In the mid-1700s, Vizag was on the cusp of becoming a French colony but a twist of fate changed the course of Vizag’s history. The first major exploratory voyage made by the French to the Bay of Bengal was in 1740, by the sailor Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, who was the French East India Company’s cartographer. Vifipatagam, on the western shore of the Golfe de Bengale, is how the mapmaker wrote the town’s name at that time.