João de Barros, nicknamed the "Portuguese Livy", is one of the first great Portuguese historians, most famous for his Décadas da Ásia, a history of the Portuguese in India, Asia, and southeast Africa.
João da Nova was a Galician-born explorer in the service of Portugal. He is credited as the discoverer of Ascension and Saint Helena islands.
Cristóvão de Mendonça was a Portuguese noble and explorer who was active in South East Asia in the 16th century.
Santa Catarina do Monte Sinai was a higher-castled Portuguese carrack with 140 guns, launched down in 1520. Built in Kochi, India around 1512 it had two square rig masts and is depicted on a painting attributed to Joachim Patinir.
António de Saldanha was a Castilian-Portuguese 16th-century captain. He was the first European to set anchor in what is now called Table Bay, South Africa, and made the first recorded ascent of Table Mountain.
Gaspar Correia was a Portuguese historian considered a Portuguese Polybius. He authored Lendas da Índia, one of the earliest and most important works about Portuguese rule in Asia.
The siege of Cannanore was a four-month siege, from 27 April 1507 to 27 August 1507, when troops of the local ruler, supported by the Zamorin of Calicut and Arabs, besieged the Portuguese garrison at St. Angelo Fort in Cannanore, in what is now the Indian state of Kerala. It followed the Battle of Cannanore, in which the fleet of the Zamorin was defeated by the Portuguese.
The Portuguese Indian Armadas were the fleets of ships funded by the Crown of Portugal, and dispatched on an annual basis from Portugal to India. The principal destination was Goa, and previously Cochin. These armadas undertook the Carreira da Índia from Portugal, following the maritime discovery of the Cape route, to the Indian subcontinent by Vasco da Gama in 1497–99.
The Second Portuguese India Armada was assembled in 1500 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral. Cabral's armada famously discovered Brazil for the Portuguese crown along the way. By and large, the Second Armada's diplomatic mission to India failed, and provoked the opening of hostilities between the Kingdom of Portugal and the feudal city-state of Calicut. Nonetheless, it managed to establish a factory in the nearby Kingdom of Cochin, the first Portuguese factory in Asia.
The Third Portuguese India Armada was assembled in 1501 upon the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of João da Nova. It was small compared to other armadas of the same type and was formed for commercial purposes. Nonetheless, it engaged in the first significant Portuguese naval battle in the Indian Ocean. The Third Armada discovered the uninhabited islands of Ascension and Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. Some speculate that it was the first Portuguese armada to reach Ceylon.
The 4th Portuguese India Armada was a Portuguese fleet that sailed from Lisbon in February, 1502. Assembled on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of D. Vasco da Gama, it was the fourth of some thirteen Portuguese India Armadas, was Gama's second trip to India, and was designed as a punitive expedition targeting Calicut to avenge the numerous defeats of the 2nd Armada two years earlier.
The Fifth India Armada was assembled in 1503 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque. It was Albuquerque's first trip to India. It was not a particularly successful armada - navigational mistakes scattered the fleet on the outward journey. Ships spent much time looking for each other and several ended up travelling alone.
The Sixth India Armada was assembled in 1504 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of Lopo Soares de Albergaria.
Diogo Fernandes Pereira, sometimes called simply Diogo Fernandes, was a Portuguese 16th-century navigator, originally from Setúbal, Portugal. Diogo Fernandes was the first known European captain to visit the island of Socotra in 1503 and the discoverer of the Mascarenes archipelago in 1507. He may also have been the first European to sail east of Madagascar island.
António Galvão, also known as Antonio Galvano, was a Portuguese soldier, chronicler and administrator in the Maluku islands, and a Renaissance historian who was the first person to present a comprehensive report of the leading voyages and explorers up to 1550 by Portuguese explorers and those of other nationalities. His works, especially the Treaty of Discovery that was published in Lisbon in 1563 and in English by Richard Hakluyt in 1601, are notably accurate.
Vicente Sodré was a 16th-century Anglo Portuguese knight of Order of Christ and the captain of the first Portuguese naval patrol in the Indian Ocean. He was an uncle of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama.
The Seventh India Armada was assembled in 1505 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of D. Francisco de Almeida, the first Portuguese Viceroy of the Indies. The 7th Armada set out to secure the dominance of the Portuguese navy over the Indian Ocean by establishing a series of coastal fortresses at critical points – Sofala, Kilwa, Anjediva, Cannanore – and reducing cities perceived to be local threats.
Diogo do Couto was a Portuguese historian.
Pero de Anaia or Pedro d'Anaya or Anhaya or da Nhaya or da Naia was a Castilian-Portuguese 16th-century knight, who established and became the first captain-major of the Portuguese Fort São Caetano in Sofala, and thus the first colonial governor of Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique).
Pero de Ataíde or Pedro d'Ataíde, nicknamed O Inferno (Hell), was a Portuguese sea captain in the Indian Ocean active in the early 1500s. He was briefly captain of the first permanent Portuguese fleet in the Indian Ocean, taking over from Vicente Sodré, and the author of a famous letter giving an account of its fate.
