The history of Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama begins in 1898, the year of its foundation in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Although it was an association initially founded due to the practice of rowing, over time it added several new sports and is currently one of the most popular and traditional multi-sport entities in Brazil and South America.
The club has stood out over time for its fights for social causes, as well as its pioneering efforts to combat racism in football, and for being the first continental champion in history in the South American Championship of Champions in 1948. In addition to this title, Vasco conquered several important conquests throughout its history, among them: twenty four Campeonato Carioca, four Campeonato Brasileiro, one Copa do Brasil, one Copa Libertadores and one Copa Mercosur.
Beginnings
Foundation
The foundation of Vasco took place in the context of the popularization of rowing at the end of the 19th century. The sport gradually became popular in the final decades of the century, with the popularization of beaches as recreational places and with the advancement of a new body aesthetic, which valued a conditioned and healthy physical type. In 1873, Club Guanabarense was created, boosting rowing in the city of Rio de Janeiro; several rowing clubs were founded over the next few years, and regattas began to become a fixture in the 1880s and 1890s.
The idea of creating a rowing club came from four young Brazilians, Henrique M. Ferreira Monteiro, Luiz Antonio Rodrigues, José Alexandre d'Avellar Rodrigues, Manoel Teixeira de Sousa Junior, all commerce, clerks, working in the center from Rio de Janeiro. In their free time, young people rented a rowing boat, called "Iracema", at Grupo de Regatas Gragoatá, in Niterói. The distance between Rio de Janeiro and Niterói brought the idea of creating a rowing club in the Saúde neighborhood, where they worked.
A fifth member was called, Lopes de Freitas, and the first meetings were held in January 1898, first in a two-story house that Henrique Ferreira Monteiro lived in, at Rua Theóphilo Ottoni, no. 80 (on the left side of the current no. 90); then, for better accommodation, the young pioneers were welcomed in the hall of the Sociedade Dramática Particular Filhos de Talma. The idea of a new rowing club in the neighborhood began to be publicized in the commercial media, and the four quickly managed to attract new interested parties. Among those invited to the future new institution were the Couto brothers, Portuguese merchants, who worked in the "steam sawmill" branch, and who had the necessary capital to put the club on its feet in its beginnings.
After some preliminary meetings, the club was founded on August 21, 1898, at Rua da Saúde n.º 293 (currently n.º 345 Rua Sacadura Cabral). At this first meeting, the board of directors was elected, with Francisco Gonçalves Couto Junior as the club's first president. The name chosen for the club - Vasco da Gama - was due to the fact that the fourth centenary of the discovery of the sea route to India was celebrated in that year, with many Portuguese among the founders. Thus, the name of the Portuguese navigator was given to the club.
Choice of colors, symbols and uniforms
The first Vasco uniform was chosen on September 6, 1898, at a club board meeting. At the proposal of the then president-founder, Francisco Gonçalves Couto Junior, Vasco had its first garments unanimously approved. The minutes of the meeting state that the uniform would consist of a black shirt cap with a "white and black pompom", a black shirt with a collar and a wide white band, with the red Maltese Cross on the chest, half on white and half on black. The belt would be white; the "black cashmere" shorts, black socks and white shoes, with the use of shoes and socks "only obligatory during regattas". The first Vasco uniform had a horizontal stripe, not a vertical one. The traditional vertical strip would only be introduced the following year. In a general meeting on July 16, 1899, it was decided that the shirt would be "black with a wide white stripe across the shoulder"; in other words, transversal. Another change occurred in the position of the cross: in the original uniform, it was half between the black and half between the white shirt.