HISTORY
SOLUTION: History Essay – Studypool
SOLUTION: History Essay – Studypool.
Essay
Instructions:
This is a 5-page paper. Submissions should be no shorter than five pages and no
longer than five pages. Document formatting should be as follows: 1” (one inch) margins
on all sides, double spacing, 12-point type, no title page, no “works
cited”/bibliography/footnotes. Remember to proofread your work, eliminating any
spelling or grammatical errors before submitting your paper. It is in your best interest to
make an outline of your response prior to writing, since your papers will be judged on
their clarity and coherence. In general, it is best to begin each paragraph of your paper
with a topic sentence and conclude each paragraph with a citation of evidence that
supports the assertion you made in your topic sentence. No outside sources can be
used for this project—students who employ information found elsewhere will be
suspected of plagiarism. You must cite (= put in quotes) material from all of the
primary sources mentioned in each question, and only material from the primary
sources (Attention! Do not cite the professor’s lectures, the introductory material in our
books, or the footnotes to the source texts). Parenthetical references must be used: e.g.
(Erauso, 7).
Essay Question:
The topic of difference, whether cultural, ethnic, or religious, is a major theme of our
course. Our readings have made it clear early modern Europeans had difficulty dealing
with difference, much as we still do today. Considering what you have read about in
Erauso’s account (Lieutenant Nun), Boxer’s Tragic History of the Sea, and
Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, tell us about how early moderns understood cultural
differences. Pick groups different from European Christians from those found in our
sources and compile evidence from these sources which describe these peoples. Are
there any conclusions that you can draw about early modern European attitudes
towards difference from these sources? If not, at least enumerate the general features
that you discover in your evidence. Be sure to be specific about both your sources and
the objects of their descriptions.
Sources of the Three Readings:
1. Erauso’s account (Lieutenant Nun) https://www.academia.edu/38581908/Catalina_de_Erauso_the_Lieutenant_Nun_
at_the_Turn_of_the_Twenty_First_Century
2. Boxer’s Tragic History of the Sea – **PDF ATTACHED**
3. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice https://shakespeare.folger.edu/downloads/pdf/the-merchant-of-venice_PDF_Folg
erShakespeare.pdf
Other Notes:
–
You DO NOT have to completely read all of them entirely, very easy to skim
through it and easy to look up summaries online as well just in case.
–
Doesn’t have to be perfect, I’m going to read through it once completed and edit
things myself.
–
Please only use the sources I gave you and not others when referencing in case
it is a different version or wrong etc.
–
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the essay or if the links don’t
work etc., feel free to message me and I will help figure it out!
*Please have this completed by TUESDAY NIGHT since it is due Wednesday morning*
THANK YOU!
INTRODUCTION
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
A. The Carreira da India
THE carreira da India was the term used by the Portuguese for the
round voyage made by their Indiamen between Lisbon and Goa
in days of sail. It was generally considered by contemporaries to
be ‘without any doubt the greatest and most arduous of any that
are known in the world’,1 although some would have excepted
the annual voyage of the Manila galleon across the Pacific. In both
cases the seasonal winds of the Tropics formed the determining
factor, and the round voyage, including the stop-over at Goa or at
Manila, took about a year and a half for the Portuguese ships and
a year for the Spanish, under the most favourable conditions.
The SW monsoon, which normally begins on the west coast of
India about the beginning of June, had the effect of virtually closing all harbours in this region from the end of May to the beginning of September, whereas the trading season lasted from this
latter month to April. Once the Cape route to India had been
opened, the Portuguese ships tried to leave Lisbon before Easter,
so as to round the Cape of Good Hope in time to catch the tailend of the SW monsoon winds off the East African coast, north
of the equator, which would bring them to Goa in September or
October. Similarly, they aimed at leaving Goa (or Cochin) with
the NE monsoon about Christmas, so as to round the Cape
before the stormy ‘winter* weather set in there in May.
The ships used in the carreira da India were principally carracks
and galleons, smaller vessels being only occasionally employed.
The carrack, or Ndo (‘Great Ship’), was a type of merchant-ship
used by the Venetians and Genoese in the later Middle Ages; but
it was the Portuguese who brought it to its greatest and most
spectacular development in the Ndo da carreira da India during the
1 A. Valignano, S.J., Historia del principle y progresso He la Campania de Jesus en
las Indias Orientates (ed. Rome, 1944), 9-
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
2
The Tragic History of the Sea
late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Broadly speaking, a
Portuguese East India carrack was a large merchant-ship, broad
in the beam, with three or four flush decks, a high poop and forecastle, but lightly gunned for her size, and often a sluggish sailer.
Originally of about 400 tons burden, they eventually attained over
2,000 tons. These huge argosies were the largest vessels afloat at
the turn of the sixteenth century, being rivalled only by the great
Manila galleons, some of which attained comparable dimensions.1
They excited the wonder of the Elizabethans in much the same
way as the Queen Mary does with us. Richard Hakluyt records
admiringly the measurements of the 1,600 ton Madre de Deus,
captured by six English ships off the Azores in 1592 when homeward-bound from India, and taken into Dartmouth. She was the
wonder of the West Country, people flocking from all over England to see her. Even the gigantic Sovereign of the Seas, built for
Charles I in 1637, was apparently surpassed in size by her Portuguese contemporary, the Santa Tereza, built as a New da carreira da
India at Oporto in the same year, and lost at the battle ofthe Downs
in I639.2
A galleon, on the other hand, was primarily a fighting-ship,
and a lighter and handier vessel than a carrack as a general rule,
but more heavily gunned, and with a less cumbersome form of
poop and forecastle. The distinction between carrack and galleon
in Portuguese and Spanish terminology was not always a hard
and fast one, and in the course of the seventeenth century it became very difficult to draw an exact line between the two types.
