section_path: Second voyage/Pilgrim ship incident
section_name: Pilgrim ship incident
paragraph_text: Pilgrim ship incident
  
  On reaching India in October 1502, da Gama's fleet intercepted Mirim, a ship of Muslim pilgrims at Madayi travelling from Calicut to Mecca. Described in detail by eyewitness Thomé Lopes and chronicler Gaspar Correia, da Gama looted the ship with over 400 pilgrims on board including 50 women, locked in the passengers, the owner and an ambassador from Egypt and burned them to death. They offered their wealth, which "could ransom all the Christian slaves in the Kingdom of Fez and much more" but were not spared. Da Gama looked on through the porthole and saw the women bringing up their gold and jewels and holding up their babies to beg for mercy. The lives of twenty children were spared against a forced conversion to Christianity.