Francisco de Almeida

Francisco De Almeida (born towards 1450 with Lisbon, dead on March 1st 1510 close to the Cape), soldier and explorer Portuguese, was the viceroy of the Portuguese Indies in charge of the expansion of the trade in the Indian Ocean.

It was distinguished during the wars against the Moor S and the conquest from Grenade to with dimensions from the troops from Castille in 1492.

In 1505, the king of Portugal Manuel Ier named it viceroy of the Portuguese Indies. It left Lisbon with a fleet of twenty and one ships on March 25th, 1505. Circumventing the Cape of Good Hope, it conquered Kilwa, on the current Tanzanian coast , where it built a fort. Then, it invests and devastated Mombasa (Kenya), and seized the port of Sofala (Mozambique).

It reached the India and settled with Cochin. It attempted to counter the Moslems of Egypt in the Indian Ocean to ensure the Portuguese presence. It supported the colonial expansion of Portugal by organizing voyages of discovery, in particular with Ceylon and Madagascar. February 3rd 1509, it beat a Moslem fleet made up of ships of the sultanate Mamelouk of Egypt, Ottoman Empire and sultanate of Gujarat, at the time of the battle of Diu, in the north of Calicut. The same year, he was the first Portuguese to be accosted with Bombay.

When Alfonso de Albuquerque arrived to India to succeed to him, he refused to recognize his letters of accreditation and made it imprison. At the end of three months, it renonça with its load when arrived from Portugal an important fleet, in November 1509. Thereafter, it embarked for the Portugal. Almeida was killed on the way of the return by Khoïkhoï, during a stopover in bay of the Cape (South Africa), on March 1st 1510. ----

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