Naval Battle Warnings

While preparing our digital edition of the Quatri Partitu en Cosmographia by Alonso de Chaves, genuine little treasures pop up everywhere. The author’s clear and detailed writing enables a visualization that is nearly as vivid as if we were personally witnessing the described scenarios, or watching a movie on the big screen in a cinema.

This time, the author immerses us in a maritime warfare scenario, explaining how the various crew members of the ships should act and the role each vessel in the fleet should play during the battle. He provides guidance for both offensive and defensive situations, along with instructions on which weapons to employ and when to use them, as well as the positioning of the ships in accordance with various battle scenarios. Towards the end of the chapter, the author offers a particularly intriguing warning:

“special care must be taken whenever a man is wounded on any of the ships in such a way that he cannot fight. Immediately, he should be placed below deck so that he does not obstruct the movement of people from one side to the other. Also, this is to prevent his comrades from seeing him and becoming disheartened or showing weakness. If the wound happens to be mortal or if he is entirely dead, it is better that as soon as he has breathed his last, he is cast into the sea so that one does not lose heart upon seeing others dead, especially when they are relatives and friends. Thus, there should be no severely disabled men or those without weapons and the will to fight on the deck and deckhouse.”

Reading this paragraph gave me the sensation of watching a movie, arriving at the unsettling part where we tend to close our eyes or shield the screen with our hand, all while maintaining a curiosity to see what is unfolding. Such instructions, unwelcome to offer and receive, were highly real, practical and pragmatic, and contributed directly to the overall success of 16th-century maritime journeys and, in this case, naval battles. [Carmo Lacerda]

A Surprise at the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France: Théodore de Godefroy and his Nautical Papers

Following our previous posts on documental discoveries in archives, we could not fail to report a French example. Theódore de Godefroy (1580-1649) was a famous French historian and jurist of the 17th century, with an important work and career under King Louis XIII of France (1610-1643). Coming from a Calvinist family of Professors of Law at Geneve University, Théodore came to France. In 1617, he was named historian of the King of France. He also became an advisor of the King and was named, in 1643, for the dealings of Munster and, in 1647, for the negotiations for the Treaty of Westphalia.

Throughout his extensive career, Theódore authored significant works, the most celebrated among them being Le Cérémonial de France (1619). Furthermore, he curated an important collection pertaining to Portugal, which led him to produce De L’origine des Roys de Portugal issues en ligne masculine de la Maison de France qui regne aujourd’hui (initially published in 1612). Theódore’s writings on Portugal are intrinsically linked to his numerous endeavors aimed at persuading the French elite to provide unwavering support for the Portuguese Restoration of independence (from 1640 onwards), in opposition to Spain. The bulk of Theódore’s personal papers, as well as those of his forebears and successors, are archived at the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France in Paris. This collection comprises almost 600 volumes, with remarkable historical materials relevant to the history of Europe as a whole.

While Theódore’s primary objective revolved around political pursuits aimed at bolstering French arguments against Spanish dominance in Europe, he also understood the significance of nautical knowledge for France during his era. Thus, nautical materials acquired their own place in Theódore’s collection. One particularly noteworthy item is a translation, from the original Portuguese into French, of the renowned nautical rutter authored by Vicente Rodrigues. This nautical guide traced the seafaring route from Lisbon to Goa, in addition to several other routes traversing the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Accompanying this work is a Spanish nautical rutter, which provides guidance on sailing from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean via the Strait of Magellan. Interestingly, this nautical rutter also furnishes information pertaining to maritime routes leading to the Spanish Caribbean and various points in South America.

Theódore also had a collection of maritime intelligence documentation, among which a 1629 Spanish address to King Philip IV of Spain (1621-1665). The unnamed author implored the Spanish monarch (as his ancestors had done) to prioritize the education and training in cosmography of oceanic navigators. The aim was to ensure that Spain continued to possess the finest navigators capable of sailing its maritime routes effectively, thus retaining a competitive edge against emerging enemies such as the French, English, and Dutch. In pursuit of this goal, Theódore also translated another document into French—an undated Spanish plan devised to obstruct the successful nautical endeavors of the Dutch in their routes to Asia.

