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—having been set ablaze and sunk and the survivors taken captive.
If I were to go into detail about what happened to each of the captives taken from our ship, I would never finish. To think that only two days earlier, all these people had been happy to be returning home and be reunited with their wives, their children, their mothers, their friends, some of whom they had not seen for more than twenty years. To think that all brought back some wealth, some a little, some a lot. And to think that in such a short time many were killed, others lost a leg or an arm, others were injured, and all were reduced to the status of poor, broken captives.
It would have been fair and right to send a ransoming mission to Algiers to free these people, since they had so gloriously fought for the faith of Christ and for the honor of their country. This would at least have served as an example, so that others, on such occasions, would be encouraged, since it would make clear that those who defend themselves are noticed and rewarded—and not left to perish as captives.
However, after five years, less than fifteen of those taken captive were freed and returned home.
I wish to observe here that we left India on a Monday; that it was a Monday when we approached the coast of the Cape of Good Hope; a Monday that we doubled it; a Monday that we arrived at the island of Saint Helena and left; a Monday when we entered the Azores and came out; a Monday when we were taken prisoner; and a Monday when we entered Algiers. For my part, it was on a Monday that I was sold, and it was a Monday that, thank God, I was set free.
Captain Dom Luis de Sousa was a prisoner on the flagship of Tabaco Arrais. The latter arranged for medical treatment of the Captain’s wounds, gave him a blanket to cover himself, and asked him if he wanted anything. The Captain begged him to bring, for his company, his wife and some servants, whose names he told him, who had been scattered among the other Turkish ships. Putting a boat into the water, Tabaco Arrais’s men searched all the other ships and brought back the Captain’s wife, Dona Antonia, as well as the servants he had asked for.
The cries and the tears of the Dona Antonia, when she found her husband in such a sorry state—gravely wounded, destitute, and a slave—moved even the Turks to pity. Dom Luis de Sousa had brought with him two hundred thousand cruzados, partly from his wife’s dowry, partly from a trip he had made to China, and partly from his office as Captain General of Hormuz, which he had left the previous year.
From these countries, he brought back the richest treasure in coins that had ever been seen in the Portuguese kingdom. As he always intended to return home, he had brought back from China precious couches, gilding, and embroidery. From Hormuz, he brought very expensive pearls. From Persia and from Goa, he brought the finest stones there were (he was the richest lord in Goa), and he brought female slaves from China and Japan in incredible numbers.
Now, he suddenly found himself in such great misery that without the blanket Tabaco Arrais had given him, he would not have had anything to protect himself. And his wife was now poor and a slave as well.
The great pain that this gentleman felt when he saw himself in such a miserable state, along with his young and beautiful wife, whom he loved very much, affected him to the highest degree. His deep melancholy and the tremors of his injured leg were such that after he had remained for three days aboard the Turkish ship, God took him from this life and sent him to rest in the next.
Pero Mendes de Vasconcelos had been a high Official in the State of India. He was a noble and rich man, married to one of the greatest ladies of India, who traveled with him, and the father of a very pretty daughter, but blind, with very light eyes, and of two boys, from eleven to twelve years old, both very handsome and of good education.
The same thing happened to him as to the captain, for fate arranged for him too to be placed aboard the flagship of the Turks, who sent for his wife and children as well and brought them aboard the same ship as Captain Dom Luis de Sousa. On the same day that the Captain died, Pero Mendes de Vasconcelos also died—of a bullet in the chest—leaving his young wife, his daughter, and his little sons in the power of these barbarians. He may have lost, along with his life, the more than forty thousand cruzados he had on him, but his children and his wife lost their freedom.
During the first days, the Turks did not fail to search the prisoners, and the more things they found, the more diligently they searched. Our ship had been filled with an infinity of diamonds, all very beautiful, and for the most part dug from a mine that had been discovered in India that year, so large and productive that if the local Indian prince had not quickly closed it, diamonds would have become banal, like crystal, and would have lost all their value.
As these diamonds were plentiful, and generally of good quality, the merchants invested all their money in them and brought them aboard our ship. They had handed them over to the officers who, thinking to hide them, had sewn them into their clothing. But the Moors discovered this stratagem. They took more diamonds from the pilot than from all the others.
From Gaspar Mimoso, who had just been a Postmaster in Malacca, they took twelve thousand cruzados worth of diamonds that they found in his shoes. He ended up dying of plague in Algiers after only a few days of captivity—with no shoes to wear.
Those aboard our ship hid whatever they could on their person, their rings, their chains, and other golden objects they hoped to save. Even the Persian ambassador, who was himself a Moor, was searched along with his people, and the Turks stripped them of everything they had.
The Fathers of the Society of Jesus [the Jesuits] were the only ones from whom nothing was taken—because nothing was found on them. They could have tried to hide much treasure (they had brought enough back with them), but did not bother to.
The Turks may have got nothing off our ship, but what they found on us captives brought them an immense profit.
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
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