The second expedition of Vasco da Gama to India was in the month of February 1502, and this time he brought with him eight hundred men and fifteen ships. King John III, who followed King Manuel I, sent da Gama to India as the representative of the King. His ships docked at Anjadiva and afterwards he visited Cannanore and was welcomed nicely by the Kalathiri who decided to sell spices to the Portuguese. Then he went to Calicut, and at the sight of such a large fleet, the Zamorin assumed a conciliatory tone and offered compensation for the destruction of Cabral`s factory. However, Da Gama demanded the immediate expulsion of all the Arab merchants to which the Zamorin refused. Then Da Gama bombarded Kochi (Cochin) and took thirty four Arabs, hanged them and cut off their heads, feet and hands. These gruesome relics he put into an open boat, together with a Brahmin envoy of the Zamorin who had arrived on a Portuguese safe-conduct, but who now drifted back to shore minus his ears, nose and hands, which were hung around his neck with a palm-leaf message to the Zamorin recommending him to make himself a curry of them.

After the death of King Manuel, King John III again sent Vasco da Gama to India as a Portuguese viceroy in the year 1524. After landing at Goa, he sent a fleet and defeated Kutti Ali at Calicut. The Cannanore king surrendered one of his captains named Balia Hassan to the Portuguese and he was kept in the dungeon in Cannanore fort. Though Vasco da Gama came out for a third term in 1524 in the hope of reforming the administration, he died almost immediately in Cochin on the 24th of December1524, with little achieved.

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