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 Conceiçam—the ship aboard which Mascarenhas was travelling—in flames.
Our cannons fired so furiously against the corsair ship attacking us that it was shot to pieces, and most of the Turks aboard it were killed. In an effort to get away from this ship, we veered downwind. But as the fire had already taken hold on our ship’s stern, and the wind blew the flames inside the gallery and into the Captain’s cabin, which caused the ship to burst into flames with the greatest violence, exploding what we thought were sacks of clovers but in fact contained gunpowder. It is thus with everything transported by a ship like ours: drugs, fabrics, cinnamon, pepper… What are they but fuel for fire?
Our people dropped their weapons and rushed towards the fire, though without any real hope of being able to extinguish it. As the flames reached the mainmast, some Turks abandoned their own vessel, which was drifting, shattered and dismasted, close to our ship. Brandishing scimitars and hatchets, they shouted, “Bring it on! Bring it on! Good war! Good war!” and swarmed aboard our ship to pillage it.
We now faced a terrible choice, caught as we were between three cruel enemies: the fire, the water, and the Turks. Finally, considering the Turks to be the most inclined to pity, our people began to scramble aboard the corsair ship still drifting alongside ours. If that ship had not been there, none of us would have survived. The Turks of the other ships came immediately with longboats, pulling us out of the crippled corsair ship and transporting us to other ships. They also rushed to try to save some of the cargo in our vessel, but they could not even take a single piece of cloth.
Escaping to the nearby corsair ship was how most our people managed to save themselves. The seriously wounded, however, remained behind and were burnt alive—and they received a better reward in heaven than that which, in this realm, awaited the survivors.
A few of the Turks were also burned. Their greed drove them to go belowdecks in our ship searching for loot. When they tried to climb back up, the fire blocked their way, opening for them the road to Hell—where they will stay forever.
Finally, in hardly an hour, the richest ship that had left India in many years was set ablaze and sank without leaving a trace. In pepper alone, our ship transported six thousand eight hundred quintals.[1] The hold and the decks were crammed with boxes and bales, and a lavish and extravagant present which the King of Persia was offering to His Majesty was stowed aboard as well. The ship also transported Captain Luis de Sousa, who had just commanded the fortress of Ormuz, in India, and had on him two hundred thousand cruzados.[2] There were also other extremely wealthy passengers. Moreover, our ship carried a very large quantity of diamonds.
This battle caused many deaths. A soldier named Antonio Caldeira, who had been in charge of the port deck cannons, and who had behaved valiantly that day and the day before, had the misfortune to be killed, by the last musket ball that penetrated into the ship, while he stood in the middle of his battery. He died like a brave and loyal soldier at the post entrusted to him.
When the Turks boarded our ship, they found the quartermaster on board with a steel shield on his arm that had belonged to the captain and his bare sword in his hand. He had not thrown down his arms, as is customary when a ship is captured. Two Turks approached him from the front and another from behind. They sliced off his head with their scimitars. This man, from the first moment to the last (when they killed him), had fought with a bravery that is impossible to surpass.
I do not intend to celebrate any further the survivors, for an action so well known as ours, and which took place so close to our kingdom, speaks for itself. Neither will I speak further of those who behaved with especial bravely, since it is public knowledge, and I would risk favoring some rather than others. Suffice it to say that all stayed at their posts and behaved excellently.
For two whole days, seventeen large corsair ships, with five thousand combatants and more than five hundred pieces of artillery, were unable to reduce one lone ship that had only twenty-two cannons and a hundred and some men, weakened and sick after eight months at sea. If the fire had not consumed our ship, the corsairs would not have conquered it, for they had already lost two of their own ships and many men, while our men retained all their ardor for battle, happy to show the Turks of Africa how the Portuguese can fight.
After the fire of our ship and the losses of theirs, our surviving people were all transported to the Turkish ships. It was done in an hour, on Monday, October 11, 1621.
From the morning we awoke to find ourselves in the midst of the Turkish fleet until the day they set fire to our ship, there had been a great calm and the world seemed to be all ablaze with heat. But as soon as our ship was burned and our people transferred to the enemy vessels, a westerly wind arose, so strong that it was impossible to sail with the topsails unfurled. If we had had that wind two hours earlier, the Turks would not have taken us, and we would certainly have got home that day.
No one, however, can escape the will of Heaven.
For the next installment of João Mascarenhas’ narrative, see the next post in this blog.
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[1] A quintal was roughly 100 pounds (45 kilos). So 6,800 quintals was equivalent to 680,000 pounds (308,440 kilos), which in turn is equivalent to 300 Imperial tons/340 US tons/308 metric tons. In other words, a lot of pepper.
[2] One Portuguese cruzado was equal to roughly ten Spanish pieces of eight (the famous coin all pirate lusted after). So the Captain de Sousa was transporting the equivalent of two million pieces of eight—an absolutely colossal sum in those days.
The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson
The story of the Barbary corsair raid on Iceland in 1627
Amazon listing