On one occasion Vasco da Gama himself captured a ship filled with hundreds of Muslims returning to India after going on pilgrimage to Mecca. Ignoring the desperately generous offers of those on board to pay a ransom, he ordered the ship to be set on fire in an act so grotesque that one observer avowed, ‘I will remember what happened every single day of my life.’ Women held up their jewellery to beg for mercy from the flames or from the water, while others held up their infants to try to protect them. Da Gama watched impassively, ‘cruelly and without any pity’ as every last passenger and crew
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