Vasco da Gama - Lisboa, Portugal - Coats of Arms on Waymarking.com

Vasco da Gama Coat of Arms show a shield divided in 15 pieces. Each one onf them showinf alternately a gold flag and a red and white stripes flag (3 red and 2 white). In the middle a shield with the 5 Portuguese Shields (Quinas) inside ). Vasco da Gama was the 1st Count of Vidigueira so his coat of Arms is also the Coat of Arms of the Counts of Vidigueira.
The coat of arms is placed in a magestic fountain in Belem (Fonte Luminosa)in front of Jerónimos Monastery together with 49 other coat of arms of important personalities from the time of Portuguese Discoveries. The fountain was designed by Cottinelli Telmo and built in 1940 for the Portuguese World Exhibition. There´s very little information about the fountain and the Coat of Arms and most available information pretend that there is a total of 32 Coat of arms of Portuguese inland and Overseas provinces wich is wrong.

"Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (c. 1460 or 1469 – 24 December 1524) was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India. For a short time in 1524 he was the Governor of Portuguese India, under the title of Viceroy.

Vasco da Gama was born in either 1460 or 1469 in Sines, on the southwest coast of Portugal, probably in a house near the church of Nossa Senhora das Salas. Sines, one of the few seaports on the Alentejo coast, consisted of little more than a cluster of whitewashed, red-tiled cottages, tenanted chiefly by fisherfolk.

Little is known of Vasco da Gama's early life. The Portuguese historian Teixeira de Aragão suggests that Vasco da Gama studied at the inland town of Évora, which is where he may have learned mathematics and navigation and it has even been claimed (although dubiously) that he studied under the astronomer Abraham Zacuto.

From the earlier part of the 15th Century, Portuguese expeditions organized by Prince Henry the Navigator had been crawling down the African coastline, principally in search for west African riches (notably, gold). They had greatly extended Portuguese maritime knowledge, but had little profit to show for the effort. After Henry's death in 1460, the Portuguese crown showed little interest in continuing and, in 1469, sold off the neglected African enterprise to a private Lisbon merchant consortium led by Fernão Gomes. Within a few years, Gomes's captains expanded Portuguese knowledge across the Gulf of Guinea, doing business in gold dust, melagueta pepper, ivory and slaves. When Gomes charter came up for renewal in 1474, Prince John (future John II), asked his father Afonso V of Portugal to pass the African charter to him.

Upon becoming king in 1481, John II of Portugal set out on many long reforms. To break the monarch's dependence on the feudal nobility, John II needed to build up the royal treasury, and saw royal commerce as the key to it. Under John II's watch, the gold and slave trade in west Africa was greatly expanded. He was eager to break into the highly-profitable spice trade between Europe and Asia. At the time, this was virtually monopolized by the Republic of Venice, who operated overland routes via Levantine and Egyptian ports, through the Red Sea across to the spice markets of India. John II set a new objective for his captains: to find a sea route to Asia by sailing around the African continent.

By the time Vasco da Gama was in his 20s, these plans were coming to fruition. In 1487, John II dispatched two spies, Pero da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva, overland via Egypt, to East Africa and India, to scout the details of the spice markets and trade routes. The breakthrough came soon after when John II's captain Bartolomeu Dias returned from rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, having explored as far as the Fish River (Rio do Infante) in modern-day South Africa and having verified that the unknown coast stretched away to the northeast.

It remained for an explorer to prove the link between the findings of Dias and those of da Covilhã and de Paiva and to connect these separate segments into a potentially lucrative trade route into the Indian Ocean. The task, originally given to Vasco da Gama's father, was finally offered to Vasco by Manuel I on the strength of his record of protecting Portuguese trading stations along the African Gold Coast from depredations by the French.

On 8 July 1497 Vasco da Gama led a fleet of four ships with a crew of 170 men from Lisbon. The distance traveled in the journey around Africa to India and back was greater than around the equator.[9][10] The navigators included Portugal's most experienced, Pero de Alenquer, Pedro Escobar, João de Coimbra, and Afonso Gonçalves. It is not known for certain how many people were in each ship's crew but approximately 55 returned, and two ships were lost. Two of the vessels were as naus or newly built for the voyage, possibly a caravel and a supply boat.[9] The four ships were:

The São Gabriel, commanded by Vasco da Gama; a carrack of 178 tons, length 27 m, width 8.5 m, draft 2.3 m, sails of 372 m²
The São Rafael, whose commander was his brother Paulo da Gama; similar dimensions to the São Gabriel
The caravel Berrio, slightly smaller than the former two (later re-named São Miguel), commanded by Nicolau Coelho
A storage ship of unknown name, commanded by Gonçalo Nunes, later lost near the Bay of São Brás, along the east coast of Africa.

