"His fleet of 13 ships sailed far into the western
Atlantic Ocean, perhaps intentionally, and made landfall (April 1500) on what he initially assumed to be a large island. As the new land was within the Portuguese sphere according to the 1494
Treaty of Tordesillas, Cabral claimed it for the
Portuguese Crown. He explored the coast, realizing that the large land mass was probably a continent, and dispatched a ship to notify King
Manuel I of the new territory. The continent was South America, and the land he had claimed for Portugal later came to be known as Brazil. The fleet reprovisioned and then turned eastward to resume the journey to India.
A storm in the southern Atlantic caused the loss of several ships, and the six remaining ships eventually rendezvoused in the
Mozambique Channel before proceeding to
Calicut in India. Cabral was originally successful in negotiating trading rights, but Arab merchants saw Portugal's venture as a threat to their monopoly and stirred up an attack by both Muslims and Hindus on the Portuguese
entrepôt. The Portuguese sustained many casualties and their facilities were destroyed. Cabral took vengeance by looting and burning the Arab fleet and then bombarded the city in retaliation for its ruler having failed to explain the unexpected attack. From Calicut the expedition sailed to the
Kingdom of Cochin, another Indian
city-state, where Cabral befriended its ruler and loaded his ships with coveted spices before returning to Europe. Despite the loss of human lives and ships, Cabral's voyage was deemed a success upon his return to Portugal. The extraordinary profits resulting from the sale of the spices bolstered the Portuguese Crown's finances and helped lay the foundation of a
Portuguese Empire that would stretch from the Americas to the Far East"