral of the Seas of Arabia, Persia and India was modelled on 'Admiral of the Ocean Sea', the title Castile had given Columbus a few years earlier for his own voyage west.
Q 23Which captain led the follow-up fleet to India in 1500, sighting Brazil on the way out?
Q 14Asked what had brought them to India, da Gama's men gave what famous answer?
'Christians and spices'
'Christians and spices' was the reply. The men expected to find Eastern Christians, and at first took a Hindu temple for a church, praying before an image they believed was the Virgin Mary.
Q 15What title did the Hindu ruler da Gama met in India in 1498 hold?
The Zamorin
The Zamorin received da Gama with a grand procession, then insisted the Portuguese pay customs duty like any other traders, and the talks ended without a treaty.
Q 16Why did da Gama's gifts fail at the Indian court?
They were trivial: cloth, hats, sugar and honey
They were trivial: cloth, hats, sugar and honey. Court officials laughed at the present, saying the poorest merchant from Mecca gave more and that a king's gift should be gold.
Q 17Da Gama crossed the Indian Ocean to India in 23 days; about how long did the return crossing take?
3 months
3 months, against 23 days going out. Da Gama ignored local advice and sailed before the monsoon winds had turned, so the fleet spent weeks becalmed or beating into headwinds.
Q 18Why did da Gama burn the São Rafael in January 1499?
Too few men left to sail three ships
Too few men left to sail three ships: the crossing from India had killed so many of the crew that da Gama burned one vessel and shared its survivors out between the other two.
Q 19What did the sultan of a friendly Kenyan port allow da Gama to erect there?
A padrão, or stone marker
A padrão, or stone marker: a limestone cross bearing Portugal's arms. Neighbours objected and the sultan took it down, but it was later set up again on a headland, where it still stands.
Q 20Where did da Gama bury his brother Paulo, who died on the voyage home?
In the Azores
In the Azores, at Angra on the island of Terceira. Da Gama had sent his flagship on without him so he could stay with his dying brother, and reached Lisbon weeks after the news of his own success.
Pedro Álvares Cabral
Pedro Álvares Cabral swung so far west on the way out that he struck Brazil. In India his trading post was stormed and its men killed, which set up da Gama's second voyage as one of revenge.
Q 24What did da Gama demand of an Indian ruler in 1502 before any peace talks?
Expel the city's Muslim merchants
Expel the city's Muslim merchants, he demanded, blaming them for the killing of Portuguese traders there in 1500. The ruler refused to turn away his long-established trading partners.
Q 25What did da Gama do to a captured Muslim pilgrim ship in 1502?
Burned it with the passengers aboard
Burned it with the passengers aboard, several hundred people, after stripping the ship of its cargo. Eyewitnesses in his fleet recorded it and it fixed his name for cruelty, though some historians think the accounts exaggerated.
Q 26What did da Gama's fleet do to an Indian city that defied him in 1502?
Bombarded it from the sea
Bombarded it from the sea; da Gama also had dozens of captives hanged from the yardarms of his ships.
Q 27Which East African sultanate did da Gama's 1502 fleet force to pay tribute in gold?
Kilwa
Kilwa's gold had a second life: back in Lisbon a goldsmith worked the tribute into the Belém Monstrance, still one of Portugal's great treasures.
Q 28Who was made the first Viceroy of Portuguese India in 1505, a post da Gama did not hold until 1524?
Francisco de Almeida
Francisco de Almeida never got home to enjoy the honour: sailing back in 1510 he was killed in a skirmish with Khoikhoi herders near the Cape of Good Hope.
Q 29Which explorer had just defected to Spain when da Gama threatened to do the same, winning himself a title?
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese veteran of the Indies who felt unrewarded, had taken his plan for a westward voyage to Spain. Rather than lose da Gama as well, the king gave way.
Q 30What noble title did da Gama receive in 1519 after years of petitioning?
Count of Vidigueira
Count of Vidigueira made da Gama lord of two towns that the Duke of Braganza gave up for him, his consolation for the home town he had been promised twenty years earlier and never received.