In one of his works, Theódore confided that the most jubilant moment in his life was when he received news that the French ambassador in Rome had finally achieved precedence over his Spanish counterpart. When writing this, Theódore was acutely aware that this outcome was realized because France was emerging as a power not only within the confines of Europe but also across distant oceans. These nautical items preserved within Theódore’s collection may not represent the only ones he acquired over the course of his extensive career. However, they serve as a testament to his profound insights. If France aspired to supplant Spain’s dominion on the European stage, it had to position itself as a formidable maritime and global player. To fulfill this ambition, France needed to glean invaluable lessons from its maritime competitors on how to construct and sustain a worldwide maritime empire. Theódore recognized that at the core of this endeavor lay the relentless pursuit of nautical knowledge. Consequently, he meticulously gathered nautical knowledge and maritime intelligence from Spain, Portugal, England, and the Dutch Republic. Similar to Cardinal de Richelieu (1585-1642), Theódore understood that maritime knowledge constituted a pivotal foundation upon which France could not afford to gamble to win the strategic contest of global power against Spain. [Nuno Vila-Santa]

When the Moon Wanes, Don’t Start Anything

In this post, we delve into a specific voyage undertaken by the ship “São Pantaleão” in 1596, sailing from Kochi to Lisbon, under the skilled guidance of the pilot Gaspar Ferreira Reimão (fl. 1612). With thirty years of experience navigating the India Run and playing various roles, from second pilot to pilot-major, Reimão meticulously recorded daily life aboard his ship, including measurements, annotations about the magnetic needle’s variation, and astronomical observations. One intriguing aspect to explore is the moon’s role during this voyage.

Reimão’s logbook contains references to nearly every phase of the moon, including what is called “conjunção da lua” (conjunction of the moon) in Portuguese. This refers to the moment when sunlight hits only the part of the moon that is hidden from human view (“new moon”). However, it’s worth noting that in the 16th century mariner jargon, the term “conjunction” could refer to any moon phase. Additionally, the phases of the moon were and are perceived differently in the northern and southern hemispheres, a significant factor for a long-distance voyage.

The majority of the pilot’s textual references to the moon had negative connotations, as they often reflected adverse meteorological conditions. For instance, leaving the Maldives on the 28th of January, the weather worsened, and Reimão explicitly attributed it to the new moon’s weakness, leading to relentless heavy rainfall. The pilot used expressions like “we were rotting with water” (“andamos podres com água”), “new moon, bad moon” (“lua nova, má lua”), and “never-ending rainfall” (“tanta infinda chuva”). On February 24th, a month later, while near the Cargados Carajol Shoals (or Saint Brandon) still in the Indian Ocean, the moon’s appearence coincided again with deteriorating weather, characterized by heavy downpours and strong south winds. Near Cape Agulhas on the 20th of March, Reimão encountered what he considered the worst of all possible moon conjunctions, with waning moon, contrary winds, and frequent lightning flashes signaling severe storms (“é quarteirão de minguante… é conjunção [de lua] que eu tenho por pior que todas a que tem a lua”). In the explanation of the phenomena, he did not forget to add that these signs were exactly the same that “mathematicians declare”. Approaching Saint Helena Island in Atlantic waters on the 5th of April, Reimão called the moon “lua chorosa” (“the weeping moon”), associated with atmospheric vapor and westerly winds. The personification of the moon was the beginning of a series of references. The continuous changes in winds and rough seas caused by this moon (“trabalhosa”,“malíssima”, “Lua do Sueste” (Southeast Moon)) brought additional challenges to the navigation. The pilot complained categorically: “This moon has me tired and dead” (“traz-me cansado e morto esta lua”), indicating that the west winds had not changed for twenty-five days, and the southeast winds had not entered; instead, a marine waterspout was produced. Not by chance, the pilot made mention of the presence of wandering albatross (“mangas-de-veludo”), sea birds also known nowadays as storm petrels.

