A Theatre of Wind Roses

Literature using the wind rose as a device bloomed in sixteenth-century Europe. Rooted in oceanic voyages, it introduced the image of the nautical chart and pointed to knowledge of the winds, cartography, astronomy and to mastery of technology as cardinal directions for successfully following a sea route. Being a transfiguration of technical documents, numerous theatre plays showed how ingrained nautical knowledge was in the Early Modern imaginary.

This is the case with Auto de Dom Luís e os Turcos (1572), a Portuguese anonymous comedy staging the tale of Dom Luís, a Portuguese nobleman who kidnaps Dona Clara, his Castilian sweetheart. More than the romantic adventures of a couple and their respective servants trying to sail to Portugal, this comedy allows us to grasp how people in Iberia perceived maritime voyages.

After a rosary string of incidents that left them stranded on Turkish shores, two servants of Dom Luís-Lop’Eanes and Brás Lourenço-invent a way back home in the most remarkable manner. Despite their lack of nautical knowledge, they plan to buy and learn how to use a nautical chart containing all the routes and ports in the Mediterranean and as far as Portugal. Recalling how a pilot made use of this artifact, these characters display a striking do-it-yourself attitude:

Lop’Eanes –

Do you know how he used to do it?

Brás Lourenço –

He used to look at the skies and say, “The skies are blue, the wind blows from the north to the south… Bear away, luff up, that route.” Then a mariner steered the ship from behind.

Lop’Eanes –

Jesus, what a skill to have!

Brás Lourenço –

If I gain that nautical chart, we will flee in peace.

According to this dialogue, the conjunction of observing the wind, rigging the sail and identifying the chosen route in the nautical chart made up the cardinal directions of a safe maritime voyage for an unlearned person. Seeded in Portuguese daily life, it illustrates that theatre audiences were aware of nautical techniques and sailing directions. The idea that it was possible to navigate from Turkey to Lisbon with just a nautical chart, given the proximity and visibility of ports in the Mediterranean Sea, shows the familiarity this society had with coastal navigation. The voyage depicted in this play represents it, as these characters purchase the anticipated nautical chart and successfully follow a wind rose of routes leading to harbors and home. A tremendous sense of confidence in nautical science springs from this comedy, one waiting to be traced in the literature that follows the path of the wind in the sea and of all humans in between. [Joana Lima]