Sea pilots and the Gujarati who guided da Gama

What defines it

1. 01

   Pilot taken on at Malindi, April 1498

2. 02

   Fleet anchors near Kozhikode, 20 May 1498

3. 03

   João de Barros names him Malemo Cana, a Gujarati

4. 04

   Kutchi tradition of Kanji Malam is unproved

01The pilot at Malindi

Da Gama’s fleet reached Malindi on the Kenyan coast on 14 April 1498. The ruler of Malindi supplied a pilot. With him aboard the ships crossed the Arabian Sea on the monsoon in about three weeks and sighted the Kerala coast, anchoring near Kozhikode on 20 May. The anonymous journal of the voyage, the Roteiro, records the pilot’s help. The chronicler João de Barros, writing decades later, calls him Malemo Cana and says he was a Gujarati who sailed on the Cambay ships.

02Who he was

Malemo is the Arabic mu‘allim, master navigator, a title used across the western ocean. Cana may stand for an Indian name such as Kanha. In Kutch a tradition names him Kanji Malam of Mandvi; it is not found in the Portuguese sources, and historians treat it as possible but unproved. The Roteiro describes the pilots it met on that coast as skilled men with charts and instruments for taking the height of stars.

03Navigating by the stars

Indian Ocean pilots fixed their latitude by the height of the Pole Star and other stars above the horizon, measured in finger-widths with a board and a knotted cord. They knew the seasons of the winds, the depth and colour of the water and the birds near each coast, as the Jatakas’ blind pilot did long before. Kutchi malams kept such knowledge in handwritten pilot books into the 20th century.

In the texts

• Roteiro of the first voyage of Vasco da Gama
• João de Barros, Décadas da Ásia, I.4.6

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