«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]

Mental Illness and Suicidal Tendencies in Early Modern Oceanic Voyages

Between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modernity, madness emerged as the great bogeyman of European societies, and since the fifteenth century, the character of the madman was associated with the image of the Ship of Fools (Stultifera Navis/Narrenschiff). This boat was as much symbolic as it was material. In fact, urban populations used to physically remove those with mental health problems by entrusting them to sailors and river merchants passing through their cities.

However, at the same time the image of the boat taking the fools away exorcised their fear using the symbolic power of water, which was a religious symbol both of purification (baptism) and separation (Exodus across the Red Sea). At the beginning of the Modern age the belief that the sea—a real prison of water and a symbol of chaos, irrationality and evil—could exert an influence on human temperaments was so deep-rooted as to suggest, during the Elizabethan age, that it was the basis of the melancholic nature of the English people, who lived precisely on an island in the middle of the ocean.

The end of the Middle Ages was also the time when the first long-distance oceanic voyages began, thanks in particular to the monarchies of Portugal and Spain. During these voyages, Europeans were able to experience for the first time the effects of prolonged isolation in the midst of veritable deserts of water, with the psychological consequences that this could entail, up to the most extreme limit, namely suicide. During one of the most extreme and memorable of these journeys, the first circumnavigation of the world initiated by Ferdinand Magellan and completed by Juan Sebastian Elcano, there were several cases of suicide.

During the winter spent in the bay of San Julian, in southern Patagonia, before finding the coveted passage to the west, the Italian sailor Antonio da Varese, the French Rogel Dupret, the Spanish Pedro Perez, and the Italian Filippo da Genova, committed suicide respectively on April 29th, June 2nd, June 18th, and July 2nd, all by drowning. The first one had been caught months earlier in homosexual practices with another older sailor, who had been hanged, but not Antonio. It was perhaps due to a case of conscience, driven by the uncertain situation of that winter, that the sailor committed suicide.

As for the other three cases, we do not know of any reason for their desperate action, but it is perhaps no coincidence that out of the four suicides, three were committed by non-Iberians. Spanish and Portuguese seamen, in fact, came from the maritime traditions that were more psychologically prepared for that type of voyage. These, of course, are simple conjectures, but it is possible that early modern oceanic voyages, with their terrible vastness, exerted on the European collective psyche a lasting sense of estrangement that made madness emerge as one of the dominant problems of modern global societies. [David Salomoni]

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]

Give Me a Pair of Gloves, I’ll Make You a Pilot

In the mid-16th century, the Spanish crown was very aware of the importance of navigation for the Empire, and the interests of the crown began to align with the interests of cosmographers: promoting the control of navigation, centralizing information and standardizing methods and techniques. It was the prosperity of the Empire that was at stake, so the safety of ships was a priority issue. The institution in charge of navigation matters was the Casa de la Contratación, in Seville, that also dealt with the training and examination of pilots.

Between 1550 and 1555 were registered the largest numbers of shipwrecks of the century, which generated several polemics and investigations at the Casa, in order to ascertain the causes of the wrecks. Accusations of corruption in the pilots’ examinations and the need to license competent pilots fostered greater attention to examination practices. The candidates were examined by a court of pilots and cosmographers, presided over by the Pilot Major. At this time it was very common to charge fees for services rendered, but this was not the case with the pilots’ examinations. In 1527 it was forbidden for the Pilot Major to accept payments for pilots’ exams. This measure was not agreeable to cosmographers, who could benefit greatly from the fees charged. Thus, several accusations of bribery appeared among the Casa cosmographers. By accepting bribes from pilots, the examiners were jeopardising national security (if they were foreigners, for example) and the safety of ships (licensing incompetent pilots).

However, according to some witnesses, accepting gloves was different from accepting money. A pair of gloves was seen as more legitimate because it was equivalent to university tuition, following the custom of doctoral exams. Payment in gloves was seen as a matter of honor agreed between the pilots. The examiners argued against the authorities of the Casa that not accepting the gloves nullified the analogy between the pilots’ exams and the university exams.

So, to get a pilot’s examination, one didn’t have to have much money, just a good pair of gloves! [Carmo Lacerda]

Columbian Exchange III. Diseases

If the exchange of plants and animals between the Old and the New World, resulting from the oceanic voyages started in 1492, was of mutual benefit, there is no question that the exchange of diseases was almost one-directional and devastating for Native Americans.

We are painfully aware of the consequences of a viral infection. Europeans brought with them a series of deadly virus and bacteria like measles, smallpox, influenza, cholera, mumps, typhus, malaria and whooping cough, just to name some.

Transmission electron micrograph of smallpox virions (commons.wikimedia.org)

As Dobyns says “Before the invasion of peoples of the New World by pathogens that evolved among inhabitants of the Old World, Native Americans lived in a relatively disease-free environment.” In other words, they were immunologically defenseless. Estimates suggest that in the first century after Columbus’ voyage, the Native American population dropped down to 5–20% of the original inhabitants.