Although galleons usually did not exceed 500-600 tons, whereas
carracks were frequently over 1,000, yet galleons of 800-1,200
tons were not exactly uncommon. Some of these larger vessels
were termed Ndos and Galedes indiscriminately, even by the men
who sailed in them. Prior to 1622, Portuguese carracks or Ndos
usually had four flush decks, but smaller types of three or even
two decks occur, and these latter were sometimes called navetas.
Here again is another fertile source of confusion, as the term naveta
1 Cf. W. L. Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York, 1939), 193-6.
2 C. R. Boxer, The Journal of Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp, Anno 1639 (Cambridge, 1930), 5,216-17.
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
The Carreira da India
5
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
was also applied to small frigate-type India-built vessels which
contemporary Dutch and English records call ‘yachts* or ‘frigates’.
These frigates were, of course, much smaller vessels than the warships of the same name developed by the Dunkirk corsairs in the
North Sea, and which later became a standard type in all European navies. It may be added that the Portuguese and Spaniards
very seldom used the word carraca to designate their carracks, but
almost invariably called them Ndos (Naus in modern Portuguese).
Their Dutch and English contemporaries, on the other hand,
equally invariably referred to such vessels as carracks, when they
could distinguish them from galleons, and we are therefore
justified in using the terms ‘carrack’ and Ndo interchangeably to
designate the same type of Great Ship.1
Some of the best and biggest Portuguese carracks were those
built in India, where Cochin, Bassein (Ba$aim), and, to a lesser
extent, Damao, were all shipbuilding centres of importance where
ships were built on contract—in the case of Cochin by contract
with the local raja at the period with which we are dealing. Pride
of place in this respect naturally went to the great royal arsenal and
dockyard at Goa, which was probably the most highly organized
industrial enterprise in India in the golden days of the Great
Mogul.2 The superiority of Indian teak over European pine, and
even oak, as shipbuilding timber was fully recognized by the Portuguese. A royal order 0^1585, repeated textually nine years later,
emphasized the importance of building carracks for the carreira in
India rather than in Europe, ‘both because experience has shown
that those which are built there last much longer than those built
in this kingdom, as also because they are cheaper and stronger,
and because timber for these carracks is increasingly hard to get
here’.3
1 Cf. E. E. de Barros, Trafado e construfao das Naus Portuguese dos seculos XVI e
XVII (Lisboa, 193 3); F. C. Bowen, From Carrack to Clipper (London, 1948); and
articles by R. Morton Nance and L. Guilleux la Roerie on ‘The Ship of the
Renaissance’ in The Mariner’s Mirror, XLI (1955). 281-98; XLII (1956), 180-92;
XLIII (1957), 179-93, for more technical details, illustrations, and sketches.
2 W. H. Moreland, From Akbar to Aurangzeb (1923), 73 Cartas rigias of 2201.1585 and 3.iii.i594, in Archivo Portuguez Oriental, in
(Nova Goa, 1861), 46,448-9.
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
4
The Tragic History of the Sea
Perhaps the most famous of these India-built carracks was the
Cinco Cbagas (‘Five Wounds’), constructed at Goa by the viceroy
Dom Constantino de Braganza in 1559-60. She served in the
carreira for twenty-five years, making nine or ten round voyages
apart from others, and was the flagship of five viceroys before ending her days as a hulk at Lisbon.1 This was in marked contrast
to the average Lisbon-built carrack which seldom made more
than three or four round voyages or lasted for as long as a decade.
For that matter, the English East India Company in the late eighteenth century did not normally allow a merchantman to undertake more than four round voyages. The India-built successor of
the Cinco Chagas was less fortunate, being burnt and sunk on her
maiden voyage after a heroic battle with the Earl of Cumberland’s squadron off the Azores in 1594. Equally unfortunate was
the India-built Saojoao Baptista whose tragic end is the theme of
the third narrative here translated
Experience having shown that ships of under 500 tons were
more seaworthy and more economical than the unwieldy monsters of 1,000 tons or more, the Crown decreed in 1570 that
thenceforth all the carracks constructed for use in the camera da
India, whether in Asia or in Europe, should not exceed 450 or be
less than 300 tons.2 Not much notice seems to have been taken of
this instruction, at any rate in the India yards, although it was
repeated in modified forms on later occasions, when it was
ordered that carracks should have only three flush decks instead
of four, but the tonnage limit was raised to 600 tons. Apart from
the shipyard officials and building contractors, the ship’s complements from captain to cabin-boy were interested in cramming
a homeward-bound carrack with as much cargo as she could possibly hold, since their perquisites were correspondingly greater.
Despite the obvious danger incurred by overloading a lubberly
carrack, the majority of contractors, merchants, and seamen shortsightedly preferred to run this risk rather than have less cargo-space
1 Diogo do Couto, Decada VII, bk. 9, ch. xvn. Gomes de Solis, Discursos
(1622), fol. 242, and Altgacion (1628), fols. 218-19, credits her with only eight
round voyages, as do other contemporary writers.
2 London,
1899, 44 note). In 1633 Dom Antonio de Ataide gave the complement of a ndo
da India as 18 officers, 60 sailors, 60 grummets, 4 pages and 26 gunners (Ataide
MSS, Harvard University, i).
