This week, we continue with the narrative of João de Carvalho Mascarenhas, the Portuguese soldier who was captured at sea in 1621 by corsairs from Algiers.
In general, Barbary corsairs tried to take their prey without a fight. Corsairs were, after all, a species of predator, and whenever possible, predators go after easy prey—there’s less chance of sustaining injury themselves that way. Sometimes, however, a fight was unavoidable. Such was the case when the Algerine corsairs encountered the Conceição.
One of the aspects of Mascarenhas’ narrative that makes it so valuable is that it describes in great detail the attempts made by the crew of the Conceição to fight off the fleet of corsair ships that assailed them—one of the most detailed descriptions of a sea battle between corsairs and their intended prey that we have.
This week, the battle commences…
When it was attacked, our ship was in the worst possible state. During the seven days it had taken us to sail from the Azores, we had done nothing but carry luggage and bundles up on deck from below. Passengers from India typically fit what they have brought with them into light luggage. In order to avoid paying the excessive duties that are charged on anything transported belowdecks, they insist that their baggage be brought up on deck towards the end of the voyage.
The crew were tired from the exertion of carrying so many pieces of luggage, and they were taken unawares. Moreover, the ship’s deck was clogged and crowded with baggage and cluttered with mooring lines that had been pulled out in preparation for anchoring at Cascais.
Our enemies were numerous. Despite everything, however, our men acted with so much courage and ardor that in less than a quarter of an hour they had cleared the bridge and cleaned it with large tubs of water, carried the passengers’ luggage back down belowdecks, and set up protective rope nets and shields.
All our men were armed and at their posts.
The armament was very poor, though—for as it had been several years since the ship had left India, and it had passed through two severe monsoon seasons, which are common in India. The men’s muskets were in bad shape and very cumbersome, and the lances were too long and all rotten. The courage of the men, however, compensated for the defects of their weapons.
Gunners were assigned at the rate of one for every two guns, though it would have taken at least two for each gun to operate them effectively. But the men behaved like old soldiers. Our captain, Dom Luis de Sousa, placed himself in the middle of the bridge, a steel shield on his arm and a naked sword in his hand, waiting bravely for the cannonade of the enemy.
Our ship lay motionless in a light wind.
Remaining on their guard, and in good combat formation, the enemy suddenly approached us, all at the same time, from all sides and with all their ships. They injured and killed many of our people in that meeting. One of the first balls carried away the leg of the master gunner, who died immediately. It was a heavy loss, for he was very brave and very proficient when it came to artillery. A splinter struck and badly wounded a young man who was on the bridge and who had been an office aboard a galley. Since he could no longer move, he was later burned alive when our ship was set on fire.
There were then more than twenty-five victims, dead and wounded combined. One of them was the captain, who remained on deck. A musket ball broke his sword in two, which he held pointing down, and struck him on his right leg, where the garter was—not a serious injury. But immediately another bullet from the same origin struck him in the same way, striking his leg a span higher and passing through the muscle. As he was greatly weakened and unable to remain upright, he lay down on a crate at the mouth of a hatch, and from there he gave his orders.
The enemy, among whom our artillery had wreaked havoc with chain-shot and bar-shot, withdrew, most of their ships damaged by the fighting, and also because of the resulting danger from the proximity of our ship, for when it rolled, because of its great size, it would tear away the spars and bowsprits, along with their rigging, of the corsair ships alongside it.
One of these corsair ships, the largest, with more than forty guns, was captained by Calafat Hassan, the bravest Turk in Algiers, and well known as such. Seeing that his ship was lost, demolished by our bar-shot, and ready to sink under the effect of the many cannonballs it had received, he made a virtue of necessity (though this did not diminish his act of courage), and, abandoning his ship and brandishing a red flag which he had snatched from the stern, he leapt onto our ship and entrenched himself in the forecastle with four hundred Turks and Moors whom he had brought with him. These were the bravest of Algiers, the elite, and for the most part renegades like him.
He fastened his flag to the foremast, and he and his people launched a volley of arrows and musket shot, followed by many others, causing us great harm.
During this fight, with our men holding the deck and the stern, and they the bow, a renegade from Setubal climbed the foremast, and, with a hatchet, began to cut as much of the rigging as he could. Addressing his fellows, calling each by name, he urged them to join him, or he would do it all by himself with his hatchet. He cut the stays of the foreyard, which fell so suddenly with such violence that all the Turks below it were killed.
Our enemies were so numerous and so closely packed together that all our musket balls hit them. Two of these Turks came out boldly from the forecastle where they were, and passed with their scimitars over the rope bridge, shouting “Avast, you scoundrels!” One of them scrambled up the mainmast ratlines and was already near the top when he was hit by a bullet and fell dead. The other passed to the stern and reached the cockpit of the compass, where he was killed by a sword thrust.
In the middle of this tight fight, a black Javanese cook who was among us ran amok—such is the custom of their country when a man decides to kill his enemy or to die trying. Climbing alone on the rope bridge with a bare sword in his hand, he rushed towards all the Turks on the forecastle. But he received so many bullets and arrows that he could not carry out his plan and was immediately killed.
For the next installment of João Mascarenhas’ narrative, see the next post in this blog.
At that moment a soldier told Pero Mendes de Vasconcelos, who was traveling with his wife and children and carrying forty thousand cruzados 1, to step aside a little because of two Tures: one was aiming at him with a escopette and the other was aimed at
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