Witness to this massive loss of life was the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, author of the Florentine Codex, a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Meso-America entitled La historia universal de las cosas de Nueva España (Universal History of the Things of New Spain). He learned the Aztec language and transcribed history and customs as told him by the Aztec elders.

“But before the Spaniards had risen against us, first there came to be prevalent a great sickness, a plague. It was in Tepeilhuitl that it originated, that there spread over the people a great destruction of men. Some it indeed covered [with pustules]; they were spread everywhere, on one’s face, on one’s head, on one’s breast, etc. There was indeed perishing; many indeed died of it. No longer could they walk; they only lay in their abodes, in their beds. No longer could they move, no longer could they bestir themselves, no longer could they raise themselves, no longer could they stretch themselves out face down, no longer could they stretch themselves out on their backs.” (Book XII, translation by Anderson and Dibble).

Image of smallpox disease form the Florentine Codex (commons.wikimedia.org)

Although still under discussion, it seems that the Europeans brought back from America venereal syphilis, a disease that in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was frequently fatal and with much more severe symptoms than nowadays (Nunn and Qian, 2010). While not decimating the population, it was still a disease which caused remarkable social disruption. [Silvana Munzi]

Beware the Edge of the Earth!

When you reach that page where they say sailors were afraid of the ship falling down the edge of the earth, you know you have reached the moment to close the book.

The awareness of the earth’s sphericity, in fact, has been a cultural heritage since ancient times, and common to many civilizations traditionally mentioned as “ancient” and “medieval”, such as the Hellenistic, the Christian, the Islamic, the Indian, and the Chinese. Philosophers (Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Isidore of Seville, Bede the Venerable), astronomers (Eratosthenes, Al-Farghānī), geographers (Strabo, Ptolemy), and mathematicians (Ibn Hazm, Al-Biruni, Shen Kuo), with very few and marginal exceptions, helped to pass on and fix this awareness essential to navigation and voyages, which only in relatively recent times has been questioned.

This “Myth of the Flat Earth,” part of a rather progressionist narrative, has been pinned down in detail and it is mostly due to some 19th-century American and English authors. What is amazing is how stubborn and reoccurring this fictional view of the “good flat earthers of old” has been over decades.

In any case, what is relevant from our nautical end is to make this clear: it is totally inconceivable that sailors on board a 15th or 16th-century Iberian ship would entertain any idea of a flat earth. Not only is the curvature of the earth very obviously observable when at sea, but it is also that the techno-scientific environment in the oceanic vessels was imbued with a sophisticated cosmography, heir to countless centuries of study. Crews aboard the Columbus and Magellan expeditions, just to name the most prominent examples, may have had other grievances and misgivings, but certainly not that they would fall down the edge of the earth—their “job” made them part of an elite fully acquainted with a wealth of cutting-edge navigational knowledge, perhaps comparable to something between our aviators and astronauts. [Acevedo/Moreno Madrid/Salomoni]

How to Establish a Maritime Route: The Case of the Strait of Magellan (2/3)

Where were we a few weeks ago? Oh yes! The Pelican—renamed as Golden Hind before reaching the Fuegian channel—was entering the waters of the Strait of Magellan on August 21, 1578. Although commanded by Francis Drake, the British fleet counted on the invaluable help of Nuno da Silva—a Portuguese pilot that Drake kidnapped in the island of Santiago de Cabo Verde—to reach and cross the Strait. The corsair held Da Silva in high esteem, and the technical documents written by the Portuguese certify his “top level” sailing skills.

Excerpt from Nuno da Silva’s Logbook
Archivo General de Indias, Patronato 33, N.3, R.30.

While Drake was beginning his piratical activities in the Pacific, his Vice-Admiral, John Winter, delved into the Strait to return to England. This return journey allowed him to go down in history as the third man to go through the Strait in a West-East direction and as the discoverer of the medicinal virtues of the Drymis winteri bark to deal with scurvy. Supposedly, also a small boat of Drake’s fleet, captained by Peter Curder, would have returned to England by undoing the path through the Strait.

Canelo (Drymis winteri). The bark of this tree became known as Winter’s Bark.

Thus, the Door to the Pacific—and to the Spanish riches it contained—was also opened to English ships. Obviously, this fact set off all the alarms in Philip II’s court. The response to Drake’s boldness was to send a fleet to the Strait under the command of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1579–1580), a man well-versed in nautical issues. His mission was to collect as much information as possible on the Fuegian channel, in order to fortify the passage and to avoid unwelcome guests. The documentary result of the expedition was an outstanding brand new rutter for the Strait and some nautical charts. However, the fortification project never materialized; in light of this, some of Drake’s compatriots began to set a course for the coveted channel. Thomas Cavendish crossed the Strait in 1587, and then completed the third circumnavigation of the Earth; Andrew Merrick tried to follow in his footsteps in 1590, but he did not go past Cape Froward; Cavendish again, in 1592, tried to repeat his own achievement, but he also ran into Cape Froward. Finally, it was Richard Hawkins in 1594 who managed to reach the Pacific again through the Strait, in an interesting journey that can be read in The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins (1622).

Do not miss the third part of the series to find out which nation took over from the English sailors on the Strait of Magellan! [José María Moreno Madrid]