This week, we continue with the narrative of João de Carvalho Mascarenhas, the Portuguese soldier who was captured at sea by corsairs from Algiers in 1621. We ended last week, remember, with the crew and passengers of the Conceiçam—the ship aboard which Mascarenhas was travelling—having successfully beaten back the first corsair assault.
Our battle that day against the Algerine corsairs was one of the most remarkable fights of our time. If the participants had been other than Portuguese, books would have been written and stories told about it that would have spread throughout the world, and there would be no province, however remote, where people did not know of it.
That a single ship, with only twenty-two cannons, fought for a whole day, without receiving help and without surrendering, against seventeen large corsair vessels, each armed with thirty-five to forty guns… I do not know if that has ever happened. And that a mere handful of soldiers, eight passengers, and ninety sailors and cabin boys, exhausted by an eight-month sea voyage, fought against five thousand Turks, courageous shooters all, who had left Algiers only fourteen days before… Never to my knowledge, in ancient or modern times, has anything like this happened to any nation.
This battle at sea was unique in the world, both because of the courage of our combatants during the battle and because of the disastrous consequences which would result from it for us, so close and in sight of our own country as we were.
The fight that day only ended when the darkness of night fell. The enemy gathered their ships together and moved away from ours us at a distance of more than a cannon shot. Some engaged in laying planking over the holes our cannon balls had made in their hulls (and those holes were not small); others repaired the yards and the bowsprits that had been broken during their attempts at boarding us; others lashed their masts together where they and the rigging had been damaged by our bar- and chain-shot.
If Our Lord had allowed our ship to enter Lisbon the next day, or the same evening, it could have done so in an hour of wind. But our ship offered the most astonishing spectacle that had ever been seen. The numerous discharges of artillery and musketry had torn the sails to shreds, and there was hardly the space of a handspan that had not received a projectile. Nor was there any rigging, pulley, or rope that was not dislocated, broken, or torn. The stern looked ready to crumble away, and, seen from a distance, the ship appeared to be sheathed with cannonballs, for few of them had managed to smash through the hull, and they remained stuck in the planking.
When night had fallen, we threw our dead into the sea and treated the wounded. But the men who were unwounded had no time to rest, for they immediately had to put the ship back in order: installing new sails, repairing the rigging, re-setting the foresail, which had fallen to the deck, and adjusting the forestay, which was broken. Everything had to be repaired, and we found the work of that night more difficult than the struggle of the day. We spent the entire night completely repairing the ship, so that it looked as if it had just left the port of Goa. The next day, the enemy, seeing our ship so different from the state in which they had left it at nightfall, were so amazed that they wondered if indeed it was the same ship.
As soon as our ship was repaired, a little favorable wind arose, but so light that it served no purpose. Everything ended in a great calm and a painful heaviness that lasted well into morning.
When it was light, the sailors scanned the sea from the ship’s gunwales and from the top of the mainmast without discovering any sails. Our ship could not go to Cascais [a headland a little under 12 miles/20 kilometers west of Lisbon] because, when the wind began to blow, it immediately became contrary. Near Ericeira [a stretch of sandy coastline about 25 miles/40 kilometers north of Cascais] we could see a small, sandy beach where there seemed to be a good anchorage. After consulting, we decided to go and anchor there in six or seven fathoms of water, for the enemy, if he reappeared, would not attack us so close to land, and if he did, our ship would not fail to be rescued.
Because of the few uninjured men who remained, it seemed impossible for us to support another day of combat. The principal officers were all wounded, and of the fourteen cannoneers, seven had been killed and four wounded, so that only three remained. Close to land like this, we reasoned we were well placed to receive reinforcements to help us fight off the corsairs’ attacks.
This plan seemed good to us, and we put it into practice. We were prepared to go as far as Peniche [a headland 25 miles/40 kilometers north of Ericeira] if the wind allowed it.
We were letting out the mooring lines, within cannon shot of Ericeira, when we saw a sail coming towards us from the shore. We thought this ship was bringing us reinforcements or ammunition, but when it approached nearer, we saw it contained only three crewmen. One of them shouted to us in a loud voice that someone—I cannot recall who—was asking us to go back to sea immediately, for the coast could be dangerous in this season, and the ship might easily be lost. We should search out the fleet of Don Antonio de Ataíde, he told us, which was awaiting us out at sea.
Our people asked this boat to take the women and children and all the others unfit for the combat, along with all the jewels, because the enemy could not be far away, since they had not had enough wind to move off. The boatman luffed as much as he could and said with an expression of the greatest fear in the world that he had orders not to approach our ship on pain of his life, and that he therefore could do nothing to help us.
The captain then told the pilot to take the ship in the direction of the open sea—as we had been directed—which the pilot did immediately.
Would to God that the captain had acted differently, and that this boat had never come to us from the shore. It was the damnation of our ship, and those who followed this direction committed a serious fault, because on the injunction of a simple boatman, and without having received a letter ordering it expressly, they were not obliged to act against their original intention.
And so our ship sailed out into the open sea—as if going straight to meet the enemy.
We encountered them around eight o’clock in the morning, when we no longer had the possibility of returning to land, as we had initially intended, for the opposing ships were very light and fast, and they would have easily caught up with ours before we could reach the coast. We therefore preferred to continue in the same direction, to show that they were not afraid, and because, sailing thus, we hoped we might come within sight of Don Antonio de Ataíde’s fleet.
We had our artillery and men ready for the fight, under the same conditions as the day before, and with the same assurance, but we had many wounded and suffered from the depletion of our crew, especially the cannoneers.
The enemy drew near.
For the next installment of João Mascarenhas’ narrative, see the next post in this blog.
The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson
The story of the Barbary corsair raid on Iceland in 1627
Amazon listing