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
10
The Tragic History of the Sea
the other. Those makeshift seamen who survived a couple of India
voyages presumably became ‘old salts’, but complaints abounded
in the years 1570-1650 that tailors, cobblers, lackeys, ploughmen
and ‘ignorant boys’ of all kinds were freely shipped as deep-sea
mariners.1 The viceroy Pero da Silva complained that when he
left Lisbon in 1635, ninety youthful stowaways were found in his
flagship, and even more in her consort, although thirty had been
sent ashore just prior to sailing, mostly boys of six or seven years
old, ‘and even under, these being brought as merchandise, some
to be made friars, etc.’2.
The mortality on board the East India carracks was very heavy,
for reasons explained below, and the recruitment of sailors for the
carreira varied a good deal. In 1623 Joao Pereira Corte-Real complained that the India voyage was so unpopular that it was necessary to press-gang sailors and keep them in irons till the ship had
sailed.3 Yet in 1565 and again in 1630, we find that common
sailors as well as officers were bribing officials at the India House
in order to be entered for the voyage.4 In 16 3 4 the viceroy wrote to the
home government that he realized they were short of money, but
he could not believe that Portugal lacked men.5 Nearly everyone
else, however, complained that she did, and certainly her population of about a million could not cope with the demands of her
maritime and commercial empire from the Maranhao to Macao.
Portuguese coastal shipping in Asia was largely operated by
Asian seamen, and even the great carracks which visited Japan
might have only a few white men besides the captain, pilot, and
1 Regimento dos Escrivaens das Naos da carreira da India (Lisboa, 1611 and 1640);
Codex-Lynch, fols. 140-1, 161-2; Antonio Vieira [alias Antonio de Sousa de
Macedo], Arte de Furtar (ed. Lisboa, 1744), 39-40,79-81.
2 Pero da Silva to the Crown, Goa, 17 February 1636, in Torre do Tombo,
‘Livros das Mongoes,’ Livro 3 3, fol. 261.
3 Autograph marginal note by Joao Pereira Corte-Real in the writer’s copy of
the Discursos (1622). Cf. also Arte de Furtar (ed. 1744), 262-3.
4 A. da Silva Rego, Documentafao para a bistoria das missoes do padroado portugues do
Oriente. India, ix (1953). 535; Codex-Lynch, fols. 140, 161. Pyrard de Laval also
states that the sailors had to buy their places in his day (1609). Cf. Hak. Soc. ed.,
ii, 185.
5 Linhares’s dispatch of29.xi. 1634, printed in the Cbronista de Tissuary, in (NovaGoa, 1868), 272.
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
Tbe Carreira da India
11
master-gunner in their complements. In the Indian Ocean the
captain was sometimes the only European on board, for even the
pilots were often Muslim Gujeratis.1
Most sixteenth-seventeenth-century Portuguese, including the
writers in the Historia Trdgico-Maritima, bitterly criticized sailors as a
class, and frequently denounced their clownishness, indiscipline,
selfishness and brutality. Official correspondence took the same
line, and indeed contempt for sailors and their profession was a
characteristic of contemporary Spain and Portugal.2 This knowledge cannot have helped their self-respect, and the poor pay they
received (when they got any at all) and the hard life which they
led doubtless helped to brutalize them. It is therefore surprising to
read Pyrard de Laval’s eulogistic account of the gentlemanly behaviour of the sailors of the carreira da India in his day, which he
contrasted with the boorish behaviour of French mariners.3 There
may be something in Pyrard’s testimony, particularly since in most
respects he is highly critical of the Portuguese and of sailors in
general; but the weight of contemporary evidence indicates that
the life of the average Portuguese sailor in the carreira was nasty,
brutish, and short. This does not alter the fact that there were a
fair number of men who spent useful lives in that difficult and
dangerous calling, and chief among these were the pilots.
The captain of an East India carrack was usually a landsman,
and by royal regulations the pilot had sole charge of the ship’s
navigation. He was therefore a more important and influential
person than his equivalent in a Dutch, English, or French Indiaman, where the captain or master was generally a capable navigator and had the last word in deciding a ship’s course. The efficient functioning of the carreira da India thus depended largely on
the pilots, and on the whole they lived up to their responsibilities.
1 E. Sanceau, Cartas de D.Joao de Castro (Lisboa, 1954). 22, 44; C. R. Boxer,
The Christian Century inJapan 1549-1650 (Berkeley, 1951), “8,279, for some typical
examples which it would be easy to multiply.
2 Tome Pinheiro da Veiga, Fastigimia (Coimbra, 1911), 54~5; Gomes de Solis,
Alegadon (1628), fols. 233, 261; M. Herrero Garcia, Ideas de los Espanoles del siglo
XVII (Madrid, 1928), 275-6; J. DufFy, Shipwreck and Empire (Cambridge, Mass.,
1955), 93-5-
3 Voyage of Pyrard de Laval, n, 186.
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
12
The Tragic History of the Sea
When we consider the few and elementary navigating instruments
which were then available; the inaccurate and small-scale charts
which were used; the insufficient knowledge of natural phenomena like magnetic variation and ocean currents; the complete
lack of any weather forecast; the want of a reliable nautical timepiece, or method of calculating longitude; and finally the bad
sailing qualities of most of the lubberly carracks, it seems nothing
short of miraculous that their pilots sometimes reached Goa just
when they anticipated after a voyage of over 200 days, perhaps
without having sighted land after leaving the mouth of the Tagus.
Miraculous, nevertheless, it was not, although the piety of these
pilots and the hostility of their critics often implied that it was.
‘God takes them out and God brings them back’, was a favourite
saying of both parties in the carreira da India concerning the annual
voyage of the carracks. This aphorism was quoted approvingly by
Diogo do Couto in his condemnation of pilots who relied on
their beautifully decorated but misleading charts, as opposed to
those old tarpaulins who had worked their way up from cabinboy to master-mariner in repeated voyages, and whose skill was
based rather on their knowledge of the winds, tides, and other
natural phenomena than on their grasp of theoretical navigation.
