Ships in the 16th century
Compiled by Albert J. Beintema, 7th July 2022
Adapted from The Remotest Island (New Generation Publishers, 2022)
In the 16th century only the Portuguese ventured into the southern oceans, followed by the Dutch in the 17th century and the English in the 18th century. Therefore, we can call the 16th century the Portuguese era in Tristan history.
The Portuguese era really is the great blank in Tristan's shipping history. Most writers only know the voyage of Tristão da Cunha, who discovered the island in 1506. Smith (1991) mentions a Portuguese fleet, visiting Tristan in 1583, and Faustini adds two voyages, in 1520 and 1557. There must have been more. One indication is that in a peat core from Tristan, pollen was found of Ribwort Plantain Plantago lanceolata, going back to about 1570 (Ljung & Björk 2011). This is an invasive European species, introduced worldwide by people with dirty feet, or by bringing domestic animals with seeds in their pelts. The early Portuguese had the habit of intruducing goats to islands they found, as a food source for future visitors, and around 1570 only the Portuguese had been near Tristan. None of the visitors (the ones we know of) in the 17th and 18th centuries ever mentions seeing goats, but they probably did not venture far enough inland to encounter them. In my view, they have been there all the time, but did not like the dense, almost impenetrable bush at lower levels and retreated to the higher ground on the mountain, with more open vegetation. The first visitor mentioning goats is Patten, who stayed six months on the island in 1790 (see page on visitors in the 18th century). I think they were of Portuguese origin going back to the mid-sixteenth century.
A Portuguese colleague drew my attention to some old history books, and via him I came into contact with naval historian José Manuel Malhão Pereira, who wrote a thesis about early Portuguese voyages (Malhão Pereira 2001). We exchanged dozens of emails, and he overloaded me with digitised old maps, roteiros (pilot books), and other publications. His thesis already gave me one or two new voyages. His most spectacular find is a shipwreck as early as 1508, just two years after the island was first seen!
I learned a lot about the early Portuguese navigators. After Bartolomeu Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498, Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil in 1500, and Tristão da Cunha found Tristan in 1506, their scientists and pilots soon started to understand the global circulation patterns of air and sea in the Atlantic Ocean. It took Da Gama nine months to reach India. Cabral did it in six, in spite of his Brazilian detour. Others soon followed his course, using the trade winds, from the Cape Verde Islands to the easternmost point of Brazil. Then they would sail south, and turn southeast towards Martin Vaz and Tristan da Cunha, to reach the Cape, making optimal use of prevailing winds and currents. On the return voyage, they would simply sail in a straight line from the Cape to Saint Helena, using the southeast trade winds. Then they would again cross the Atlantic in a wide arc far to the west, and finally return to Portugal with the westerlies, via the Azores. Thus, their sailing itineraries in the Atlantic would describe a huge figure of eight (just like the Greater Shearwaters of Nightingale - aren't they clever too!). In their roteiros, the pilots advised to stay well north of Tristan da Cunha, because of the risk of strong gales further south, so most ships would not go further south than 35 degrees, hundreds of kilometres further north than Tristan. That may be a reason why we see so few Portuguese sightings of the island.
The Portuguese already knew how to use the declination of the compass to estimate their longitude. The declination of the compass is the angle between the true north and the needle pointing at the magnetic north pole (somewhere in northern Canada). Obviously, this angle depends on where you are, relative to these two poles. The lines between them, connecting points with the same declination are called isgones. At the Cape, the declination was about three degrees east, near Tristan it was almost twenty degrees east. The Portuguese sailors knew this. As the isogones ran parallel to the coast of South Africa, the declination gave them a fair idea of the distance to the Cape. Ships would often note in their journal that they passed Tristan da Cunha norte-sul (north-south), based on the observed declination, usually still far to the north of the island.
