Thomé Lopes
Encyclopedia
Thomé Lopes or Tomé Lopes (?-?) was a Portuguese
scrivener
, writer of an eyewitness account of the second journey
of Vasco da Gama
to India (1502–03).
Thomé Lopes's background is obscure. All that is known is that he is a native of Porto
, Portugal
.
In early 1502, Thomé Lopes was hired as a escrivão (captain's clerk
) aboard an unnamed ship owned and outfitted by Ruy Mendes de Brito (a gentleman of the royal chamber of King Manuel I of Portugal
) and captained by an Italian, Giovanni Buonagratia (João de Buonagracia) of Florence
. This ship was part of a Portuguese squadron of five ships, under the overall command of Estêvão da Gama
(cousin of Vasco da Gama). This squadron set out from Lisbon
on April 1, 1502, intending to catch up and join the 4th Portuguese India Armada
of admiral Vasco da Gama
, which had left a few months earlier (February, 1502). According to Lopes, their squadron caught up with the main armada on August 21, 1502 at Anjediva Island, off the Malabar Coast
of India.
Among the most memorable passages in Lopes's account, is a detailed description of the notorious massacre of the Muslim pilgrim ships (October 3, 1502 a day "that I remember every day of my life") on the orders of Vasco da Gama
. Later Portuguese chroniclers have dealt uneasily with this act of cruelty, but Lopes's vivid and often heart-breaking narrative leaves little unmentioned.
Another famous episode reported by Lopes is the execution by impaling of three Muslims in Cochin, on the orders of the Trimumpara Raja, the Hindu prince of Cochin
, for the sacrilege of selling a cow for beef to the crew of a Portuguese ship in harbor. It is notable that it was admiral Vasco da Gama
himself (not usually known for his cultural sensitivity) who arrested the three men and handed them over to the Cochinese authorities for justice, and forbade any further purchases of cows by Portuguese sailors.
Lopes and the armada left India in February 1503, beginning its return journey back to Portugal. Lopes reports how his ship was nearly sunk in a collision with another off Mozambique Island . Somewhere around the Cape of Good Hope
in July, Lopes reports an encounter with two of the ships of the outgoing 5th Armada
of Afonso de Albuquerque
.
On July 30, 1503, Thomé Lopes's ship, accompanied by two others, came across and landed on the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena
. Lopes refers to it as an unknown island, and gives its position relative to Ascension Island
(which he refers to by that name). It is commonly accepted that Ascension island was first discovered in May, 1501 on the outward journey
of João da Nova
, and some writers have questioned how Lopes could have known about that island as he left Lisbon before Nova's fleet returned. A clue is given in Lopes's own account, where he describes how, in August 1502, they picked up letters in Malindi
left by the returning João da Nova . These letters might have described Nova's discovery of Ascension island on the outward journey (although not, of course, Nova's own discovery of Saint Helena on his return in May 1502). The only quibble remains with Lopes's use of the name "Ascension" island, as it is commonly thought Nova originally named it Conceição (Conception island), and it was only renamed "Ascension" later (May, 1503) by Afonso de Albuquerque
. One possible explanation is that Lopes's account might not have been written immediately in 1502, but a little later after his arrival in Portugal, after the name of Ascension island had already been settled upon. But the most probable explanation is simply that the name (and maybe even the locational information) was reported to Thomé Lopes precisely by the two 5th Armada ships that, as already mentioned, Lopes just encountered near the Cape of Good Hope (the two would have been coming precisely from Albuquerque's (re-)discovery of Ascension island).
The original Portuguese version of Thomé Lopes's account has been lost, but an Italian translation was published in 1550 in Venice, in a collection of travelogues collected by Giovanni Battista Ramusio
. A translation back to Portuguese was commissioned and published in 1812.
Thomé Lopes's account is one of several eyewitness account of the 4th Portuguese India Armada
of 1502-03. It is widely regarded as reliable, and frequently resorted to by historians to correct the accounts by later 16th C. chroniclers (Joao de Barros
, Gaspar Correia
, etc.)
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
scrivener
Captain's clerk
A captain's clerk was a rating, now obsolete, in the Royal Navy for a person employed by the captain to keep his records, correspondence, and accounts. The regulations of the Royal Navy demanded that a purser serve at least one year as a captain's clerk, so the latter was often a young man working...
, writer of an eyewitness account of the second journey
4th Portuguese India Armada (Gama, 1502)
The Fourth India Armada was assembled in 1502 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of D. Vasco da Gama. It was Gama's second trip to India...
of Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India...
to India (1502–03).
