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A few notes regarding a possible identification of the wreck.... With no House of India archives left to peruse, one has to revert to other, more imaginative, ways of finding information. Besides the royal archives kept at Torre do Tombo we have several fragmented, but crucial, documentation kept at Arquivo Historico Ultramarino, Biblioteca da Ajuda, Biblioteca da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Harvard University, British Library, Spain, Brazil, Macau, etc.
An important part of this documentation is the Relações das Armadas – the Armadas narratives. These we done by people from the 16th century onwards and were used to keep a tally, mostly on the noblemen sent to India and - sometimes with more, sometime with less detail - on the number of ships sent, their names and their fortune. There are about 50 of these narratives surviving. Only two have, besides text, the drawings/paintings of the ships; clearly ordered by prestigious persons, these two lists were eventually done on the 1560´s and are kept at Academia das Ciências de Lisboa (“Memória ou Ementa das Armadas”) and at the John Pierpont Morgan Library, in New York (“Livro de Lisuarte de Abreu”). Both have been published as a facsimile[1].
As with any non-official text, these narratives have either gaps or just plain errors. Since there’s still no such thing as a complete a critical study of their genealogy and authority (although Paulo Guinote et al. have done a very nice first effort towards it, compiling the losses of the Carreira da India) one has to use both our better judgment and all other pertinent documentation we can get our hands on.
Let’s then read the most complete Armadas narratives starting in 1525 (our terminus post quem for the moment) and stopping only, for good measure, in 1600. Looking at the cargo of our ship – mainly copper, gold, ivory – and the lack of oriental goods (no Chinese ceramics, no pepper corns, etc.) this can only be a ship going to India, not one coming back to Lisbon (I will return with references for this later on).
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Of all the ships going outward to India, the following have been lost in this period:
1525: Dom Felippe de Castro, ship Corpo Santo, lost at Cape de Rosalgate;
1527: Manoel de Lacerda (ship Conceição) and Aleixo de Abreu (ship Bastiana), both lost at island of São Lourenço;
1528: Affonso Vaz Azambujo, lost at island of João da Nova; João de Freitas, lost at Val das Egoas; Bernardim da Silva, lost at parcel of Sofala; Nuno da Cunha (ship Flor da Rosa), lost while anchored off the island of São Lourenço;
1531: Manoel de Maçedo, ship Esperança, lost at Cape Comorim in a low lying island facing Calicaré;
1533: Francisco de Noronha, on Bom Jesus, lost on the turn of the Cape of Good Hope;
1538: Bernardim da Silveira, lost;
1544: Simão de Mello, ship Graça, lost at Bahia Fermosa, 5 leagues off Melinde;
1550: Dom Diogo de Noronha, lost at Mazagão, near Baçaim;
1552: Antonio Moniz Barreto, ship Zambuco, lost at the coast of India;
1555: Francisco Nobre, ship Conceição, lost at the sunken reefs of Pero dos Banhos;
1585: Fernão de Mendoça, ship Santiago, lost at baixos of Judia;
1589: Dom João da Cunha in Santo António lost between Mozambique and India
1590: Ruy Gomes in the galleon São Lucas that disappeared near Lisbon;
1593: Pero Gonçalves, ship São Pedro, lost in Pernambuco; Antonio Teixeira de Macedo lost at high seas after Mozambique;
1599: Simão de Mendonça. lost 40 leagues before arriving at Mozambique;
1600: Gaspar Palha Lobo, ship São Filipe, lost at Val das Egoas.
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So, by reading with a critical eye all the available Relações, there is only one ship that is unnacounted for, lost somewhere between Lisbon and India, without a specific place of loss – the ship of Bernardim Silveira (1538).
But, if we check the Chronical of King João III, published by Francisco Andrada in 1613, seventy years after the event, we find that:
“of these twelve ships the one of Bernardim da Silveyra, because it was leaking badly, could not go to India and returned to the Kingdom”[2]
Problem solved. So, again according to several different Relações, the only India-going ship that could have been lost in this area, in the said time frame, is the 1533 one. Also, if we take into account that the “Portugueses” coins ceased to be struck on November, the 19th, 1538 and were re-melted, this identification makes even more sense.
And what happened in 1533? Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, a chronicler that lived in India from 1528 till 1538 (a priveledged eye witness of these events) wrote that:
on this year of 1533, the King of Portugal dispatched seven ships to India, split in two captaincies, of the three was captain-general a nobleman called dom João Pereyra, that had the Goa captaincy, and his captains were a certain dom Francisco de Noronha that was lost due to weather, and Lourenço de Payva that sailed through with dom João. Of the other armada was captain-general another nobleman called dom Gonçalo Coutinho, he also had the Captancy of Goa if João Pereyra vacated it, his captains were Simão da Veiga, Diogo Brandão from Oporto, and Nuno Furtado de Mendonça, holder of Cardiga, of which we know not much, only what happened to João Pereyra (that was grounded in the Sofala Parcel reef but managed to refloat the nau and arrived in Goa)[3]
So, here you have it: a ship lost in 1533, near the Cape of Good Hope, in bad weather… could well be what we are staring at. At the very least, it's a working hypothesis.
[1] “Livro de Lisuarte de Abreu”, ed. fac-símile, Lisboa, CNCDP, 1992 and “Memória das Armadas”, ed. fac-símile, Lisboa, Academia das Ciências, 1982.
[2] ANDRADA, Francisco, “Cronica do muyto alto e muito poderoso rey destes reynos de Portugal dom João o III deste nome”. Lisboa: Jorge Rodrigues, 1613, 3ª parte, p. 78.
[3] CASTANHEDA, Fernão, “Historia do Descobrimento e Conquista da India pelos Portugueses por Fernão Lopes de Castanheda”. Nova Edição, Livro VIII. Lisboa: Typographia Rollandiana, 1853 p. 156.