The moon’s influence on navigation compelled pilots like Reimão to wait for the right moon (“esperando a lua que será amanhã”) and favourable travel conditions to continue or begin their voyage. Gaspar Ferreira Reimão’s sailing directions, published in 1612, reveal his navigational experience, including practical reccomendations related to the better moon’s conjunction. The moon’s impact on the voyage of “São Pantaleão” provides valuable insights into oceanic practices and the challenges faced by skilled pilots like Reimão. His numerous references to the moon highlight the richness of maritime technical documents, encompassing climate, global wind patterns, ornithology, tides, astrology, and science at sea, while also resonating with a poweful proverbial cultural heritage. In fact, the timeless Portuguese proverb seems to echo: “When the Moon wanes, don’t start anything” (Quando a Lua minguar, não deves começar). [Luana Giurgevich]

Migrating through the Centuries

The Fratercula arctica, a seabird known also as the Atlantic puffin, can be found in the North Atlantic and Arctic regions. It spends the winter in the open ocean and is rarely if ever seen from land, but very recently hundreds of dead Atlantic puffins are washing up on the Portuguese coasts.

The Atlantic puffin is particularly sensitive to pollution and climate changes. It is only one of many marine animals on the red list of endangered species that are affected by global changes of anthropogenic origin. This case highlights the importance of analyzing nautical documents to retrieve data about the historical distribution of animals and plants in oceanic habitats.

Rutters and logbooks, especially, are significant documents in such research. The presence of certain bird species in specific navigation areas, for example, was systematically recorded by pilots. In Manuel Álvares’ seaman’s book (ca. 1545), we can find mentions of “feijões", small birds that resemble magpies, when approaching the Tristan da Cunha islands, while different birds are present near the Cape of Good Hope, such as albatrosses, black cormorants with white beaks, and some gulls that have black wing tips. Between Tristan da Cunha Islands and the Cape of Good Hope, the pilot observed the presence of monk seals (but never in June, “since they take shelter from the cold on land”, the pilot noted).

Monk seals, another endangered species, were also sighted by the pilot Manuel Mesquita Perestrelo in the same waters. In his rutter (ca. 1575), Perestrelo wrote about “an innumerable multitude of monk seals, some of them of incredible size.”

Working as unintentional ecologists, sailors left us precious records that today help scientists to understand the correlation between species and climate change, thus contributing to biodiversity conservation. [Luana Giurgevich and Silvana Munzi]

From the Ship’s Angle

In early modern times the ship, as a means of transport, was an old invention. However, its use in the new context of high-seas navigation and long-distance voyages changed deeply the way of understanding travel, the relation with space and time, and a concrete perception of the world.

A new way of reporting the world was witnessed and made evident by pilots in their nautical rutters.

Nautical rutters fulfilled perfectly their primary task, that was informative, with a neutral language, with a synthetic prose and a pragmatic second person plural. In such an information flow devoted to the reliability of data gathering, the texts should not reach a tone of stylistic pleasantness or elegance. Even so, surprisingly, figurative discourses were not completely absent, and one can find them especially related to the observation of coast profiles.

The images used by pilots were very significant because they represented a piece of world that was not visible from all directions; instead, it was visible only from one specific angle. The observer’s location coincided with the position of the ship at a very precise navigational moment which was the best for a safe navigation.

Figueiredo’s rutters collection was a receptacle of such images. The images were related to pilots’ everyday life, like shipbuilding, known animals, or even food.

An island’s tip could be described by sailors as the spur of a galley (“esporão de galé”), or another could look like a galley with a covered poop (“galé toldada”). Some islands could bring to mind a round bread (“pão redondo”) rising above the sea, or delicious sugar bread (“pão de açucar”) as the Islands Estácio and Saba did. Very common were also the similitarities of coasts with some chess pieces, to indicate especially high peaks, as well as animal heads (like turtle-head or dolphin’s snout).

