3rd Portuguese India Armada (Nova, 1501)
He was Alcalde Pequeno (municipal magistrate) of Lisbon, and his principal recommendation to the admiralship was probably his connection to the powerful Portuguese nobleman Tristão da Cunha.
The journey's destination was Calicut (known as Calecute in some sources, now Kozhikode), the principal spice hub in the state of Kerala and the dominant city-state on the Malabar coast of India.
Lightly armed, it would have to press on, sneak into India stealthily, avoid Calicut, load spices at friendly ports, and leave, all as quickly as possible.
[25] First, the Church of Rome has long celebrated the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary on the fixed date of 8 December, yet by then the third armada had already reached India.
[26] Two sources, a letter from King Manuel I of Portugal[27] and Gaspar Corrêa’s chronicle,[28] made no mention of either Ascension or Conception, instead describing a visit to Brazil.
[29] Ataíde's note, addressed to all captains bound for India, warned that Calicut had become hostile to the Portuguese, but that Cochin (Cochim, now Kochi) and Cannanore (now Kannur) were still friendly ports where spices could be procured.
[30] Centuries later, the South African government declared the milkwood tree where Ataíde hung his shoe a national monument and erected a shoe-shaped postbox below it.
Barros suggests that, on this occasion, João da Nova personally met Muhammad Arcone, a Kilwan noble who would later play a critical role in Portuguese–Kilwan affairs.
Correia notes that Nova was wary of approaching Kilwa, and refused to go ashore despite repeated invitations; he had the degredado negotiate the provision of some supplies, probably citrus fruit, from the city for his scurvy-sick crews and hurriedly moved on.
He further writes that it was now that Nova received the letters that Cabral had dispatched by a messenger from Mozambique, from which he learned more about the Zamorin (monarch) of Calicut, the Portuguese factory at Cochin and the friendly relations with Cannanore and Quilon.
[43] Both narratives agree that the Third Armada eventually began going down the Indian coast to Kerala, attempting to capture two merchant ships, allegedly from Calicut, near Mount d'Eli (now Ezhimala Hill) along the way.
[45] Correia suggests that the Third Armada simply lingered in the area between Batecala and Mount d'Eli to trade and perhaps engage in piracy before it headed south to Cannanore.
hypothesize that during this interlude, Nova launched exploratory ventures far to the south below Cape Comorin to locate the fabled island of Taprobana (Ceylon), the world's main source of cinnamon.
However, the factor whom he left behind was Paio Rodrigues, a private agent of D. Álvaro of Braganza and the Marchionni consortium, not an employee of the Casa da India, the crown trading house.
The Zamorin also reported that the ringleaders of the riot had been rounded up and punished, and invited Nova to Calicut to collect the wares left behind in the Portuguese factory and receive compensation.
Proposing to dispatch two ambassadors with Nova's fleet back to Lisbon, he expressed a desire to make a final treaty with King Manuel I of Portugal.
Gonçalo Peixoto warned Nova to reject the offer, claiming that the Zamorin was luring him into a trap and at the time preparing a war fleet in Calicut.
Arriving in Cochin, João da Nova encountered a factor left by Cabral, Gonçalo Gil Barbosa, who reports trading difficulties in the local markets.
In 1898, excavations underneath the Breakwater Office in Colombo, Sri Lanka, revealed a boulder with a Portuguese inscription, a coat of arms, and the clearly denoted date 1501.
Under this scenario, Nova did not immediately return to Cannanore after he realized the cash problem, but rather he or one of his captains either stumbled upon Ceylon or was guided there by a local, hoping for better success there.
Earlier encounters were fought against mostly poorly armed merchant ships, pirates and isolated squads; a single well-armed caravel could win a battle against these targets with ease.
In the First Battle of Cannanore, the Zamorin of Calicut had attacked directly, deploying the best fleet he could against a small group of Portuguese merchant carracks, which were significantly less heavily armed than the ships of Gama and Cabral.
The armada made two watering stops in East Africa: first at Malindi, where Nova deposited letters that would be received later that year by Thomé Lopes, and second at Mozambique Island.
[53] After turning around the Cape of Good Hope, Nova sailed into the South Atlantic and discovered the uninhabited island of Saint Helena while he was returning home.
According to the letters by Italian merchants in Lisbon, the Third Armada brought back 900 cantari (quintals) of black pepper, 550 of cinnamon, 30 of ginger, 25 of lac, and other assorted goods.
Although there was no significant loss of ships or men, the armada came back with fewer spices than what was anticipated; letters insinuate that the cargo holds were partially empty.
Although contradictory in describing other events, these chronicles almost unanimously claim João da Nova found Saint Helena sometime in 1502, although none quote the precise date.
On 12 July 1502, nearly three weeks before reaching Saint Helena, Lopes described how Estêvão da Gama’s ships met up with a section of the Fifth Armada led by Afonso de Albuquerque off the Cape of Good Hope.
The paper suggested the solution to this apparent paradox was the fact that by the time his book was published in 1596 Linschoten had converted to the Protestant Dutch Reformed Church.
Quite apart from the fact that the discoverers were Catholics, Linschoten failed to realise the impossibility that the island was named after a Protestant feast-day, it being found more than a decade before the Reformation and start of Protestantism.
