Tom and Jerry Game? António Eanes Pinteado and the Bargaining of Nautical Expertise Between Maritime Rivals

In April 1553, António Eanes Pinteado, a skilled Portuguese oceanic pilot and captain from Oporto, signed from London a letter to King John III of Portugal, preserved today at the Portuguese National Archives of Lisbon (ANTT, Corpo Cronológico I-89-120). The missive was the pilot’s reply to the Portuguese King’s request to return to Portugal to serve him.

In the letter [see both illustrations], he explained his reasons for not coming back to Portuguese service. He argued that he had been mistreated despite having personally fought at sea, on Portuguese service, against the Scots and the French. He claimed that due to a complaint from a Spaniard, he had been jailed in Lisbon in 1547. Since his arrival to England in 1552, London merchants had been tempting him with proposals to pilot English overseas voyages, all of which he had refused because he still wished to serve his king. Thus, he replied to King John III that he would only return to Portugal if his goods were restored and he was granted a reward. The Portuguese King quickly issued a pardon letter to Pinteado and promoted him to knight with a corresponding pension.

Nevertheless, in this missive, Pinteado was misleading King John III about his true intentions. After receiving the Portuguese King’s response, he proposed to Thomas Wyndham that he could captain an English voyage to West Africa. He offered to teach Wyndham the nautical route from England to West Africa, the secrets of astronomical navigation in the Atlantic, the best places to trade, and the best methods to evade Portuguese vigilance. Pinteado also used King John III’s pardon letter and promises of a knight’s pension to bolster his reputation with Privy Council members, as Simon Renard, Charles V’s ambassador in England, quickly warned.

While misleading King John III and his agents in England—who had previously failed to jail him—about his true intentions, Pinteado also confused ambassador Renard. Renard became uncertain whether Pinteado would join the English voyage to West Africa with Thomas Wyndham or the expedition to Russia with Richard Chancellor. Pinteado’s strategic moves between the English, the Imperial ambassador, and the Portuguese agents was highly effective. He successfully piloted Wyndham’s voyage, although he died on the return journey to England. Additionally, he provided Richard Eden with Pietro Martyr d’Anghiera’s famous chronicle on the Spanish Americas, which was soon translated into English. Upon his death, all of Pinteado’s papers, likely including Portuguese nautical charts and rutters, also came into Eden’s possession.

Therefore, the little yet cunning “Jerry” (pilot Pinteado) successfully eluded the formidable and angered “Tom” (Portugal). In doing so, Pinteado decisively influenced the English maritime and overseas resurgence in the 1550s, with significant consequences: from then onwards, Portugal was destined to fail in steering the English away from West Africa. Pinteado’s story illuminates perfectly well the mechanisms employed by early modern pilots to circulate freely between maritime rivals and shift their allegiances. Despite the numerous obstacles they faced, it was often possible to cross borders and make substantial contributions.

[Nuno Vila-Santa]

Writing the Strings of Time

Writing the strings of time, i.e., creating a narrative nexus to make sense of a given era, is always a delicate act. When this historiographical gesture is interested in understanding the imaginary of a given society, it is useful to search for artifacts that contain a certain roughness – not necessarily the erudite texts printed for the consumption of the learned people, a minority, but maybe the texts that are rough around the edges, with little inclination for being canonical, but that a big number of learned and unlearned people were familiar with.

Artifacts that provide a lens into the historical and cultural fabric of their time and are essential for understanding the broader social context and historical developments, because widely-known texts portray the cultural values, beliefs, and norms of their time; artifacts that impact the public thought and social trends of their time, while revealing how ideas, ideologies, or information were disseminated and how they shaped public opinion and behaviour; artifacts that resonate with broad audiences, thus offering insights into their sentiments and attitudes.

Artifacts such as texts from literatura de cordel (Port. and Span.), or chapbook literature (Eng.), a collection of small booklets or pamphlets, hung by a string, inexpensive and widely accessible, sold by street vendors, that contain a variety of content, including poetry, theatre plays, and folk tales. Artifacts that transmit the narratives read or listened to by illiterate or semi-literate people, apart from scholars, clergy, and the elite. Artifacts like the theatre play Auto do Nascimento, written by Baltazar Dias (16th century), a blind Portuguese poet of great success, thought to be his own publisher and bookseller at Rua Nova dos Mercadores, Lisbon, whose works travelled through all the corners of Early Modern Portugal and to the Americas and Western Africa, having a great impact in the literatures of these territories.

