Four vessels. One audacious commander. On July 8, 1497, Vasco da Gama weighed anchor at Restelo beach near Lisbon and pointed his bow south toward the unknown Atlantic. His mission, ordered by King Manuel I of Portugal, was to find a direct sea route from western Europe to the spice markets of Asia, a prize that Venice and the Arab trading world had guarded jealously for centuries through overland routes. Eleven months later, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope and crossing the Indian Ocean, da Gama dropped anchor at Calicut on the southwestern coast of India, becoming the first European to reach Asia by sea. The voyage shattered the Ottoman and Venetian monopoly on Eastern trade, flooded Portugal with pepper and profits, and ignited 150 years of European maritime empire-building across three oceans. Every modern trade route, every container ship threading the Indian Ocean today, sails in the wake of those four small hulls that left Lisbon on this morning in 1497.