THE ARMADA OF 1445.
While Gonsalo Pacheco had been wasting time and men and the good name of
Europe and Christendom in his plunderings between C. Bojador and C.
Blanco, the memory of the death of Gonsalo de Cintra was kept alive in
Lagos, and the men of the town came in solemn deputation to the Prince,
before the summer of this same year (1445) was out, to beg him for
permission to take full, perfect, and sufficient vengeance. In other
words, they offered to equip the largest fleet that had ever sailed on
an ocean voyage--as it now began to be called, a Guinea voyage--since
the Prince began his work. As far as we know, this was also one of the
greatest armadas that had been sent out into the new-discovered or
re-discovered or undiscovered seas and lands since the European nations
had begun to look at all beyond their own narrow limits.
Neither the fleet of 1341, which found the Canaries, and of which
Boccaccio tells us, nor the Genoese expedition of 1291, nor the Catalan
venture of 1346, nor De Béthencourt's armament of 1402, for the
conquest of the Fortunate Isles, was anything like this armada of 1445.
For this last was a real sign of national interest in a work which was
not only discovery, but profit and a means to more; it proved that in
Portugal, in however base and narrowly selfish a way, there was now a
spirit of general enterprising activity, and till this had been once
awakened, there was not much hope of great results from the efforts of
individuals.
The first contingent now equipped in Lagos--for the Prince at once
approved of his men's idea--numbered fourteen caravels--fourteen of the
best sailing ships afloat, as Cadamosto said a little later; but this
was only the central fleet, under Lançarote as Admiral. Three more ships
came from Madeira, one of them under Tristam Vaz, the coloniser of
Funchal; Diniz Diaz headed another contingent from Lisbon; Zarco, the
chief partner in the discovery and settlement of Madeira, sent his own
caravel in command of his nephew; in all there were seven and twenty
ships--caravels, galleys, and pinnaces. Since the Carthaginians sent out
their colonists under Hanno beyond the Pillars of Hercules, a larger and
braver fleet had not sailed down that desolate West of Africa.
Gil Eannes, who had rounded Bojador, was there, with the Diaz, who had
passed the Green Headland and come first to the land of the Negroes, and
the list of captains was made up of the most daring and seasoned of
Spanish seamen. Scarcely a man who had ventured on the ocean voyages of
the last thirty years was still alive and able-bodied who did not sail
on the 10th August, 1445.
At the start Cape Blanco was appointed as the rendezvous; with favouring
wind and tide the ships raced out as far as Arguin. Lawrence, a younger
brother of the Diaz family, drew ahead, and was the first to fall in
with Pacheco's three caravels, which were slowly crawling home after
their losses. Now, hearing of the great fleet that was coming after to
take vengeance, they turned about to wait for them, "as it was worth
while to have revenge though one had to live on short rations." So, now,
thirty European ships and their crews were included in the fleet. The
pioneer, Lawrence Diaz, and the rest, lay to at the Isle of Herons in
the Bank of Arguin; while waiting there they saw some wonderful things
in birds, and Azurara tells us what they told him, though rather
doubtfully. The great beaks of the Marabout, or Prophet Bird, struck
them most,--"a cubit long and more, three fingers' breadth across, and
the bill smooth and polished, like a Bashaw's scabbard, and looking as
if artificially worked with fire and tools,"--the mouth and gullet so
big that the leg of a man of the ordinary size would go into it. On
these birds particularly, says Azurara, our men refreshed themselves
during their three days' stay.
Slowly but surely, two by two, three by three, nine caravels mustered at
C. Blanco, and as the flagship of Lançarote was among them, an attack
was made at once with two hundred and seventy-eight men picked from
among the crews, the footmen and lancers in one boat and the archers in
another, with Lançarote himself and the men-at-arms behind. They were
steered by pilots who had been on the coast before and knew it, and it
was hoped they would come upon the natives of Tider Island with the
first light of dawn. But the way was longer than the pilots reckoned,
the night was pitchy dark, without moon or stars, the tide was on the
ebb, and at last the boats were aground. It was well on in the morning
before they got off on the flood and rowed along the coast to find a
landing-place. The shore was manned with natives, not at all taken by
surprise, but dancing, yelling, spitting, and throwing missiles in
insolent defiance. After a desperate struggle on the beach, they were
put to flight with trifling loss--eight killed, four taken,--but when
the raiders reached the village, they found it empty; the women and
children had been sent away, and all their wretched little property had
gone with them. The same was found true of all the villages on that
coast; but in a second battle on the next day, fifty-seven Moors were
captured, and the army went back on shipboard once more.
And now the fleet divided. Lançarote, holding a council of his captains,
declared the purpose of the voyage was accomplished. They had punished
the natives and taken vengeance for Gonsalo de Cintra and the other
martyrs; now it was for each crew and captain to settle whether they
would go farther. All the prisoners having now been divided like
prize-money between the ships, there was nothing more to stay for.
