æñIn the 16th century, the voyage from Portugal to India was a long, dangerous adventure.ñ
A new type of large sailing ship, the galleon, appeared during the 15th and 16th centuries. It was better suited to ocean voyages, with a long streamlined hull and three or four masts - the two forward ones carrying square sails and the two rear ones triangular lateen sails. Galleons gradually replaced the heavy, round carrack and the caravel, which was too light for the transport of large quantities of merchandise. Portuguese galleons regularly left Lisbon in March to take advantage of the summer monsoon to cross the Indian Ocean. With good luck, they returned to Portugal at the end of December. Variable sailing conditions in the Atlantic made the voyage unpredictable, however. The Portuguese followed a route they called the ºvoltaº (the loop). After the Cape Verde islands, they no longer followed the African coast but headed southwest to avoid the windless "doldrums", where they feared being stranded for a long time under a blazing sun. The prevailing winds drove the ships in a large loop toward the coast of Brazil. There they changed direction, heading southeast for the Cape of Good Hope.
~Conditions at sea~
For the six months or more of the voyage, up to 700 or 800 people - sailors and passengers - were trapped on the galleon. The crew slept on the deck, the officers and religious missionaries shared the few cabins on board, and the other travellers settled down in the hold among the merchandise and the food supplies. These food supplies were hard to preserve because of the climate. The bacon rotted and the biscuits were eaten by worms. Water, which quickly began to smell, was rationed during the longer stages of the voyage. Malnutrition and lack of vitamins caused scurvy, which people cured by eating oranges and lemons when the ship called into port. Epidemics on board were murderous, despite the care of the ship's surgeon. On top of all this discomfort, there was the added fear of storms and attack by pirates. Passengers and crew broke the monotony of the voyage by gambling. A traveller could easily gamble away all his possessions in the course a voyage.
