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XIII
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THE ARMADA OF 1445
While Gonsalo Pacheco had been wasting time and men and the good
name of Europe and Christendom in his plunderings between C. Bojador and C. Blanco, the memory of the
death of Gonsalo de Cintra was kept alive in Lagos,
and the men of the town came in solemn deputation to the Prince, before the
summer of this same year (1445) was out, to beg him for permission to take
full, perfect, and sufficient vengeance. In other words, they offered to equip
the largest fleet that had ever sailed on an ocean voyage—as it now began to be
called, a Guinea voyage—since the Prince began his work. As far as we know,
this was also one of the greatest armadas that had been sent out into the
new-discovered or re-discovered or undiscovered seas and lands since the
European nations had begun to look at all beyond their own narrow limits.
Neither the fleet
of 1341, which found the Canaries, and of which Boccaccio tells us, nor the
Genoese expedition of 1291, nor the Catalan venture of 1346, nor De Béthencourt’s armament of 1402, for the conquest of the
Fortunate Isles, was anything like this armada of 1445. For this last was a
real sign of national interest in a work which was not only discovery, but
profit and a means to more; it proved that in Portugal, in however base and
narrowly selfish a way, there was now a spirit of general enterprising
activity, and till this had been once awakened, there was not much hope of
great results from the efforts of individuals.
The first
contingent now equipped in Lagos—for the Prince at once approved of his men's
idea—numbered fourteen caravels—fourteen of the best sailing ships afloat, as Cadamosto said a little later; but this was only the
central fleet, under Lançarote as Admiral. Three more
ships came from Madeira, one of them under Tristam Vaz, the coloniser of Funchal; Diniz Diaz headed another contingent from Lisbon; Zarco, the chief partner in the discovery and settlement of
Madeira, sent his own caravel in command of his nephew; in all there were seven
and twenty ships—caravels, galleys, and pinnaces. Since the Carthaginians sent
out their colonists under Hanno beyond the Pillars of Hercules, a larger and
braver fleet had not sailed down that desolate West of Africa.
Gil Eannes, who had rounded Bojador,
was there, with the Diaz, who had passed the Green Headland and come first to
the land of the Negroes, and the list of captains was made up of the most
daring and seasoned of Spanish seamen. Scarcely a man who had ventured on the
ocean voyages of the last thirty years was still alive and able-bodied who did
not sail on the 10th August, 1445.
At the start Cape
Blanco was appointed as the rendezvous; with favouring wind and tide the ships raced out as far as Arguin.
Lawrence, a younger brother of the Diaz family, drew ahead, and was the first
to fall in with Pacheco's three caravels, which were slowly crawling home after
their losses. Now, hearing of the great fleet that was coming after to take
vengeance, they turned about to wait for them, “as it was worth
while to have revenge though one had to live on short rations”. So, now,
thirty European ships and their crews were included in the fleet. The pioneer,
Lawrence Diaz, and the rest, lay to at the Isle of Herons in the Bank of Arguin; while waiting there they saw some wonderful things
in birds, and Azurara tells us what they told him,
though rather doubtfully. The great beaks of the Marabout, or Prophet Bird,
struck them most,—"a cubit long and more, three fingers’ breadth across,
and the bill smooth and polished, like a Bashaw's scabbard, and looking as if
artificially worked with fire and tools”,—the mouth and gullet so big that the
leg of a man of the ordinary size would go into it. On these birds
particularly, says Azurara, our men refreshed
themselves during their three days' stay.
Slowly but surely,
two by two, three by three, nine caravels mustered at C. Blanco, and as the
flagship of Lançarote was among them, an attack was
made at once with two hundred and seventy-eight men picked from among the
crews, the footmen and lancers in one boat and the archers in another, with Lançarote himself and the men-at-arms behind. They were
steered by pilots who had been on the coast before and knew it, and it was
hoped they would come upon the natives of Tider Island with the first light of dawn. But the way was longer than the pilots
reckoned, the night was pitchy dark, without moon or stars, the tide was on the
ebb, and at last the boats were aground. It was well on in the morning before
they got off on the flood and rowed along the coast to find a landing-place.
The shore was manned with natives, not at all taken by surprise, but dancing,
yelling, spitting, and throwing missiles in insolent defiance. After a
desperate struggle on the beach, they were put to flight with trifling loss—eight
killed, four taken,—but when the raiders reached the village, they found it
empty; the women and children had been sent away, and all their wretched little
property had gone with them. The same was found true of all the villages on
that coast; but in a second battle on the next day, fifty-seven Moors were
captured, and the army went back on shipboard once more.
And now the fleet
divided. Lançarote, holding a council of his
captains, declared the purpose of the voyage was accomplished. They had
punished the natives and taken vengeance for Gonsalo de Cintra and the other martyrs; now it was for each crew and captain to settle
whether they would go farther. All the prisoners having now been divided like
prize-money between the ships, there was nothing more to stay for.
