Battle of Cannanore (1506)

01The battle

Francisco de Almeida, the first Portuguese viceroy, had built a fort at Cannanore in 1505 with the consent of its Kolathiri king. The Zamorin assembled a fleet of many vessels, with Arab and Gujarati merchant ships among them, to attack it. Lourenço de Almeida, the viceroy’s son, went out with a smaller fleet of heavier ships. Portuguese accounts describe a fight lasting most of a day, in which their gunnery and boarding parties scattered the Calicut fleet.

02Command of the sea

The victory left the Portuguese masters of the Malabar sea lanes for the moment and confirmed their alliance with Cannanore and Cochin against Calicut. The Zamorin turned to the Mamluk sultan of Egypt and the sultan of Gujarat for help, and two years later their combined fleet defeated and killed Lourenço de Almeida at Chaul. The fort at Cannanore, rebuilt over the centuries as St Angelo’s Fort, still stands by the sea.

Dynasty · c. 12th century–1766 CEZamorins (Samoothiri) of KozhikodeThe Samoothiri, called Zamorin by Europeans, ruled the port of Kozhikode, the busiest pepper market on the Indian Ocean, for some five centuries. They received Zheng He’s fleets and Vasco da Gama, and fought the Portuguese at sea for a hundred years.Read →