JOÃO DE CARVALHO MASCARENHAS: WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE A GALLEY SLAVE

We started this year (2023) with a series of excepts from a captivity narrative written by a Portuguese soldier named João de Carvalho Mascarenhas who endured five years as a slave in Algiers in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Mascarenhas, remember, survived his enslavement and managed eventually to return home, where he wrote a narrative describing his experiences: Memorável relaçam da perda da Nao Conceição que os Turcos queymárão à vista da barra de Lisboa. (Memorable Account of the Loss of the Ship Conceiçam that the Turks Burned in Sight of the Bar of Lisbon).

To wind down the year, I thought it might be appropriate to return to Mascarenhas.

João Mascarenhas served as a soldier for the Portuguese crown in a wide variety of locations, including Brazil, Mozambique, various places along the east coast of Africa as far north as the shores of the Red Sea, the Middle East (where he saw the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers), Persia, Mongolia, and India, where, among other places, he visited the Ganges.

In March of 1621, after completing a tour in the Portuguese controlled territory in India, Mascarenhas embarked from Goa on the Nossa Senhora da Conceição (Our Lady of Conception), a large carrack that was returning to Portugal. The voyage lasted slightly over seven months, and in October, the Conceição arrived in the waters near Lisbon. There, the ship was attacked by a fleet of Algerine corsairs and, after a series of sea battles, set afire and sunk.

The excerpts from Mascarenhas’ Memorável relaçam da perda da Nao Conceição that I posted way back at the beginning of this year described that corsair attack.

Mascarenhas survived the attack and was taken to Algiers, where he was sold into slavery. Worse than that… he was made a galley slave.

By the early seventeenth century, Barbary corsairs were phasing out the use of oared galleys in favor of square-rigged, European style sailing ships, but galleys were still in use.

Oared galleys were the seventeenth century’s equivalent of motorboats—powered by human muscle. In the age of sail, this gave galleys, which could move any way they wanted regardless of wind conditions, a major tactical advantage. It came at a cost, though. A large galley required as many as a couple of hundred slaves toiling at the oars. Even relatively modest galleys still needed dozens of slave oarsmen.

Conditions aboard such vessels were atrocious.

In this week’s excerpt from the Memorável, Mascarenhas describes firsthand what life aboard such a galley was like for the slave oarsmen. (Following the standard usage of the time, Mascarenhas refers to the corsair as “Turks.” In those days, the word was used as a generic term for all Muslims and does not mean they actually came from Turkey.)

Here then is João de Carvalho Mascarenhas’ description of what it was like to be a slave aboard an oared corsair galley. This is, to my knowledge, the first time this text has appeared translated into English.

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As for me, I was, for my sins, consigned to be a rower on a corsair galley, and so I was an eyewitness to the torments such a fate incurs. The sufferings that one endures on a Turkish galley are so harsh that it is said in Algiers that if a man has not been a galley slave, he cannot truly claim he has been a real slave.

And this is undeniably true.

The unfortunate galley slave is attached to a very long chain that is riveted to the galley itself. If the ship capsizes—as frequently happens—no slave can get out alive. Furthermore, when the slaves try to sleep, there are five of them sitting sideways, crammed together on a four-span bench without being able to turn around. As for the food… It consists of two handfuls of black biscuits each day, nothing more.

The galley slaves row shirtless, and they are lashed so frequently and so violently that there is not one among them who is not covered in blood.

The maneuvering of these galleys seems to be operated not by men, but by diabolical spirits. You have to anchor, drop the gangplank, raise anchor, bring in the sail, hoist the sail, change tack, row—all at full speed, and all the while the unfortunate slaves are constantly being beaten.

Under the slightest pretext the Turks do the escurribanda, which consists of herding the slaves into a courtyard and lashing the bare back of each one ten or twelve times with a length of tarred rope. The two hundred and fifty Christians of a galley must pass through it one by one, without a chance of anyone escaping it.

But this is still nothing compared to the great confusion and volleys of blows that await them when they venture into Christian countries.

Dawn can reveal their presence, and so they therefore flee four leagues offshore by force of oars. Then, after having verified that there are no Christian galleys nearby to cause them harm, they return to land at the same speed. When they arrive, they disembark (with their packs on their backs) the one hundred and fifty soldiers aboard each galley. Then the slaves must unload the sails, the oars, the provisions, the ballast, and everything else that may be on board.

After this, the slaves must immediately tilt the galley on its side, scrape the hull, and coat it with tallow. Then they must put everything back on board at the same speed. So in two hours the ship is cleaned and trimmed and returned to sea—all this by dint of constant blows with sticks.

Chasing after a ship is an ordeal that only the demons of Hell could endure. As soon as the Turks spot a ship, even from a far distance, and even if they can only see the tip of a sail, they absolutely must catch it. I have seen men who, after that, fell exhausted onto the oar, and others who died under the lash without the Turks having the slightest pity for them. On the contrary, they were more and more cruel and more and more relentless.

If by chance the Turks are pursued by some Christian galleys (of which they nevertheless pay little attention, except those of the Grand Duke of Florence, whom they greatly fear), it is a wonder to see the sudden kindness they give to the slaves—even going so far as to wipe the sweat from their faces with their handkerchiefs—so that the slaves will row harder and get them out of danger. The Turks want to get along well with the slaves during this sort of situation in case they are caught—all out of fear. They tell the slaves at the oars to do everything possible, and that if fate turns in favor of the Christians, they will gladly take their irons and give them their whips, and that thus they will exchange their destinies according to the custom of war.

By these sweet words, and others besides, they placate the slaves. But then, once the danger has passed, they overwhelm them and the poor captives are kicked and shackled, and the Turks torment and mock them.

Here is yet another proof of the numerous violence suffered by slaves.

When leaving Algiers, the galley I was on brought a load of fifty large sticks aboard, the sort from which they make bows. Fifteen days later, not a single stick remained: all of them had been broken on the backs of the slaves. After that, the Turks whipped the slaves with tarred ropes.

Galley slaves must constantly risk their lives, and not just through their labor at the oars. Every day, men die, or are injured in the arms and legs, by gunfire during the numerous captures of Christian ships or at the entrances to harbors and fortress. And the worst thing is that a man then dies without acquiring honor, forced to collude in capturing his fellow Christians—his friends and his relatives.