Five caravels at
once returned to Portugal after trying to explore the inlet of the sea at C.
Blanco; but they only went up in their boats five leagues, and then turned
back. One stayed in the Bay of Arguin to traffic in
slaves, and lost one of the most valuable captives by sheer carelessness,—a
woman, badly guarded, slipped out and swam ashore.
But there was a
braver spirit in some others of the fleet. The captain of the King’s caravel,
which had come from Lisbon in the service of the King's uncle, swore he would
not turn back. He, Gomes Pires, would go on to the Nile; the Prince had ordered
him to bring him certain word of it. He would not fail him. Lançarote for himself said the same, and another, one Alvaro de Freitas, capped the
offers of all the rest. He would go on beyond the Negro-Nile to the Earthly
Paradise, to the farthest East, where the four sacred rivers flowed from the
tree of life. "Well do you all know how our Lord the Infant sets great
store by us, that we should make him know clearly about the land of the
Negroes, and especially the River of Nile. It will not be a small guerdon that
he will give for such service."
Six caravels in
all formed the main body of the Perseverants, and
these coasted steadily along till they came to Diaz's Cape of Palms, which they
knew was near the Senegal and the land of the Negroes, “and so beautiful did
the land now become, and so delicious was the scent from the shore, that it was
as if they were by some gracious fruit garden, ordained to the sole end of
their delights. And when the men in the caravels saw the first palms and
towering woodland, they knew right well that they were close upon the River of
Nile, which the men there call the Sanaga”. For the
Infant had told them how little more than twenty leagues beyond the sight of
those trees they would see the river, as his prisoners of the Azanegue tribes had told him. And as they looked carefully
for the signs of this, they saw at last, two leagues from land, “a colour of the water that was different from the rest, for
that was of the colour of mud”.
And understanding
this to mean that there were shoals, they put farther out to sea for safety,
when one took some of the water in his hand and put it to his mouth, and found
that it was sweet. And crying out to the others, “Of a surety”, said they, “we
are now at the River of Nile, for the water of the river comes with such force
into the sea as to sweeten it”. So they dropped their anchors in the river's
mouth, and they of the caravel of Vincent Diaz (another brother of Diniz and Lawrence) let down a boat, into which jumped
eight men who pulled ashore.
Here they found
some ivory and elephant hide, and had a fierce battle with a huge negro whose
two little naked children they carried off,—but though the chronicle of the
voyages stops here for several chapters of rapturous reflection on the
greatness of the Nile, and the valour and spirit of
the Prince who had thus found a way to its western mouth, we must follow the
captains as they coast slowly along to Cape Verde, “for that the wind was fair
for sailing”. Landing on a couple of uninhabited islands off the Cape, they
found first of all “fresh goat-skins and other things”, and then the arms of
the Infant and the words of his motto, Talan de bien faire, carved
upon trees, and they doubted, like Azurara when
writing down his history from their lips; “whether the great power of Alexander
or of Caesar could have planted traces of itself so far from home”, as these
islands were from Sagres. For though the distance
looks small enough on a full map of all the world, on the chart of the Then
Known it was indeed a lengthy stretch—some two thousand miles, fully as great a
distance as the whole range of the Mediterranean from the coast of Palestine to
the Straits of Gibraltar.
Now by these
signs, adds the chronicler, they understood right well that other caravels had
been there already—and it was so; for it was the ship of John Gonsalvez Zarco, Captain of
Madeira, which had passed this way, as they found for a fact on the day after.
And wishing to land, but finding the number of the natives to be such that they
could not land by day or night, they put on shore a ball and a mirror and a
paper on which was drawn a cross.
And when the
natives came and found them in the morning, they broke the ball and threw away
the pieces, and with their assegais broke up the mirror into little bits, and
tore the paper, showing that they cared for none of these things.
Since this is so,
said Captain Gomes Pires to the archers, draw your bows upon these rascals,
that they may know we are people who can do them a damage.
But the negroes
returned the fire with arrows and assegais—deadly weapons, the arrows unfeathered and without a string-notch, but tipped with
deadly poison of herbs, made of reed or cane or charred wood with long iron
heads, and the assegais poisoned in like manner and pricked with seven or eight
harpoons of iron, so that it was no easy matter to draw it out of the flesh.
So they lost heart
for going farther, with all the coast-land up in arms against them, and turned
back to Lagos, but before they left the Cape they noticed in the desert island,
where they had found the Prince’s arms, trees so large that they had never seen
the like, for among them was one which was 108 palms round at the foot. Yet
this tree, the famous baobab, was not much higher than a walnut; “of its fibre they make good thread for sewing, which burns like
flax; its fruit is like a gourd and its kernels like chestnuts”. And so, we are
told, all the captains put back along the coast, in a mind to enter the
aforesaid River of Nile, but one of the caravels getting separated from the
rest and not liking to enter the Senegal alone, went straight to Lagos, and
another put back to water in the Bay of Arguin and
the Rio d'Ouro estuary, where there came to them at
once the Moors on board the caravel, full of confidence because they had never
had any dealings before with the merchants of Spain, and sold them a negro for
five doubloons, and gave them meat and water from their camels, and came in and
out on board the ship, so that there was great fear of treachery, but at last
without any quarrel they were all put on shore, under promise that next July
their friends would come again and trade with them in slaves and gold to their
hearts' content. And so, taking in a good cargo of seal-skins, they made their
way straight home.