Five caravels at once returned to Portugal after trying to explore the
inlet of the sea at C. Blanco; but they only went up in their boats five
leagues, and then turned back. One stayed in the Bay of Arguin to
traffic in slaves, and lost one of the most valuable captives by sheer
carelessness,--a woman, badly guarded, slipped out and swam ashore.
But there was a braver spirit in some others of the fleet. The captain
of the King's caravel, which had come from Lisbon in the service of the
King's uncle, swore he would not turn back. He, Gomes Pires, would go on
to the Nile; the Prince had ordered him to bring him certain word of it.
He would not fail him. Lançarote for himself said the same, and another,
one Alvaro de Freitas, capped the offers of all the rest. He would go on
beyond the Negro-Nile to the Earthly Paradise, to the farthest East,
where the four sacred rivers flowed from the tree of life. "Well do you
all know how our Lord the Infant sets great store by us, that we should
make him know clearly about the land of the Negroes, and especially the
River of Nile. It will not be a small guerdon that he will give for such
service."
Six caravels in all formed the main body of the Perseverants, and these
coasted steadily along till they came to Diaz's Cape of Palms, which
they knew was near the Senegal and the land of the Negroes, "and so
beautiful did the land now become, and so delicious was the scent from
the shore, that it was as if they were by some gracious fruit garden,
ordained to the sole end of their delights. And when the men in the
caravels saw the first palms and towering woodland, they knew right well
that they were close upon the River of Nile, which the men there call
the Sanaga." For the Infant had told them how little more than twenty
leagues beyond the sight of those trees they would see the river, as his
prisoners of the Azanegue tribes had told him. And as they looked
carefully for the signs of this, they saw at last, two leagues from
land, "a colour of the water that was different from the rest, for that
was of the colour of mud."
And understanding this to mean that there were shoals, they put farther
out to sea for safety, when one took some of the water in his hand and
put it to his mouth, and found that it was sweet. And crying out to the
others, "Of a surety," said they, "we are now at the River of Nile, for
the water of the river comes with such force into the sea as to sweeten
it." So they dropped their anchors in the river's mouth, and they of the
caravel of Vincent Diaz (another brother of Diniz and Lawrence) let down
a boat, into which jumped eight men who pulled ashore.
Here they found some ivory and elephant hide, and had a fierce battle
with a huge negro whose two little naked children they carried off,--but
though the chronicle of the voyages stops here for several chapters of
rapturous reflection on the greatness of the Nile, and the valour and
spirit of the Prince who had thus found a way to its western mouth, we
must follow the captains as they coast slowly along to Cape Verde, "for
that the wind was fair for sailing." Landing on a couple of uninhabited
islands off the Cape, they found first of all "fresh goat-skins and
other things," and then the arms of the Infant and the words of his
motto, _Talan de bien faire_, carved upon trees, and they doubted, like
Azurara when writing down his history from their lips; "whether the
great power of Alexander or of Cæsar could have planted traces of itself
so far from home," as these islands were from Sagres. For though the
distance looks small enough on a full map of all the world, on the chart
of the Then Known it was indeed a lengthy stretch--some two thousand
miles, fully as great a distance as the whole range of the Mediterranean
from the coast of Palestine to the Straits of Gibraltar.
Now by these signs, adds the chronicler, they understood right well that
other caravels had been there already--and it was so; for it was the
ship of John Gonsalvez Zarco, Captain of Madeira, which had passed this
way, as they found for a fact on the day after. And wishing to land, but
finding the number of the natives to be such that they could not land by
day or night, they put on shore a ball and a mirror and a paper on which
was drawn a cross.
And when the natives came and found them in the morning, they broke the
ball and threw away the pieces, and with their assegais broke up the
mirror into little bits, and tore the paper, showing that they cared for
none of these things.
Since this is so, said Captain Gomes Pires to the archers, draw your
bows upon these rascals, that they may know we are people who can do
them a damage.
But the negroes returned the fire with arrows and assegais--deadly
weapons, the arrows unfeathered and without a string-notch, but tipped
with deadly poison of herbs, made of reed or cane or charred wood with
long iron heads, and the assegais poisoned in like manner and pricked
with seven or eight harpoons of iron, so that it was no easy matter to
draw it out of the flesh.
So they lost heart for going farther, with all the coast-land up in arms
against them, and turned back to Lagos, but before they left the Cape
they noticed in the desert island, where they had found the Prince's
arms, trees so large that they had never seen the like, for among them
was one which was 108 palms round at the foot. Yet this tree, the famous
baobab, was not much higher than a walnut; "of its fibre they make good
thread for sewing, which burns like flax; its fruit is like a gourd and
its kernels like chestnuts." And so, we are told, all the captains put
back along the coast, in a mind to enter the aforesaid River of Nile,
but one of the caravels getting separated from the rest and not liking
to enter the Senegal alone, went straight to Lagos, and another put back
to water in the Bay of Arguin and the Rio d'Ouro estuary, where there
came to them at once the Moors on board the caravel, full of confidence
because they had never had any dealings before with the merchants of
Spain, and sold them a negro for five doubloons, and gave them meat and
water from their camels, and came in and out on board the ship, so that
there was great fear of treachery, but at last without any quarrel they
were all put on shore, under promise that next July their friends would
come again and trade with them in slaves and gold to their hearts'
content. And so, taking in a good cargo of seal-skins, they made their
way straight home.