Such details were never useless: placing themselves in relation to the object observed (with specific expressions like coming from the north side, moving in North-South direction, etc.), the pilots thus reinforced an intrinsic practical value. [Luana Giurgevich]

Nautical Rutters and the Notion of a Global Earth in Early Modern Europe

In 1596, Jan Huygen van Linschoten published within his Itinerario, a section named the Reys-gheschrift. It contained the first published compilation of nautical rutters comprising the navigation made on those days in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Van Linschoten’s goal in organizing all these nautical rutters was to try to simplify as much as he could the technical information of rutters to mariners (shallows, tides, nautical dangers, geographical signs and descriptions of several places). Meanwhile, he attempted to make available to the Dutch audience sixty-three Portuguese and four Spanish nautical rutters, detailing the main sailing routes that both Iberian Crowns always tried to keep secret from their maritime rivals. For the Indian Ocean section, this comprised rutters detailing the Portuguese India Run navigation and the technical details of the routes between the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian subcontinent, as well as routes from India to Sri Lanka, Siam and Malacca. Regarding the Pacific Ocean, Van Linschoten printed rutters on the navigation to China and Japan, and also recent nautical routes such as the Manila Galleon’s route and a pioneering route that sailed directly from Macau to Mexico, first tested in the 1580s. In the Atlantic Ocean section, Van Linschoten published rutters detailing navigation to the Caribbean and Brazilian coasts, to Angola and the Strait of Magellan. These three sections were supplemented by a more technical one in which a regiment of the nautical compass in the voyage between Lisbon and Goa, a list of latitude of ports worldwide and a quick set of questions and answers for sailors were also printed.

But who aided Van Linschoten in this titanic and encyclopaedic task? What were the original sources he used? Did he introduce changes to them? These are some of the questions I attempted to answer in my recent article Jan Huygen van Linschoten and the Reys-gheschrift: Updating Iberian Science for Dutch Expansion. The Reys-gheschrift impacted the Dutch maritime expansion, but also the French and English ones (due to several 17th century translations). However, Van Linschoten’s publication played also a role in fuelling an idea already being developed through the 16th century: humans lived in a Global Earth that could all be known by the technical mastery of the rutters for voyages into the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. One of the bases for this idea was precisely the nautical rutters that Van Linschoten published, which through their rich information, not only ensured a safe navigation and successful maritime expansion to the Dutch, the English and the French in the 17th century, but also made a contribution to the development of the so-called Scientific Revolution. [Nuno Vila-Santa]

Beware, Avalanche!

Previous posts have emphasized the value of rutters as a documentary source for the study of the Early Modern natural world. Today I wanted to call attention to a very concrete example, reported by Juan Ladrillero in the rutter of his 1558 voyage through the Strait of Magellan:

“But they should be warned [...] if they see snowy mountains, that [...] they should stay away from them, because in many parts of them there is so much snow that the mountains have five, and six, and seven, and eight, and ten fathoms of snow, and more and less. And it seems that it must have been accumulated for a long time, and when the mountains are heavily loaded with it, the snow breaks and comes rolling down, breaking into pieces [...]. And it comes with a great noise, like a thunder, crashing down the mountains; and hits the channel broken into many pieces the size of ships or houses, and almost as big as plots of land [...], and they hit the water and are as hard as a rock, so hard that there would be no fortress or other building that would not be thrown to the ground or to the seabed. And since the channels are very deep, many times the ships go close to the land, where great damage could come to them [...]. Those masses [of snow/ice] were on top of the water, like islands, some of which had three or four stades under the water, and others the same [dimension] on top of them [...].”

Fig.1. Glaciar Santa Inés

The southern latitude of the Strait fascinated Europeans with geographies and natural phenomena that did not exist in the Old Continent. In this case, Ladrillero describes in detail the snow avalanches that, from the high peaks of the Fuegian region, rushed over the waters of the channel. A testimony to equal parts of admiration and fear in the face of the unbridled force of nature. [José María Moreno Madrid]

A 16th-century Run for Gold and for… an Accurate Nautical Rutter?