Portuguese captains were also asked to note all the animals and plants they would see, which they called sinais (signs or signals), such as birds, floating seaweed, driftwood, smell and colour of the sea, and so on. In European waters they knew birds were a sure sign of nearby land, and in the south they thought so too. Gannets and gull species certainly indicate a nearby coast, but petrels and albatrosses do not. They roam widely, all over he ocean, New Zealand species frequenting the South Atlantic, and vice versa. When approaching Tristan waters, they often noted corvas pretas, bicos brancas, black ravens with white beaks. These must have been White-chinned Petrels (Procellaria aequinoctialis), which are very common in the Southern Ocean, and often follow ships in their wake. Near Tristan they could even have been the closely allied Spectacled Petrels (P. conspicillata), endemic to Inaccessible Island. They also saw black-and-white checkered birds, which they called feijãos, speckled beans, a very strange name for a bird. They must have been Cape Petrels (Daption capense), which also like to follow ships. Seeing those was no indication of nearby islands at all, they just appeared because the ships approached the nutrient rich subantarcic seas. Feeding frenzies of these birds can be seen anywhere between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, wherever they find a local patch of krill.
Let's turn our attention to Tristan visitors.
In 1505 Gonçalo Alvares, sailing as a pilot with Pero d'Anhaya, was blown too far to the south. On his way to the Cape he saw a godforsaken island which was named after him, Ilha de Gonçalo Alvares, which was later rediscovered as Gough Island. Gonçalo Alvares was erroneously changed into Diego Alvarez (Spanish spelling). Old maps often showed the name abbreviated to Ilha de go Alvares (not with a capital G!). De go could easily be misread as Diogo. People have suggested it would be nice to change the name of Gough back into the old name Diego Alvarez. But that is not the old name. It should be Gonçalo Alvares. Or, to avoid the confusion about Diogo, Diego, de go, or Gonçalo, let's just call it Alvares Island, instead of the ugly-sounding Gough.
On the early maps, Alvares Island is drawn a bit too far to the north, at 39 degrees instead of 40, which later confused Dutch sailors. Because of the name change, Gonçalo Alvares' discovery is often given as a 'maybe', but I think we are now confident enough to remove the question mark.
The story of Tristão da Cunha finding the islands in 1506, which were named after him is well known, but needs some clarifications. According to MacKay (1963) Tristão's ship was called Capitão Mor. This is an error, which has been repeated by other authors, including myself, I am afraid (Beintema 1997). Capitão-mor was not his ship, but his title. His ship was the Espirito Santo. In a fleet, every ship had her own captain, but only one of them would be the chief captain, or captain-major: capitão-mor. This was not a permanent title, like Admiral, but just an assignment for the voyage. The size of the fleet varies between sources: 14, 15, 16 or just 6. I think they sailed from Lisbon to Brazil with 16 ships. One was sent back to Portugal with sick men, one ship was lost, and 14 reached the waters around Tristan da Cunha. Da Cunha sailed with Afonso de Alboquerque (or Dalboquerque), future viceroy of India. D'Alboquerque commanded a sub-fleet of six ships, with fourhundred men, with a special assignment to control the Moors on the African eastcoast, so he was a capitão-mor too, and captain of the Flor de la Mar. Having two chief captains on one fleet is asking for trouble, and indeed, there were a lot of disputes between the two. D'Alboquerque was especially irritated because da Cunha's ship was slow, and they often had to wait for each other. It was already late in the season and it was questionable whether they would still be able to safely round the Cape. After discovering Tristan, the weather took the matter in hand. In a heavy gale the fleet was dispersed, and the ships arrived on the east coast of Africa at different times. Since 1509, the charts show seven little dots, with the remark 'Ilhas que achou Tristão da Cunha' - islands found by Tristão da Cunha. Malhão Pereira found a very nice drawing, in colour, of the entire fleet of fourteen near Tristan, with small boats filled with rowing men, exploring the islands.
We sometimes see Tristão spelled as Tristam. Note that ão and am are pronounced the same in Portuguese (aaung, with a nasal ending, like in the French bon). Similarly, we often see Sam instead of São (Saint).