Meantime two of the other caravels and a pinnace, which had been
separated early in the voyage from the main body, under the pilotage of
the veteran Diniz Diaz, had also made their way to C. Verde, had fought
with the natives in some desperate skirmishes--one knight had his
"shield stuck as full with arrows as the porcupine with quills," and had
turned back in the face of the same discouragements as the rest; and so
would have ended the whole of this great enterprise but for the
dauntless energy of one captain and his crew.
Zarco of Madeira had given his caravel to his nephew with a special
charge that, come what might, he was not to think of profit and trading,
but of doing the will of the Prince his lord. He was not to land in the
fatal Bay of Arguin, which had been the end of so many enterprises; he
was to go as Diniz Diaz had first gone, straight to the land of the
Negroes, and pass beyond the farthest of earlier sailors. Now the
caravel, says Azurara proudly, was well equipped and was manned by a
crew that was ready to bear hard ship, and the captain was full of
energy and zeal, and so they went on steadily, sailing through the great
Sea of Ocean till they came to the River of Nile, where they filled two
pipes with water, of which they took back one to the city of Lisbon. And
not even Alexander, though he was one of the monarchs of the world,
ever drank of water that had been brought from so far as this.
"But now, still going on, they passed C. Verde and landed upon the
islands I have spoken of, to see if there were any people there, but
they found only some tame goats without any one to tend them; and it was
there that they made the signs that the others found on coming after,
the arms of the Infant with his device and motto. And then drawing in
close to the Cape, they waited to see if any canoes would come off to
them, and anchored about a mile off the shore. But they had not waited
long before two boats, with ten negroes in them, put off from the beach
and made straight for the caravel, like men who came in peace and
friendship. And being near, they began to make signs as if for a
safe-conduct, which were answered in like manner, and then at once,
without any other precaution, five of them came on board the caravel,
where the captain made them all the entertainment that he could, bidding
them eat and drink, and so they went away with signs of great
contentment, but it appeared after, that in their hearts they meditated
treachery. For as soon as they got to land they talked with the other
natives on shore, and thinking that they could easily take the ship,
with this intent there now set out six boats, with five and thirty or
forty men, arrayed as those who come to fight, but when they came close
they were afraid and stayed a little way off, without daring to make any
attack. And seeing this, our men launched a boat on the other side of
the caravel, where they could not be seen by the enemy, and manned it
with eight rowers, who were to wait till the canoes came nearer to the
ship. At last the negroes were tired of waiting and watching, and one of
their canoes came up closer, in which were five strong warriors, and at
once our boat rowed round the caravel and cut them off. And because of
the great advantage that we had in our style of rowing, in a trice our
men were upon them, and they having no hope of defence, threw themselves
into the water, and the other boats made off for the shore. And our men
had the greatest trouble in catching those that were swimming away, for
they dived not a whit worse than cormorants, so that we could scarcely
catch hold of them. One was taken, not very easily, on the spot, and
another, who fought as desperately as two men, was wounded, and with
these two the boat returned to the caravel.
"And for that they saw that it would not profit them to stay longer in
that place, they resolved to see if they could find any new lands of
which they might bring news to the Infant their lord. And so, sailing on
again, they came to a cape, where they saw 'groves of palm trees dry and
without branches, which they called the Cape of Masts.'" Here, a little
farther along the coast, a reconnoitring party of seven landed and found
four negro hunters sitting on the beach, armed with bows and arrows, who
fled on seeing the strangers. "And as they were naked and their hair cut
very short, they could not catch them," and only brought away their
arrows for a trophy.
This Cape of Masts, or some point of the coast a little to the
south-east, was the farthest now reached by Zarco's caravel. "From here
they put back and sailed direct to Madeira, and thence to the city of
Lisbon, where the Infant received them with reward enough. For this
caravel, of all those who had sailed at this time (1445), had done most
and reached farthest."
There was one contingent of the great armada yet unaccounted for, but
they were sad defaulters. Three of the ships on the outward voyage which
had separated from the main body and Lançarote's flagship, had the
cowardice or laziness to give up the purpose of the voyage altogether;
"they agreed to make a descent on the Canary Islands instead of going to
Guinea at all that year."
Here they stayed some time, raiding and slave-hunting, but also making
observations on the natives and the different natural features of the
different islands, which, as we have them in the old chronicle, are not
the least interesting part of the story of the Lagos Armada of 1445.[38]
[Footnote 38: The date of this voyage is brought down as late as 1447 by
Santarem Oliveiro Martins.]