Rua Nova dos Mercadores, Lisbon. Anonymous autor, c. 1570-1590. London, Kelmscott Manor Collection – Society of Antiquaries of London.

When historians of science start to unravel such an historical artifact, thread by thread, reference to the Portuguese Maritime Expansion by reference, they may be surprised by an unexpected and surrealistic image about an oceanic voyage to India:

Zaú: And listen, say no more,
Because now I will win.
I saw the tower of Cascais
Sail to India by sea
And then return and anchor at the dock.

Auto do Nascimento (c. 1520-1530), Baltasar Dias

“Cascale”, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1572), by Georg Braun (1541-1622) and Frans Hogenberg (1535-1590).

Being one of two characters who play a game of who creates the most dreamlike and unreal images and actions, Zaú wins the game with the image above, which consists of Torre de Santo António de Cascais, a fifteenth-century tower fortress near Lisbon, unexpectedly departing the Portuguese shores into the Atlantic Ocean, sailing on to India, and then returning home safe and sound. From this sequential and intriguing image – a monument on the move across the oceans –, History of Science learns that for early modern Portuguese imagination the notion of planetary distance and safety were combined. On the one hand, conceiving an oceanic route made of enormous spatial extension (Portugal-India-Portugal), the author summarizes the voyage and roundabout voyage in merely three lines, minimizing the great distances sailed, and giving this surrealistic voyage in a tower an unprecedented notion of speed, echoing the notion of the Portuguese ships being very fast that can be found in other literature of that time. On the other hand, the author conveys a notion of safety, security and success to this voyage, echoing the same notions that were then associated with real sixteenth-century Portuguese oceanic voyages in which Baltazar Dias’ readers and listeners participated at some level, either directly or indirectly. By connecting these hands and these lines of ideas, by grabbing other artifacts as this, a narrative nexus starts to appear. A string of booklets writing the strings of time – an occasion to think about how the Early Modern oceanic voyages produced new perceptions about planetary space and human movement in it.

[Joana Lima]

Maritime Pride and Arrogance? The French-Portuguese Clashes and the Emergence of Notions of “National” Pride

The French-Portuguese maritime and overseas rivalry experienced several significant episodes during the 16th century. Prior to the major dispute between the French and the Portuguese in Brazil, known as France Antarctique (1555-1560), an earlier episode demonstrates the emerging feelings of nationhood alongside overseas voyages. In 1528-29, the Parmentier brothers, sponsored by the French ship owner and corsair Jean Ango (1480-1551), embarked on a French expedition to Asia. Their objective was to reach the Gold Islands, believed to be located in modern Indonesia. The voyage ended in disaster, with the two brothers dying and several Frenchmen being captured and imprisoned by the Portuguese. However, the French traveller and cosmographer Pierre Crignon (?-1540) survived and returned to Dieppe, where he attempted to persuade the French Crown to continue supporting overseas voyages in opposition to the Portuguese. In 1539, Crignon wrote in his famous work the Discours de la Navigation de Jean et Raoul Parmentier [see both illustrations], later reprinted in Italian by Giovanni Baptista Ramussio’s famous account, the following statement about the Portuguese:

Even though they [the Portuguese] are the smallest people in the world, it does not seem big enough to satisfy their greed. I think they must have drunk of the dust of King Alexander’s heart to be stirred by such inordinate ambition. They believe they hold in their clenched fist what they could not embrace with both hands. And I believe that they are convinced that God made the sea and the land for them alone and that the other nations are not worthy of sailing. Certainly, if it were in their power to close the seas from Cape Finisterre to Ireland, they would have done so long ago.

Crignon viewed the traditional Portuguese Mare Clausum rhetoric—particularly evident in the speeches of Portuguese diplomats in France, Spain, England, and Rome—as necessitating a clear public rebuttal. He found it absurd that “tiny” Portugal aspired to control all the seas, given the power of “larger” and “mighty” France. In making this claim, he acknowledged that Portugal was failing in this endeavor, a statement he believed to be accurate. Nonetheless, he also recognized that the Portuguese behaved in this manner because they perceived themselves as superior to the French, relying on their “superior” nautical science to build and sustain a global maritime empire that spanned the Americas, Africa, and Asia, thus encompassing the globe. Crignon regarded this Portuguese pride as excessive and their behavior as arrogantly overbearing.