Meantime two of
the other caravels and a pinnace, which had been separated early in the voyage
from the main body, under the pilotage of the veteran Diniz Diaz, had also made their way to C. Verde, had fought with the natives in some
desperate skirmishes—one knight had his “shield stuck as full with arrows as
the porcupine with quills”, and had turned back in the face of the same
discouragements as the rest; and so would have ended the whole of this great
enterprise but for the dauntless energy of one captain and his crew.
Zarco of Madeira had given his caravel to his nephew with a special charge that,
come what might, he was not to think of profit and trading, but of doing the
will of the Prince his lord. He was not to land in the fatal Bay of Arguin, which had been the end of so many enterprises; he
was to go as Diniz Diaz had first gone, straight to
the land of the Negroes, and pass beyond the farthest of earlier sailors. Now
the caravel, says Azurara proudly, was well equipped
and was manned by a crew that was ready to bear hard ship, and the captain was
full of energy and zeal, and so they went on steadily, sailing through the
great Sea of Ocean till they came to the River of Nile, where they filled two
pipes with water, of which they took back one to the city of Lisbon. And not
even Alexander, though he was one of the monarchs of the world, ever drank of
water that had been brought from so far as this.
“But now, still
going on, they passed C. Verde and landed upon the islands I have spoken of, to
see if there were any people there, but they found only some tame goats without
any one to tend them; and it was there that they made the signs that the others
found on coming after, the arms of the Infant with his device and motto. And
then drawing in close to the Cape, they waited to see if any canoes would come
off to them, and anchored about a mile off the shore. But they had not waited
long before two boats, with ten negroes in them, put off from the beach and
made straight for the caravel, like men who came in peace and friendship. And
being near, they began to make signs as if for a safe-conduct, which were
answered in like manner, and then at once, without any other precaution, five
of them came on board the caravel, where the captain made them all the entertainment
that he could, bidding them eat and drink, and so they went away with signs of
great contentment, but it appeared after, that in their hearts they meditated
treachery. For as soon as they got to land they talked with the other natives
on shore, and thinking that they could easily take the ship, with this intent
there now set out six boats, with five and thirty or forty men, arrayed as
those who come to fight, but when they came close they were afraid and stayed a
little way off, without daring to make any attack. And seeing this, our men
launched a boat on the other side of the caravel, where they could not be seen
by the enemy, and manned it with eight rowers, who were to wait till the canoes
came nearer to the ship. At last the negroes were tired of waiting and
watching, and one of their canoes came up closer, in which were five strong
warriors, and at once our boat rowed round the caravel and cut them off. And
because of the great advantage that we had in our style of rowing, in a trice
our men were upon them, and they having no hope of defence,
threw themselves into the water, and the other boats made off for the shore.
And our men had the greatest trouble in catching those that were swimming away,
for they dived not a whit worse than cormorants, so that we could scarcely
catch hold of them. One was taken, not very easily, on the spot, and another,
who fought as desperately as two men, was wounded, and with these two the boat
returned to the caravel.
“And for that they
saw that it would not profit them to stay longer in that place, they resolved
to see if they could find any new lands of which they might bring news to the
Infant their lord. And so, sailing on again, they came to a cape, where they
saw 'groves of palm trees dry and without branches, which they called the Cape
of Masts”. Here, a little farther along the coast, a reconnoitring party of seven landed and found four negro hunters sitting on the beach, armed
with bows and arrows, who fled on seeing the strangers. "And as they were
naked and their hair cut very short, they could not catch them," and only
brought away their arrows for a trophy.
This Cape of
Masts, or some point of the coast a little to the south-east, was the farthest
now reached by Zarco’s caravel. “From here they put
back and sailed direct to Madeira, and thence to the city of Lisbon, where the
Infant received them with reward enough. For this caravel, of all those who had
sailed at this time (1445), had done most and reached farthest”.
There was one
contingent of the great armada yet unaccounted for, but they were sad
defaulters. Three of the ships on the outward voyage which had separated from
the main body and Lançarote’s flagship, had the
cowardice or laziness to give up the purpose of the voyage altogether; “they
agreed to make a descent on the Canary Islands
instead of going to Guinea at all that year”.
Here they stayed
some time, raiding and slave-hunting, but also making observations on the
natives and the different natural features of the different islands, which, as
we have them in the old chronicle, are not the least interesting part of the
story of the Lagos Armada of 1445.
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