_ 249 _ Were the Norman sailors on the "Marie de Bon Secours", the first Frenchmen to cross the Indian Ocean? In their petition to João III, they assured him that they were 'ignorant and did not know these places, for none of us had ever heard of them'. The story must have made some impression in France, and when the southern French merchants pronounced in 1537 that the Normans were qualified to undertake the Calicut trade they gave as the reason the fact that 'none of the Norman sailors who have endured great dangers there had gone there merely by chance(A). Repeated failures did not discourage the Normans. The crew of the "Marie de Bon Secours" was held in India. Nothing was known of the companions of the second Verrazzano expedition, which had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Nevertheless, by the spring of 1528, the Verrazzano brothers were again prepared for a voyage through the Magellan Strait to south-east Asia. They were to meet with no greater success than before. an edition of this work, to be entitled Nuño da Cunha et le sultan Bador. I also owe to him the reference to Tabaqãt-i-akbari (vol.IlI, Calcutta 1955,p. 210). (A) See above n.6.
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