Couto’s criticisms were echoed by many of his contemporaries,
and the complacent arrogance of the pilots of the carreira was
indeed proverbial.1
In the final analysis, a successful voyage resulted from a combination of good fortune and the pilot’s skill in navigation. That
skill, as Diogo do Couto observed, was only attained by continuous and careful observation throughout a series of voyages. This
practical experience formed the basis of the pilots’ roteirof (anglice
rutters) or written sailing-directions, many of which were models
of their kind. They may be said to be the forerunners of the Eng1 Diogo do Couto, Decada X, Livro vii, 123-4 of the 1788 ed., and Dialogo do
Soldado Pratico Portuguez (Lisboa, 1799), n, 8-12, 99-101; A. da Silva Rego,
Documentacao, vi (1951). 190, and ix, 14; D. Carck de Silva y Figueroa, Comentarios, 1614-1624 (ed. Madrid, 2 vols., 1903), I, 48 fF., 80, 109-12, 121; n, 528,
546-50; Fernao de Queiroz, S.J., Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon (ed.
S. G. Perera, Colombo, 1930), 1098-9; Linschoten, Discours of Voyages (London,
1598), 146-8,166.
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
The Carreira da India
15
lish Admiralty Pilot Handbooks which are the standby of navigators at the present day. The first printed roteiro of the India voyage was only published in I6O8,1 but manuscript ones were in
circulation at least a century earlier. Later editions, with certain
variations, were published at irregular intervals throughout the
seventeenth century by successive cosmographers-royal of the
Portuguese Crown.
The standard roteiro, whether printed or manuscript, consisted
of two parts. The first was a treatise on the theory of navigation,
and contained such items as: (a) calendar and tables of the sun’s
declination; (b) rules for finding the latitude by observing the sun
on the meridian; (c) explanation of the mariner’s compass with
notes on its variation; (d) rules for plotting a ship’s track on the
chart; (e) directions for determining latitude by the Pole Star;
(/) a traverse table for the dead-reckoning of the course; (^) rules
for calculating a ship’s daily run, based on the measurement of
17^ leagues to the geographical degree; (b) a brief summary of
John of Holywood’s medieval Tractatus de Spbaera. The second
part consisted of sailing directions between Lisbon on the one
hand and Goa, Cochin, and Malacca on the other, with an
appendix on the regional variations of the compass-needle. For
the period 1575-1612, the sailing-directions for the India voyage
were chiefly based on those elaborated by Vicente Rodrigues of
Lagos, who spent a lifetime in the carreira before being lost with
the returning Bom Jesus in i59i-2 From 1612 onwards they embodied many of the amendments introduced by another celebrated
pilot, Caspar Ferreira Reimao, whose Roteiro was printed in a
very limited edition in that year, and who was directly concerned
in two out of the three shipwrecks described below.3
In addition to his own practical experience and that embodied
in the roteiros, the pilot also had a few simple navigating instru1 Manual de Figueiredo, Hydrograpbia. Exame de Pilotos (Lisboa, 1608). For subsequent editions see A. Fontoura da Costa, A Marinbaria dos Descobrimentos (Lisboa,
2 His roteiros were included in Linschoten’s Itinerarh which was the vade-mecum
of the Dutch and English pioneer navigators in the East during the first two decades
of the seventeenth century. Cf. also Silva y Figueroa, Comentarios, i, 81.
3 Cf. 39-40W/W.
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
14
The Tragic History of the Sea
ments, such as the mariner’s compass, astrolabe, cross-staff and
quadrant. He also had an hour-glass, and a portulan-type
nautical chart (carta de marear)t drawn on a consistent distance
scale but not on a consistent projection. Since he had no means of
ascertaining the longitude, the chart was of very limited value,
and most of the instruments could not be used in stormy or cloudy
weather. Even in fine weather, the best he could hope for was a
fairly accurate calculation of his position from a combination of
observed latitude and dead reckoning when he was out of sight of
land. One gets the impression from the surviving ships’ journals
or diarios do bordo, that the pilots’ chief reliance was on their
astrolabe, their mariner’s compass, and on their experience of the
ocean currents, the varying species of birds they saw, the colour
and run of the sea, the kinds of seaweed, the sort of sand they
dredged up when they took soundings, and so forth. In other
words, on a combination of latitude-sailing, dead reckoning, and,
above all, on their knowledge of how to interpret nature’s signs.
The following extract from Caspar Ferreira’s journal of 17
January 1598 is typical: ‘… and I tell you that steering this
course, as soon as you see large numbers of seagulls from 8° to
between 9° and 10° latitude, that you are off the islands of Arro,
and you will find gulf-weed and branches of seaweed. On seeing
these signs together with men-of-war birds and wind in the east,
you should try to work south-westwards and approach Cape
Delgado, and although there is likewise gulf-weed off this coast,
it is not found together with seagulls and men-of-war birds.’1
This keen observation of the sea and sky around him did not
prevent the pilot from watching his compass-needle continually,
as testified in a striking passage by an English contemporary:
‘In this point of steeridge, the Spaniards and Portugalls doe
exceede all that I have scene, I meane for their care, which is
chiefest in navigation. And I wish in this … we should follow
1 Quirino da Fonseca, Diarios da Navegafao da Carreira da India nos anos de 1545,
i$
Purchase answer to see full
attachment
Instructions:
This is a 5-page paper. Submissions should be no shorter than five pages and no
longer than five pages. Document formatting should be as follows: 1” (one inch) margins
on all sides, double spacing, 12-point type, no title page, no “works
cited”/bibliography/footnotes. Remember to proofread your work, eliminating any
spelling or grammatical errors before submitting your paper. It is in your best interest to
make an outline of your response prior to writing, since your papers will be judged on
their clarity and coherence. In general, it is best to begin each paragraph of your paper
with a topic sentence and conclude each paragraph with a citation of evidence that
supports the assertion you made in your topic sentence. No outside sources can be
used for this project—students who employ information found elsewhere will be
suspected of plagiarism. You must cite (= put in quotes) material from all of the
primary sources mentioned in each question, and only material from the primary
sources (Attention! Do not cite the professor’s lectures, the introductory material in our
books, or the footnotes to the source texts). Parenthetical references must be used: e.g.
