A Salty Satire on Pilots

Travelling through time, the sound of laughter triggered by sixteenth-century comedies brings us echoes of what was considered witty in Early Modern societies. Perceiving the topics that resonated in the imaginary of theatre audiences as jokes allows the historian to grasp what was seen as embarrassing by the public. Thus, it may be of interest for those wondering about the social status of pilots in the Iberian world to listen to the chuckling that Gil Vicente (1465–1535), the forefather of Portuguese theatre, must have provoked with this dialogue from Triunfo do Inverno (1529):

Pilot –

Where do you think we are?

Sailor –

You are asking me
What is yours to know.
You pilot from Alcochete
Used to the river of eels,
To navigate these routes
Requires having a head and a helmet.

Set in the South Atlantic Ocean, this scene displays a very unusual conversation between a pilot who never sailed south of the Gulf of Guinea,and a sailor. The first, unable to calculate latitude, asks for his subordinate’s help. Inverting the hierarchy aboard an oceanic voyage–where the pilot had full control over the route and instructed the sailors–, this tragicomedy ridicules those who were chosen for pilots on the India Run not because of their nautical knowledge, but due to having a benefactor.

The Tagus estuary.

Besides this satirical device, Gil Vicente goes the distance to create comicality, and achieves so in the most traditional way: old-style insulting the character. His invective could not have been harsher for an oceanic pilot, since the author is making a salty sailor call him a “pilot from Alcochete used to the river of eels.” That is, a freshwater pilot whose only experience is to sail a fishing boat in the Tagus estuary. That is, someone without the “head and helmet”, the intelligence and skills necessary for oceanic navigation, where the ability to calculate latitude is crucial—altogether different from roaming around in a river calmly fishing eel. Certainly, one of the worst insults a pilot could hear.

Evoking a society where astronomical knowledge was crucial for navigating the globe, the laughter following this dialogue–and the occurrences of this exact insult in later theatre plays by different authors–will have something to say about how pilots were perceived in Iberia. It is a sound yet to be fully recorded by the History of Science. [Joana Lima]