He was, however, a patron not only of sailors themselves, but of a special school at Sagres in which nautical knowledge was collected and new maps were made and all kinds of awesome stuff happened. And all that knowledge gave Portuguese sailors a huge competitive advantage when it came to exploration. Henry commissioned sailors to search for two things. First, a path to the Indian Ocean so they could get in on the lucrative spice trade. And second, to find the kingdom of Prester John, a mythical Christian king who was supposed to live in Africa somewhere so that Henry could have Prester John's help in a crusade. Dagama was the first of Henry's protégés to make it around Africa and into the Indian Ocean. In 1498, he landed at Calicut, a major trading post on India's west coast, and when he got there, merchants asked him what he was looking for.