(Erauso, 7).
Essay Question:
The topic of difference, whether cultural, ethnic, or religious, is a major theme of our
course. Our readings have made it clear early modern Europeans had difficulty dealing
with difference, much as we still do today. Considering what you have read about in
Erauso’s account (Lieutenant Nun), Boxer’s Tragic History of the Sea, and
Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, tell us about how early moderns understood cultural
differences. Pick groups different from European Christians from those found in our
sources and compile evidence from these sources which describe these peoples. Are
there any conclusions that you can draw about early modern European attitudes
towards difference from these sources? If not, at least enumerate the general features
that you discover in your evidence. Be sure to be specific about both your sources and
the objects of their descriptions.
Sources of the Three Readings:
1. Erauso’s account (Lieutenant Nun) https://www.academia.edu/38581908/Catalina_de_Erauso_the_Lieutenant_Nun_
at_the_Turn_of_the_Twenty_First_Century
2. Boxer’s Tragic History of the Sea – **PDF ATTACHED**
3. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice https://shakespeare.folger.edu/downloads/pdf/the-merchant-of-venice_PDF_Folg
erShakespeare.pdf
Other Notes:
–
You DO NOT have to completely read all of them entirely, very easy to skim
through it and easy to look up summaries online as well just in case.
–
Doesn’t have to be perfect, I’m going to read through it once completed and edit
things myself.
–
Please only use the sources I gave you and not others when referencing in case
it is a different version or wrong etc.
–
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the essay or if the links don’t
work etc., feel free to message me and I will help figure it out!
*Please have this completed by TUESDAY NIGHT since it is due Wednesday morning*
THANK YOU!
INTRODUCTION
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
A. The Carreira da India
THE carreira da India was the term used by the Portuguese for the
round voyage made by their Indiamen between Lisbon and Goa
in days of sail. It was generally considered by contemporaries to
be ‘without any doubt the greatest and most arduous of any that
are known in the world’,1 although some would have excepted
the annual voyage of the Manila galleon across the Pacific. In both
cases the seasonal winds of the Tropics formed the determining
factor, and the round voyage, including the stop-over at Goa or at
Manila, took about a year and a half for the Portuguese ships and
a year for the Spanish, under the most favourable conditions.
The SW monsoon, which normally begins on the west coast of
India about the beginning of June, had the effect of virtually closing all harbours in this region from the end of May to the beginning of September, whereas the trading season lasted from this
latter month to April. Once the Cape route to India had been
opened, the Portuguese ships tried to leave Lisbon before Easter,
so as to round the Cape of Good Hope in time to catch the tailend of the SW monsoon winds off the East African coast, north
of the equator, which would bring them to Goa in September or
October. Similarly, they aimed at leaving Goa (or Cochin) with
the NE monsoon about Christmas, so as to round the Cape
before the stormy ‘winter* weather set in there in May.
The ships used in the carreira da India were principally carracks
and galleons, smaller vessels being only occasionally employed.
The carrack, or Ndo (‘Great Ship’), was a type of merchant-ship
used by the Venetians and Genoese in the later Middle Ages; but
it was the Portuguese who brought it to its greatest and most
spectacular development in the Ndo da carreira da India during the
1 A. Valignano, S.J., Historia del principle y progresso He la Campania de Jesus en
las Indias Orientates (ed. Rome, 1944), 9-
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
2
The Tragic History of the Sea
late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Broadly speaking, a
Portuguese East India carrack was a large merchant-ship, broad
in the beam, with three or four flush decks, a high poop and forecastle, but lightly gunned for her size, and often a sluggish sailer.
Originally of about 400 tons burden, they eventually attained over
2,000 tons. These huge argosies were the largest vessels afloat at
the turn of the sixteenth century, being rivalled only by the great
Manila galleons, some of which attained comparable dimensions.1
They excited the wonder of the Elizabethans in much the same
way as the Queen Mary does with us. Richard Hakluyt records
admiringly the measurements of the 1,600 ton Madre de Deus,
captured by six English ships off the Azores in 1592 when homeward-bound from India, and taken into Dartmouth. She was the
wonder of the West Country, people flocking from all over England to see her. Even the gigantic Sovereign of the Seas, built for
Charles I in 1637, was apparently surpassed in size by her Portuguese contemporary, the Santa Tereza, built as a New da carreira da
India at Oporto in the same year, and lost at the battle ofthe Downs
in I639.2
A galleon, on the other hand, was primarily a fighting-ship,
and a lighter and handier vessel than a carrack as a general rule,
but more heavily gunned, and with a less cumbersome form of
poop and forecastle. The distinction between carrack and galleon
in Portuguese and Spanish terminology was not always a hard
and fast one, and in the course of the seventeenth century it became very difficult to draw an exact line between the two types.