The sense of “national” pride that Crignon identified in Portuguese behavior was something he explicitly sought to challenge. By writing in this manner, Crignon aimed to contribute to the development of French maritime pride. He was not alone in this endeavor in 16th century France. Similar processes of “national identity” formation, as a reaction to maritime and overseas rivalries with the Portuguese, also unfolded in Spain, England, and the Dutch Republic during the 16th century. These examples illuminate how overseas rivalries contributed to the gradual emergence of notions of the “nation-state” throughout the early modern period. [Nuno Vila-Santa]

No Country for Mercator’s Charts

It is well known that Mercator charts took a long time to become a common instrument in the nautical panoply of Early Modern pilots. Gerard Mercator (1512-1594) published his Ad Usum Navigatium—the earliest Mercator projection chart—in 1569, and Edward Wright (1561-1615) his Certain errors in Navigation—containing the relevant mathematical tools for constructing such charts—in 1599, but it was still almost two centuries before European Early Modern pilots decided that they were worth using. Cosmographers and mathematicians of the time blamed this decision on the conservatism and scientific illiteracy of the pilots, a representative case being that of the famous Royal Astronomer Edmond Halley (1656-1742). In the preface to his Atlas Maritimus et Commercialis (1728) one can read:

It is well known that many of our sailors, and some that would be accounted artists are at this day obstinate in the use of the Plain Chart […]. And many of our masters that teach navigation teach what they call plain sailing (and many times that only) to such as are designed to take charge of ships […]. And this they do for no other reason but because they think they can measure distances thereon by a scale of equal parts, rejecting the truly Nautical Chart, commonly called Mercator, because one single scale cannot be fitted to all its parts.

Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio
ad Usum Navigantium Emendate Accommodata, Gerard Mercator (1569)

Historians of navigation and nautical science have echoed such view on this issue until our days. The pilots’ decisions on which charts to use, however, have nothing to do with any kind of “conservatism” or “scientific obscurantism”, but with more complex particularities of their epistemological reality. Stay tuned for more news on this subject soon! [José María Moreno Madrid]

The Unexpected Role of a 16th-century Widow

In 1578, Diego Hernández underwent his pilot’s examination at the Casa de la Contratación in Seville. This otherwise mundane event deserves special attention because Hernández was originally from Tavira, Portugal. Within the context of a highly hierarchical and regulated institution, securing an examination for a foreigner aspiring to the position of pilot posed a formidable challenge. While it is important to note that this was not unprecedented, complications did arise due to the substantial responsibility associated with the role of a ship’s pilot.

Hernández requested to undergo a pilot examination at the Casa de la Contratación. In addition to meeting the standard requirements, he faced additional criteria due to his foreign status. He needed to substantiate, with witnesses, that he had been married to a Spanish woman for over fourteen years in a union recognized by the Church. Furthermore, he had to prove that they had resided in Spain throughout that period, thereby asserting his eligibility for the examination. Additionally, other witnesses were required to affirm their acquaintance with him since childhood, vouching for knowledge of his parents and grandparents. They were to confirm that these familial connections were legitimate, recognized by the Church as valid marriages, and that all involved were individuals of reputable conduct.

These were referred to as ”testimonios de naturaleza,” serving as evidence of the purity of the candidate’s lineage. Within the records and documents of these examinations, one can find the names of the witnesses, along with their occupations and places of origin. In this particular case, three testimonios de naturaleza were called:
The first was Juan López, seaman, from Tavira.
The second, Gómez Álvarez, sailor, from Tavira.
The third, Constança López, widow, from Tavira.

It’s intriguing to observe the inclusion of a woman among these witnesses, and particularly to note her occupation, which may appear unusual to those with a more anachronistic perspective. [Carmo Lacerda]

Have you ever thought about coconuts?

The work Asia written by the fifteenth-century chronist João de Barros can prove to be a mine of information. Not only does the reader come across stories about the Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean there, but also comments and descriptions of places and objects that caught the attention of the author. We mentioned chess some months ago, for example.

There is a chapter in the third Decade of Asia where Captain João Gomes is sent to the Maldives by the Governor Diogo Lopes de Sequeira. The episode gives João de Barros the opportunity to describe the islands and, this time, it is the palm trees that fascinate him – “not the ones that give dates, but rather a round fruit the size of a men’s head, which consist of two layers before one gets to its kernel. Just like chestnuts”.

Now, coconuts did not grow in Portugal. It is in fact unlikely that Portuguese people in general had been acquainted with them before sailors started moving down the West coast of Africa and into the Indian Ocean. That was probably the reason that led the chronist to dedicate nearly four pages to this fruit and the ways in which its parts could be used.