In March 1569, King Sebastian ordered Francisco Barreto to head his fleet from Lisbon to Eastern Africa to conquer the famous Mutapian gold mines (a goal that was not achieved). However, the Portuguese King also wanted Barreto’s expedition to solve another problem: the previous Portuguese shipwrecks in the East African coast.

After arriving to Mozambique in 1570-71, Barreto sent a nobleman to “discover” the coast between Mozambique and the Cape of Good Hope. The unfortunate nobleman prepared a nautical rutter, but perished in the area due to its several dangers. King Sebastian did not receive his rutter, and some years later he ordered Manuel Mesquita Perestrelo to produce a nautical rutter of the area. This time the King’s choice felt upon a nobleman that had been a victim of a famous shipwreck in the region during the 1550s and who had even written a report about it. As a result, Perestrelo wrote an important nautical rutter dedicated to King Sebastian. In this rutter, Perestrelo detailed all the coastal signs and explained how to anchor with success in good and bad places. He also described all the occasions in which he was about to die, in spite of all his experience. His rutter was so technically accurate that even during the 17th and 18th centuries, French, English and Dutch seafarers used it as the reference for the dangerous navigation on the region.

Perestrelo’s rutter is, thus, a testimony that good nautical rutters were always required to avoid the many dangers of an Oceanic voyage. King Sebastian also knew that good nautical rutters could help to prevent shipwrecks and guarantee the financial revenues of his Crown. Perestrelo’s story also shows that in the 16th century, nautical science was far from being a fixed matter; it always required adaptions. The multiple global impacts of maritime expansion explain how a document that today seems to us of a boring technicality (a nautical rutter) could become the focus of attention of different society echelons: from the pilot, the merchant, the missionary, the nobleman, the ambassador, to a King. This raises an intriguing question: Is it possible that nautical rutters made a very particular and unique contribution to the scientific development of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries? [Nuno Vila-Santa]

Iberian Nautical Knowledge in the Renaissance: a Connected History

Portuguese and Spanish navigations and discoveries aroused huge curiosity through Europe at the beginning of the 16th century. The case of France and its maritime awakening provides a striking example of this Iberian impact.

The expeditions by Giovanni da Verrazano, the Parmentier brothers, Jacques Cartier and Jean-François de Roberval, all taking place during the reign of Francis I (1515-1547), are intimately connected with previous Iberian nautical achievements. Verrazano’s and Cartier’s expeditions to North America during the 1520s and 1530s, in search of the Northern Passage to Asia, were decisively influenced by the impact of the first circumnavigation of the world (led by the Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan and the Spanish Juan Sebastian Elcano). The French attempts to reach the Indian Ocean in the 1520s and 1530s, like the Parmentier brothers’ expeditions, were also connected with the previous impact of Portuguese navigations to Asia and the hiring of Portuguese pilots in France.

Portuguese pilot Jean Alphonse played a critical role in the transmission of Portuguese nautical knowledge to France. In the service of France during Cartier’s and Roberval’s expeditions to Canada, Jean Alphonse made contributions to the cartographical school of Dieppe, created to support the onset of French maritime expansion. Based on his personal experiences with the Portuguese and French, Alphonse wrote the report of his voyages and a cosmography, both in French. Alphonse’s case alarmed the Portuguese authorities, who tried to convince him, without success, to return to Portugal.

Worried with the circulation of Iberian cosmographical knowledge to France, the Spanish and Portuguese ambassadors in France were tasked with preventing any Iberian pilot or cartographer to work for France. They resorted to private negotiations, bribery, espionage at Court. Throughout the 16th century, Iberian ambassadors also had spies in several ports and they tried to block the departure of any significant French fleet. This story was later repeated with Elizabethan England. In order to prepare successfully any oceanic expedition, knowledge was crucial. Both Portugal and Spain built the first global maritime empires by learning how to master nautical knowledge. Analysis of the Iberian nautical rutters circulating to France, England and the Netherlands during the Renaissance, and studies on the impact they had for the preparation of French, English and Dutch expeditions are goals of the RUTTER project. [Nuno Vila-Santa]

«Ce Routier est la piece la plus exacte qui ait paru en ce genre»

In the giant puzzle of pre-modern nautical literature, the 16th century rutter by Manuel de Mesquita Perestrelo (to which our title refers) is a very special piece. Mesquita Perestrelo sailed south-east African waters—between the Cape of Good Hope and the Cape Correntes—around 1576, and his navigational survey, commissioned by Sebastian of Portugal, was used as a reference until the late 18th century.