Although galleons usually did not exceed 500-600 tons, whereas
carracks were frequently over 1,000, yet galleons of 800-1,200
tons were not exactly uncommon. Some of these larger vessels
were termed Ndos and Galedes indiscriminately, even by the men
who sailed in them. Prior to 1622, Portuguese carracks or Ndos
usually had four flush decks, but smaller types of three or even
two decks occur, and these latter were sometimes called navetas.
Here again is another fertile source of confusion, as the term naveta
1 Cf. W. L. Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York, 1939), 193-6.
2 C. R. Boxer, The Journal of Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp, Anno 1639 (Cambridge, 1930), 5,216-17.
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
The Carreira da India
5
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
was also applied to small frigate-type India-built vessels which
contemporary Dutch and English records call ‘yachts* or ‘frigates’.
These frigates were, of course, much smaller vessels than the warships of the same name developed by the Dunkirk corsairs in the
North Sea, and which later became a standard type in all European navies. It may be added that the Portuguese and Spaniards
very seldom used the word carraca to designate their carracks, but
almost invariably called them Ndos (Naus in modern Portuguese).
Their Dutch and English contemporaries, on the other hand,
equally invariably referred to such vessels as carracks, when they
could distinguish them from galleons, and we are therefore
justified in using the terms ‘carrack’ and Ndo interchangeably to
designate the same type of Great Ship.1
Some of the best and biggest Portuguese carracks were those
built in India, where Cochin, Bassein (Ba$aim), and, to a lesser
extent, Damao, were all shipbuilding centres of importance where
ships were built on contract—in the case of Cochin by contract
with the local raja at the period with which we are dealing. Pride
of place in this respect naturally went to the great royal arsenal and
dockyard at Goa, which was probably the most highly organized
industrial enterprise in India in the golden days of the Great
Mogul.2 The superiority of Indian teak over European pine, and
even oak, as shipbuilding timber was fully recognized by the Portuguese. A royal order 0^1585, repeated textually nine years later,
emphasized the importance of building carracks for the carreira in
India rather than in Europe, ‘both because experience has shown
that those which are built there last much longer than those built
in this kingdom, as also because they are cheaper and stronger,
and because timber for these carracks is increasingly hard to get
here’.3
1 Cf. E. E. de Barros, Trafado e construfao das Naus Portuguese dos seculos XVI e
XVII (Lisboa, 193 3); F. C. Bowen, From Carrack to Clipper (London, 1948); and
articles by R. Morton Nance and L. Guilleux la Roerie on ‘The Ship of the
Renaissance’ in The Mariner’s Mirror, XLI (1955). 281-98; XLII (1956), 180-92;
XLIII (1957), 179-93, for more technical details, illustrations, and sketches.
2 W. H. Moreland, From Akbar to Aurangzeb (1923), 73 Cartas rigias of 2201.1585 and 3.iii.i594, in Archivo Portuguez Oriental, in
(Nova Goa, 1861), 46,448-9.
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
4
The Tragic History of the Sea
Perhaps the most famous of these India-built carracks was the
Cinco Cbagas (‘Five Wounds’), constructed at Goa by the viceroy
Dom Constantino de Braganza in 1559-60. She served in the
carreira for twenty-five years, making nine or ten round voyages
apart from others, and was the flagship of five viceroys before ending her days as a hulk at Lisbon.1 This was in marked contrast
to the average Lisbon-built carrack which seldom made more
than three or four round voyages or lasted for as long as a decade.
For that matter, the English East India Company in the late eighteenth century did not normally allow a merchantman to undertake more than four round voyages. The India-built successor of
the Cinco Chagas was less fortunate, being burnt and sunk on her
maiden voyage after a heroic battle with the Earl of Cumberland’s squadron off the Azores in 1594. Equally unfortunate was
the India-built Saojoao Baptista whose tragic end is the theme of
the third narrative here translated
Experience having shown that ships of under 500 tons were
more seaworthy and more economical than the unwieldy monsters of 1,000 tons or more, the Crown decreed in 1570 that
thenceforth all the carracks constructed for use in the camera da
India, whether in Asia or in Europe, should not exceed 450 or be
less than 300 tons.2 Not much notice seems to have been taken of
this instruction, at any rate in the India yards, although it was
repeated in modified forms on later occasions, when it was
ordered that carracks should have only three flush decks instead
of four, but the tonnage limit was raised to 600 tons. Apart from
the shipyard officials and building contractors, the ship’s complements from captain to cabin-boy were interested in cramming
a homeward-bound carrack with as much cargo as she could possibly hold, since their perquisites were correspondingly greater.
Despite the obvious danger incurred by overloading a lubberly
carrack, the majority of contractors, merchants, and seamen shortsightedly preferred to run this risk rather than have less cargo-space
1 Diogo do Couto, Decada VII, bk. 9, ch. xvn. Gomes de Solis, Discursos
(1622), fol. 242, and Altgacion (1628), fols. 218-19, credits her with only eight
round voyages, as do other contemporary writers.
2 London,
1899, 44 note). In 1633 Dom Antonio de Ataide gave the complement of a ndo
da India as 18 officers, 60 sailors, 60 grummets, 4 pages and 26 gunners (Ataide
MSS, Harvard University, i).
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
10
The Tragic History of the Sea
the other. Those makeshift seamen who survived a couple of India
voyages presumably became ‘old salts’, but complaints abounded
in the years 1570-1650 that tailors, cobblers, lackeys, ploughmen
and ‘ignorant boys’ of all kinds were freely shipped as deep-sea
mariners.1 The viceroy Pero da Silva complained that when he
left Lisbon in 1635, ninety youthful stowaways were found in his
flagship, and even more in her consort, although thirty had been
sent ashore just prior to sailing, mostly boys of six or seven years
old, ‘and even under, these being brought as merchandise, some
to be made friars, etc.’2.