e expedition set sail from Lisbon on 8 July 1497, following the route pioneered by earlier explorers along the coast of Africa via Tenerife and the Cape Verde Islands. After reaching the coast of present day Sierra Leone, da Gama took a course south into the open ocean, crossing the Equator and seeking the South Atlantic westerlies that Bartolomeu Dias had discovered in 1487.[11] This course proved successful and on November 4, 1497, the expedition made landfall on the African coast. For over three months the ships had sailed more than 6,000 miles of open ocean, by far the longest journey out of sight of land made by the time.[9][12]

By December 16, the fleet had passed the Great Fish River (Eastern Cape, South Africa) - where Dias had turned back - and sailed into waters previously unknown to Europeans. With Christmas pending, da Gama and his crew gave the coast they were passing the name Natal, which carried the connotation of "birth of Christ" in Portuguese.

Arab-controlled territory on the East African coast was an integral part of the network of trade in the Indian Ocean. Fearing the local population would be hostile to Christians, da Gama impersonated a Muslim and gained audience with the Sultan of Mozambique. With the paltry trade goods he had to offer, da Gama was unable to provide a suitable gift to the ruler and soon the local populace became suspicious of da Gama and his men. Forced by a hostile crowd to flee Mozambique, da Gama departed the harbor, firing his cannons into the city in retaliation.

In the vicinity of modern Kenya, the expedition resorted to piracy, looting Arab merchant ships - generally unarmed trading vessels without heavy cannons. The Portuguese became the first known Europeans to visit the port of Mombasa but were met with hostility and soon departed.

In February 1498, Vasco da Gama continued north, landing at the friendlier port of Malindi - whose leaders were then in conflict with those of Mombasa - and there the expedition first noted evidence of Indian traders. Da Gama and his crew contracted the services of a pilot whose knowledge of the monsoon winds allowed him to bring the expedition the rest of the way to Calicut (Kozhikkodu), located on the southwest coast of India. Sources differ over the identity of the pilot, calling him variously a Christian, a Muslim, and a Gujarati. One traditional story describes the pilot as the famous Arab navigator Ibn Majid, but other contemporaneous accounts place Majid elsewhere, and he could not have been near the vicinity at the time.[14] Also, none of the Portuguese historians of the time mention Ibn Majid.

The fleet arrived in Kappadu near Calicut, India on 20 May 1498. The King of Calicut, the Samudiri (Zamorin), who was at that time staying in his second capital at Ponnani, returned to Calicut on hearing the news of the foreign fleets's arrival. The navigator was received with traditional hospitality, including a grand procession of at least 3,000 armed Nairs, but an interview with the Zamorin failed to produce any concrete results. The presents that da Gama sent to the Zamorin as gifts from Dom Manuel—four cloaks of scarlet cloth, six hats, four branches of corals, twelve almasares, a box with seven brass vessels, a chest of sugar, two barrels of oil and a cask of honey—were trivial, and failed to impress. While Zamorin's officials wondered at why there was no gold or silver, the Muslim merchants who considered da Gama their rival suggested that the latter was only an ordinary pirate and not a royal ambassador.[15] Vasco da Gama's request for permission to leave a factor behind him in charge of the merchandise he could not sell was turned down by the King, who insisted that da Gama pay customs duty—preferably in gold—like any other trader, which strained the relation between the two. Annoyed by this, da Gama carried a few Nairs and sixteen fishermen (mukkuva) off with him by force.[16] Nevertheless, da Gama's expedition was successful beyond all reasonable expectation, bringing in cargo that was worth sixty times the cost of the expedition.

Vasco da gama returned to India 2 more times. The third was in 1524 when King John III granted Vasco da Gama the privileged title of "Viceroy". Gama contracted malaria not long after arriving, and died in the city of Cochin on Christmas Eve in 1524, three months after his arrival.

Vasco da Gama's body was first buried at St. Francis Church, which was located at Fort Kochi in the city of Kochi, but his remains were returned to Portugal in 1539. The body of Vasco da Gama was re-interred in Vidigueira in a casket decorated with gold and jewels.

The Monastery of the Hieronymites (Jerónimos), in Belém was erected in honor of his voyage to India."
From Wikipedia

Bearer of Coat of Arms: Noble (aristocratic) family Full name of the bearer: Vasco da Gama Where is Coat of Arms installed (short description) ?: Fonte Luminosa @ Praça do Império (Fountain ) Material / Design: Stone Blazon (heraldic description): See above. Address: Praça do Império Web page about the structure where is Coat of Arms installed (if exists): [Web Link] Web page about the bearer of Coat of Arms (if exists): [Web Link]

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