Vasco de Ataíde was a sailor who served as a ship captain in the Portuguese fleet sent to India under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500. His name went down in history when he disappeared without a trace along with his ship and crew in the first weeks of the voyage. There is almost no reliable information about the period of his life before this time.
Breakaway from the fleet
The fleet of thirteen ships set sail from Lisbon, at the mouth of the Tagus River, on March 9, 1500. The ships passed Cape Verde on March 22 and headed out into the Atlantic. The ship under Ataíde's command, with its crew of approximately 150 people according to records, became separated from the fleet during the night or morning that followed.
The incident is briefly described in the famous letter written by Pêro Vaz de Caminha, the secretary of the expedition, to King Manuel I: According to Caminha, there was no strong or adverse wind that would drag the ship; Cabral had a search conducted to find the ship, but it was never seen again. The fact that no storm, fog or call for help was recorded made the loss one of the most curious events of the period.
Because of this loss, Ataíde's ship was not present when the fleet reached the coast of present-day Brazil in April 1500, marking the first recorded arrival of Europeans in the region. It is also written in some Portuguese chronicles that the ship was lost off the coast of the Cape of Good Hope; In these different narratives, it is seen that Ataíde is confused with Luís Pires, one of the captains of the same expedition.
The fate of Vasco de Ataíde is still unknown today. What is known about him consists largely of brief lines in a few documents describing the Cabral expedition.