The mortality on board the East India carracks was very heavy,
for reasons explained below, and the recruitment of sailors for the
carreira varied a good deal. In 1623 Joao Pereira Corte-Real complained that the India voyage was so unpopular that it was necessary to press-gang sailors and keep them in irons till the ship had
sailed.3 Yet in 1565 and again in 1630, we find that common
sailors as well as officers were bribing officials at the India House
in order to be entered for the voyage.4 In 16 3 4 the viceroy wrote to the
home government that he realized they were short of money, but
he could not believe that Portugal lacked men.5 Nearly everyone
else, however, complained that she did, and certainly her population of about a million could not cope with the demands of her
maritime and commercial empire from the Maranhao to Macao.
Portuguese coastal shipping in Asia was largely operated by
Asian seamen, and even the great carracks which visited Japan
might have only a few white men besides the captain, pilot, and
1 Regimento dos Escrivaens das Naos da carreira da India (Lisboa, 1611 and 1640);
Codex-Lynch, fols. 140-1, 161-2; Antonio Vieira [alias Antonio de Sousa de
Macedo], Arte de Furtar (ed. Lisboa, 1744), 39-40,79-81.
2 Pero da Silva to the Crown, Goa, 17 February 1636, in Torre do Tombo,
‘Livros das Mongoes,’ Livro 3 3, fol. 261.
3 Autograph marginal note by Joao Pereira Corte-Real in the writer’s copy of
the Discursos (1622). Cf. also Arte de Furtar (ed. 1744), 262-3.
4 A. da Silva Rego, Documentafao para a bistoria das missoes do padroado portugues do
Oriente. India, ix (1953). 535; Codex-Lynch, fols. 140, 161. Pyrard de Laval also
states that the sailors had to buy their places in his day (1609). Cf. Hak. Soc. ed.,
ii, 185.
5 Linhares’s dispatch of29.xi. 1634, printed in the Cbronista de Tissuary, in (NovaGoa, 1868), 272.
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
Tbe Carreira da India
11
master-gunner in their complements. In the Indian Ocean the
captain was sometimes the only European on board, for even the
pilots were often Muslim Gujeratis.1
Most sixteenth-seventeenth-century Portuguese, including the
writers in the Historia Trdgico-Maritima, bitterly criticized sailors as a
class, and frequently denounced their clownishness, indiscipline,
selfishness and brutality. Official correspondence took the same
line, and indeed contempt for sailors and their profession was a
characteristic of contemporary Spain and Portugal.2 This knowledge cannot have helped their self-respect, and the poor pay they
received (when they got any at all) and the hard life which they
led doubtless helped to brutalize them. It is therefore surprising to
read Pyrard de Laval’s eulogistic account of the gentlemanly behaviour of the sailors of the carreira da India in his day, which he
contrasted with the boorish behaviour of French mariners.3 There
may be something in Pyrard’s testimony, particularly since in most
respects he is highly critical of the Portuguese and of sailors in
general; but the weight of contemporary evidence indicates that
the life of the average Portuguese sailor in the carreira was nasty,
brutish, and short. This does not alter the fact that there were a
fair number of men who spent useful lives in that difficult and
dangerous calling, and chief among these were the pilots.
The captain of an East India carrack was usually a landsman,
and by royal regulations the pilot had sole charge of the ship’s
navigation. He was therefore a more important and influential
person than his equivalent in a Dutch, English, or French Indiaman, where the captain or master was generally a capable navigator and had the last word in deciding a ship’s course. The efficient functioning of the carreira da India thus depended largely on
the pilots, and on the whole they lived up to their responsibilities.
1 E. Sanceau, Cartas de D.Joao de Castro (Lisboa, 1954). 22, 44; C. R. Boxer,
The Christian Century inJapan 1549-1650 (Berkeley, 1951), “8,279, for some typical
examples which it would be easy to multiply.
2 Tome Pinheiro da Veiga, Fastigimia (Coimbra, 1911), 54~5; Gomes de Solis,
Alegadon (1628), fols. 233, 261; M. Herrero Garcia, Ideas de los Espanoles del siglo
XVII (Madrid, 1928), 275-6; J. DufFy, Shipwreck and Empire (Cambridge, Mass.,
1955), 93-5-
3 Voyage of Pyrard de Laval, n, 186.
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
12
The Tragic History of the Sea
When we consider the few and elementary navigating instruments
which were then available; the inaccurate and small-scale charts
which were used; the insufficient knowledge of natural phenomena like magnetic variation and ocean currents; the complete
lack of any weather forecast; the want of a reliable nautical timepiece, or method of calculating longitude; and finally the bad
sailing qualities of most of the lubberly carracks, it seems nothing
short of miraculous that their pilots sometimes reached Goa just
when they anticipated after a voyage of over 200 days, perhaps
without having sighted land after leaving the mouth of the Tagus.
Miraculous, nevertheless, it was not, although the piety of these
pilots and the hostility of their critics often implied that it was.
‘God takes them out and God brings them back’, was a favourite
saying of both parties in the carreira da India concerning the annual
voyage of the carracks. This aphorism was quoted approvingly by
Diogo do Couto in his condemnation of pilots who relied on
their beautifully decorated but misleading charts, as opposed to
those old tarpaulins who had worked their way up from cabinboy to master-mariner in repeated voyages, and whose skill was
based rather on their knowledge of the winds, tides, and other
natural phenomena than on their grasp of theoretical navigation.