Surprisingly, the first edition of this rutter was a French translation made by the diplomat and scientist Melchisédech Thévenot (c. 1620–1692). Thévenot published his four-volume travel compilation, the Relations de divers voyages curieux (Paris, 1663–1672), continuously updated until 1696, in a crucial moment of the French administration, and precisely when it looked at the colonial policy and trade as a priority.

The edition of Mesquita Perestrelo’s rutter was based Aleixo da Mota’s version. Aleixo da Mota was another Portuguese pilot of the Carreira da India who wrote his own rutter around 1615. Nowadays a copy of Mota’s text is kept at the National Library of Portugal, but it is not clear which was the copy followed in the French edition.

Thévenot was a tireless collector who was involved in the management of the royal library, but he also created his personal cabinet of curiosities with a rich library, scientific instruments, Greek sculptures and, above all, a renowned collection of Oriental manuscripts. He was in contact with Arabists as Antoine Galland and Abraham Ecchellensis (Ibrahim al-Haqilani) and kept up correspondence with notorious men of letters all around Europe. One of them was John Locke, whom Thévenot asked for help to locate the lost unprinted papers of Richard Hakluyt. Thévenot was obsessed with overseas knowledge and long-distance voyages and engaged in a real manuscript hunt.

The French writer stressed the importance of the Portuguese rutters on several occasions, but the very first lines of the dedication to the King Louis XIV is the most meaningful: “Sire, I present to your Majesty a collection of travel accounts about voyages to the East Indies and long-distance voyages, in a time when the glory of Your Name spreads through all Europe, and your subjects are on the verge of bringing it with your Empire beyond the Ocean: They will find in the rutters and in the maps of the Portuguese all the knowledge accumulated during two hundred years of navigation and several shipwrecks on the way to find the Sea route & all traces of such a long path.” [Luana Giurgevich]

What is an Oceanic Nautical Rutter in the Renaissance Really?

The straightforward answer would be: it is the technical document that details how to navigate from point A to point B. However, this statement does not draw enough attention to the complexity of nautical rutters. To explain how to navigate from A to B, many other issues have to be dealt with.

Information on winds, currents, tides, shallows, weather conditions, measurements on the declination of the magnetic needle and stories about what happened to other navigators were generally included in rutters. Nautical rutters were also used along with nautical cartography. If nautical charts used the data from nautical rutters to be built, pilots also used nautical charts alongside nautical rutters when sailing. Many rutters are also lively testimonies to the uneasiness caused by the globalizing 16th century development of long Oceanic voyages. In this sense, there are still too many unanswered questions regarding nautical rutters in the Iberian Renaissance.

In many instances rutters were composed by pilots, but were they written during the voyages? Several early 16th-century Iberian nautical rutters suggest that. Nevertheless, as soon as manuscript and printed compilations of rutters circulated, it becomes clear that there were standardized versions of rutters and that some of them were not written on board. In those cases, it is possible that pilots composed rutters on land after returning. Which were the criteria for the writing of those rutters and how could their scientific accuracy be ensured? Were there standard nautical rutters for certain routes, as happened with cartographical models, namely the Portuguese “Padrão Real” or the Spanish “Padrón Real”? How was Iberian nautical knowledge influenced by other maritime traditions, such as the Islamic and others? And finally, what were the critical stages of the knowledge transmission process for the French, the English and the Dutch, who all used Iberian nautical knowledge to start their overseas expansions?

The answer to these interrogations is still to be provided by a study of Iberian nautical rutters, a declared goal of the RUTTER project. However, in the process of answering these main questions, it is inevitable to be struck by the true richness of rutters and their impact on Renaissance science, society and culture. [Nuno Vila-Santa]