How was the legend of Vasco de Gama, this navigator who unlike Christopher Columbus did not keep a logbook? What exactly were the tribulations of this adventurer? It is to these two questions that the historian answers. Regarding the legend, this book analyzes in equal parts the Eastern and Western archives. Regarding the expedition to Calicut, which laid the foundation for the commercial expansion of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, he describes at length the concrete conditions of the crossing.