Couto’s criticisms were echoed by many of his contemporaries,
and the complacent arrogance of the pilots of the carreira was
indeed proverbial.1
In the final analysis, a successful voyage resulted from a combination of good fortune and the pilot’s skill in navigation. That
skill, as Diogo do Couto observed, was only attained by continuous and careful observation throughout a series of voyages. This
practical experience formed the basis of the pilots’ roteirof (anglice
rutters) or written sailing-directions, many of which were models
of their kind. They may be said to be the forerunners of the Eng1 Diogo do Couto, Decada X, Livro vii, 123-4 of the 1788 ed., and Dialogo do
Soldado Pratico Portuguez (Lisboa, 1799), n, 8-12, 99-101; A. da Silva Rego,
Documentacao, vi (1951). 190, and ix, 14; D. Carck de Silva y Figueroa, Comentarios, 1614-1624 (ed. Madrid, 2 vols., 1903), I, 48 fF., 80, 109-12, 121; n, 528,
546-50; Fernao de Queiroz, S.J., Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon (ed.
S. G. Perera, Colombo, 1930), 1098-9; Linschoten, Discours of Voyages (London,
1598), 146-8,166.
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
The Carreira da India
15
lish Admiralty Pilot Handbooks which are the standby of navigators at the present day. The first printed roteiro of the India voyage was only published in I6O8,1 but manuscript ones were in
circulation at least a century earlier. Later editions, with certain
variations, were published at irregular intervals throughout the
seventeenth century by successive cosmographers-royal of the
Portuguese Crown.
The standard roteiro, whether printed or manuscript, consisted
of two parts. The first was a treatise on the theory of navigation,
and contained such items as: (a) calendar and tables of the sun’s
declination; (b) rules for finding the latitude by observing the sun
on the meridian; (c) explanation of the mariner’s compass with
notes on its variation; (d) rules for plotting a ship’s track on the
chart; (e) directions for determining latitude by the Pole Star;
(/) a traverse table for the dead-reckoning of the course; (^) rules
for calculating a ship’s daily run, based on the measurement of
17^ leagues to the geographical degree; (b) a brief summary of
John of Holywood’s medieval Tractatus de Spbaera. The second
part consisted of sailing directions between Lisbon on the one
hand and Goa, Cochin, and Malacca on the other, with an
appendix on the regional variations of the compass-needle. For
the period 1575-1612, the sailing-directions for the India voyage
were chiefly based on those elaborated by Vicente Rodrigues of
Lagos, who spent a lifetime in the carreira before being lost with
the returning Bom Jesus in i59i-2 From 1612 onwards they embodied many of the amendments introduced by another celebrated
pilot, Caspar Ferreira Reimao, whose Roteiro was printed in a
very limited edition in that year, and who was directly concerned
in two out of the three shipwrecks described below.3
In addition to his own practical experience and that embodied
in the roteiros, the pilot also had a few simple navigating instru1 Manual de Figueiredo, Hydrograpbia. Exame de Pilotos (Lisboa, 1608). For subsequent editions see A. Fontoura da Costa, A Marinbaria dos Descobrimentos (Lisboa,
2 His roteiros were included in Linschoten’s Itinerarh which was the vade-mecum
of the Dutch and English pioneer navigators in the East during the first two decades
of the seventeenth century. Cf. also Silva y Figueroa, Comentarios, i, 81.
3 Cf. 39-40W/W.
Boxer, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). The tragic history of the sea, 1589-1622 : Narratives of the shipwrecks of the portuguese east
indiamen são thomé (1589), santo alberto (1593), são joão baptista (1622) and the journeys of the survivors in south east africa. Hakluyt Society.
Created from michstate-ebooks on 2022-02-20 00:05:09.
Copyright © 2010. Hakluyt Society. All rights reserved.
14
The Tragic History of the Sea
ments, such as the mariner’s compass, astrolabe, cross-staff and
quadrant. He also had an hour-glass, and a portulan-type
nautical chart (carta de marear)t drawn on a consistent distance
scale but not on a consistent projection. Since he had no means of
ascertaining the longitude, the chart was of very limited value,
and most of the instruments could not be used in stormy or cloudy
weather. Even in fine weather, the best he could hope for was a
fairly accurate calculation of his position from a combination of
observed latitude and dead reckoning when he was out of sight of
land. One gets the impression from the surviving ships’ journals
or diarios do bordo, that the pilots’ chief reliance was on their
astrolabe, their mariner’s compass, and on their experience of the
ocean currents, the varying species of birds they saw, the colour
and run of the sea, the kinds of seaweed, the sort of sand they
dredged up when they took soundings, and so forth. In other
words, on a combination of latitude-sailing, dead reckoning, and,
above all, on their knowledge of how to interpret nature’s signs.
The following extract from Caspar Ferreira’s journal of 17
January 1598 is typical: ‘… and I tell you that steering this
course, as soon as you see large numbers of seagulls from 8° to
between 9° and 10° latitude, that you are off the islands of Arro,
and you will find gulf-weed and branches of seaweed. On seeing
these signs together with men-of-war birds and wind in the east,
you should try to work south-westwards and approach Cape
Delgado, and although there is likewise gulf-weed off this coast,
it is not found together with seagulls and men-of-war birds.’1
This keen observation of the sea and sky around him did not
prevent the pilot from watching his compass-needle continually,
as testified in a striking passage by an English contemporary:
‘In this point of steeridge, the Spaniards and Portugalls doe
exceede all that I have scene, I meane for their care, which is
chiefest in navigation. And I wish in this … we should follow
1 Quirino da Fonseca, Diarios da Navegafao da Carreira da India nos anos de 1545,
i$
Purchase answer to see full
attachment