We all agree that Tristão is the one who discovered Tristan. But was he really the first to see the islands? In June 1503 the French adventurer Binot de Paulmier de Gonneville left the Harbour of Honfleur with his ship L'Espoir. He heard of the riches brought back by Vasco da Gama and Cabral and wanted his share, ingoring the fact that the route to India was forbidden for non-Portuguese ships. Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Cabral and Tristão da Cunha all travelled with large fleets. De Gonneville sailed solo. On November 9th, they encountered large fields of floating seaweed, with roots. They first thought that it meant they were close to the Cape, but because they never saw Gannets, which are always seen there, they figured it must have been somewhere else. They also found it was suddenly much colder. Then L'Espoir had strong contrary winds for several weeks, and they had to reef to prevent being blown back to the north. They drifted in all directions and were utterly lost. The crew was suffering from scurvy, and several men had already died, including the all important Portuguese pilot. What made them decide to travel west in the end, instead of east, is totally unclear. Eventually, they ended up on the coast of southern Brazil, where they met the same kind of friendly natives Cabral had seen. They had found paradise, and stayed there for six months, having a wonderful time, then gradually moved north along the coast, to return to France in 1505. De Gonneville had no idea he had been in South America, and claimed to have found the fabled Great South Land that everybody was hoping to find. He called it Les Indes Méridionales, the South Indies. His stories became a myth, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, and were the basis for several French expeditions to find the Great South Land, leading to the discoveries of Bouvet in the South Atlantic, and Kerguelen in the southern Indian Ocean. De Gonnevilles log was lost. It surfaced as late as 1869, and was made available for scientists. The log was thoroughly analysed and historians could even identify the various places where De Gonneville had been ashore (Perrone-Moisés 1992). They concluded that the seaweed must have been near Tristan da Cunha, and one of them even says that the island was seen. In the version of the log I have read, there is no mention of seeing an island at all, only the seaweed, which could have been anywhere. So in my judgment, de Gonneville never saw Tristan.
In April 1508, a fleet of seventeen sails departed for India, divided into two captaincies. Jorge da Guiar was capitão-mor of thirteen ships, eight of which would go for spices, and five would stay on the Arabian coast. The remaining four vessels were to explore Malacca, under command of Diogo Lopes de Segueira. Jorge da Guiar lost his ship Sam João during the night on the shores of Tristan da Cunha. There are beautiful drawings of the accident, in colour, in two different Portuguese pilot books, clearly made by the same artist who produced the drawing of Tristão's explorations (Soeiro de Brito et al. 1992).
In his thesis, Malhao Pereira (2001) plotted the itineraries of various voyages. Most of them stayed well north of Tristan, but in 1535 Fernão Peres de Andrade, with the Espera, came very close, and indeed the text says he saw the largest of the islands, on June 17th. He found the island 'well shadowed' and supposed it was not very high, which probably means the mountain was hidden in clouds. Two years later, in 1537, André Vaz (no ship's name mentioned) passed the island even closer, but did not mention seeing it. Perhaps clouds or fog blocked his view, or perhaps he saw it without saying so. But as he was so close, I add him to my list with a question mark.
For the 16th century, Faustini gives us two more Portuguese visitors, both questionable: in 1520 the navigator Ruy Vaz Pereira, captain of the ship Las Rafael, called at Tristan for water, on his way to Muscat. And in 1557 Luis Fernandez de Vasemcellos, captain of the ship Santa Maria de Carca, sailed with the new Portuguese governor from the Canary Islands to Brazil, and then on to Tristan da Cunha, which he sighted at the beginning of July.
Rui Vaz Pereira's ship's name was Sam Rafael (mis-spelled by Faustini's transcriber). We could not find any mention of Tristan. All stories about him are about catching a giant fish, almost the size of his ship, near the Cape. It is a complete mystery how Faustini got the information about fetching water and sailing to Muscat. Unfortunately, the list of references has not been included in the transcribed Annals, so we have no idea where Faustini found this information. We keep this voyage on the list, with a huge question mark.
Regarding the 1557 voyage: the captain's name was Vasconcelos, and his ship the Santa Maria da Craça. Malhão Pereira found the voyage, but there is no indication that Vasconcelos saw the island. So here is the next question mark. Finally, there is the 1583 fleet, mentioned by Smith (1991). He refers to an earlier listing made by Butler in 1952. I have not been able to find this document, and even my English, stamp-collecting Tristan friends had never heard of it. They knew Butler was a philatelist too, who even designed new stamps for Tristan which were never produced. We could not find a 1583 voyage. This leaves us with another big question mark. That concludes the Portuguese era. Lots of uncertaincies, and no landing with goats could be identified.