What cape did Vasco da Gama round on his first voyage to India?

Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope on his first voyage to India.

Da Gama’s fleet left Lisbon on 8 July 1497, sailing south along the Atlantic coast of Africa before making a long open-ocean crossing. The expedition passed the southern tip of Africa and entered the Indian Ocean, following a route first demonstrated as feasible by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488.

The cape was once called the Cape of Storms, but Portugal’s King John II renamed it the Cape of Good Hope to express optimism that a sea route to India had been found. Da Gama was not the first Portuguese sailor to round it; Dias had reached and rounded the cape earlier. Da Gama’s achievement was completing the first direct ocean voyage from Europe to India.

The fleet reached Calicut, on India’s Malabar Coast, on 20 May 1498. The voyage opened a lasting Portuguese sea route around Africa and transformed European trade with the Indian Ocean. Cape Horn is in South America, while Cape Verde and Cape Bojador are farther north along Africa’s Atlantic coast.