The work stars with the first external layer, which the book describes as apparently smooth. Once one gets past this smooth part, the pulp of the coconut is so fibrous that all of India uses ropes made with it. “Especially in sailing ropes, for the ones made with this thread are much safer and long-lasting at sea than any sort of flax.” The author then reminds us how Indian Ocean ships were not nailed, but sewn with such ropes.

The second inner layer is very hard. “It is the peel through which the fruit receives its vegetable nutriment. It has a sharp end, which wants to resemble a nose put in the middle of two eyes.” The description was alluding to what nowadays are called the two plugged and the one functional pore. According to the author, the Portuguese term “coco” to designate coconuts derives from this shape:

“[for] it is a name given by women to anything with which they want to scare the children. A name that stuck to [the fruit] to such an extent that no one knows of another. The one that the Malabari give it is Tenga and the Canarijs, Narle.”

Inside this second layer is the kernel. It is said to be “oilier than that of hazelnuts, inside of which there is very sweet water.” When coconuts start to germinate, they form a mass which the work claims to be thick as cream, soft and tasty. The author then concludes, as he approaches the end of his description:

“This round fruit and the palm tree which provides it seem to be among the most profitable things that God has given man, for both his substance and necessary use. Because, besides serving for that which we have already mentioned, from coconut are also made honey, vinegar, oil and wine. Besides, it is a very substantial provision in itself, mixed with rice, and by other ways the Indians serve it in their meals.”

The value attributed to coconuts nowadays has only increased, especially due to its nutritional health benefits. People around the Indian Ocean have used these fruits and explored the ways in which it could be used for centuries. When the Portuguese started sailing there, they started being disseminated worldwide via Europe. [Inês Bénard]

The Birth Date of Camões and the Eclipse of Science and Literature

The Mother of many waters, the Moon, standing between the Sun and the Earth, hindered the way of the light to the place where a woman was about to give birth to the Portuguese Bard, Luís Vaz de Camões (1524-1580). In the lunar shadow of the 23rd of January 1524, these luminaries aligned, a solar eclipse drew an astonishing ring of fire in the dim heavens, and Camões took his first breath on the planet he came to sing so remarkably. Unaware of the crown of literary glory that History of Literature would place upon him, given his eventful and somewhat star-crossed life, Camões wrote a biographical sonnet where the solar corona of this eclipse cast a darkness over him since the day he was born:

“Let the day I was born die and be gone
Forever from all time that is or was.
Let it never return or, if it does,
Let an eclipse bear down upon the sun.

Let it black out and light go on the run,
The world show signs of being about to die,
And monsters spawn and blood rain from the sky,
And mother be a stranger to her son.

Then let the people, ignorant and dazed,
Face pale in tears, ghastliness in the heart,
Reckon the world already come apart.

O timid creatures, do not be amazed
That this day of all days beheld the birth
Of the most cursèd wretch upon the earth.”

This mysterious day of light and shadow was elusive until Luciano Pereira da Silva’s historiographical gesture of searching for Camões’ specific date of birth in scientific early modern artifacts. In A Astronomia d’ Os Lusíadas (1915), Silva used early modern astronomical tables – such as those in the Almanach Perpetuum (1496), by Abraham Zacuto, and Cosmographia (1524), by Petrus Apianus – to unravel this biographical mystery. By listing the apparent positions of celestial bodies in the heavens at regular intervals, and the dates corresponding to the calculated positions of these bodies, these texts allowed astronomers to track the movements of the Sun, Moon, and planets over time, and predict celestial events such as eclipses. By crossing the information in these texts with a hermeneutic analysis of the sonnet, these texts allow historians to answer old questions such as the date of birth of Camões.

Placing the gaze of historians of science on the flickering interstice between science and literature, the conjunct reading of scientific and literary texts gives access to ideas and ways of knowing the world of a given era. Five-hundred years after the birth of Camões, it is no mystery that his opus magnum, Os Lusíadas, displays a poetic image of the scientific idea of the “machine of the world”, the intricate celestial machinery that governs the movements of the heavenly bodies according to the Ptolemaic cosmology that was then accepted. An era when cosmology and poetry were equally good ways of making sense of the universe.

Five-hundred years after, it is time to celebrate the poet, the eclipse, and the historiographical light that shines when science and literature join forces. This longstanding relation between peers is sometimes overshadowed in History, and sometimes distorted by well-meaning but misguided attempts at restoring an essential connection. [Joana Lima]