Thomé Lopes's background is obscure. All that is known is that he is a native of Porto
Porto
Porto , also known as Oporto in English, is the second largest city in Portugal and one of the major urban areas in the Iberian Peninsula. Its administrative limits include a population of 237,559 inhabitants distributed within 15 civil parishes...
, Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
.
In early 1502, Thomé Lopes was hired as a escrivão (captain's clerk
Captain's clerk
A captain's clerk was a rating, now obsolete, in the Royal Navy for a person employed by the captain to keep his records, correspondence, and accounts. The regulations of the Royal Navy demanded that a purser serve at least one year as a captain's clerk, so the latter was often a young man working...
) aboard an unnamed ship owned and outfitted by Ruy Mendes de Brito (a gentleman of the royal chamber of King Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I , the Fortunate , 14th king of Portugal and the Algarves was the son of Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu, , by his wife, Infanta Beatrice of Portugal...
) and captained by an Italian, Giovanni Buonagratia (João de Buonagracia) of Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
. This ship was part of a Portuguese squadron of five ships, under the overall command of Estêvão da Gama
Estêvão da Gama (c.1470)
Estêvão da Gama was a Portuguese navigator and explorer, discoverer of the Trindade and Martim Vaz islands .Estêvão da Gama was Vasco da Gama's cousin, son of his cousin Aires da Gama, as explained by Manuel de Faria e Sousa, in its work "Ásia Portuguesa"...
(cousin of Vasco da Gama). This squadron set out from Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
on April 1, 1502, intending to catch up and join the 4th Portuguese India Armada
4th Portuguese India Armada (Gama, 1502)
The Fourth India Armada was assembled in 1502 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of D. Vasco da Gama. It was Gama's second trip to India...
of admiral Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India...
, which had left a few months earlier (February, 1502). According to Lopes, their squadron caught up with the main armada on August 21, 1502 at Anjediva Island, off the Malabar Coast
Malabar Coast
The Malabar Coast is a long and narrow coastline on the south-western shore line of the mainland Indian subcontinent. Geographically, it comprises the wettest regions of southern India, as the Western Ghats intercept the moisture-laden monsoon rains, especially on their westward-facing mountain...
of India.
Among the most memorable passages in Lopes's account, is a detailed description of the notorious massacre of the Muslim pilgrim ships (October 3, 1502 a day "that I remember every day of my life") on the orders of Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India...
. Later Portuguese chroniclers have dealt uneasily with this act of cruelty, but Lopes's vivid and often heart-breaking narrative leaves little unmentioned.
Another famous episode reported by Lopes is the execution by impaling of three Muslims in Cochin, on the orders of the Trimumpara Raja, the Hindu prince of Cochin
Kingdom of Cochin
Kingdom of Cochin was a late medieval Hindu kingdom and later Princely State on the Malabar Coast, South India...
, for the sacrilege of selling a cow for beef to the crew of a Portuguese ship in harbor. It is notable that it was admiral Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India...
himself (not usually known for his cultural sensitivity) who arrested the three men and handed them over to the Cochinese authorities for justice, and forbade any further purchases of cows by Portuguese sailors.
Lopes and the armada left India in February 1503, beginning its return journey back to Portugal. Lopes reports how his ship was nearly sunk in a collision with another off Mozambique Island . Somewhere around the Cape of Good Hope
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the...
in July, Lopes reports an encounter with two of the ships of the outgoing 5th Armada
5th Portuguese India Armada (Albuquerque, 1503)
The Fifth India Armada was assembled in 1503 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque. It was Albuquerque's first trip to India. It was not a particularly successful armada - navigational mistakes scattered the fleet on the outward journey...
of Afonso de Albuquerque
Afonso de Albuquerque
Afonso de Albuquerque[p][n] was a Portuguese fidalgo, or nobleman, an admiral whose military and administrative activities as second governor of Portuguese India conquered and established the Portuguese colonial empire in the Indian Ocean...
.
On July 30, 1503, Thomé Lopes's ship, accompanied by two others, came across and landed on the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena
Saint Helena
Saint Helena , named after St Helena of Constantinople, is an island of volcanic origin in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the British overseas territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha which also includes Ascension Island and the islands of Tristan da Cunha...
. Lopes refers to it as an unknown island, and gives its position relative to Ascension Island
Ascension Island
Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island in the equatorial waters of the South Atlantic Ocean, around from the coast of Africa and from the coast of South America, which is roughly midway between the horn of South America and Africa...
(which he refers to by that name). It is commonly accepted that Ascension island was first discovered in May, 1501 on the outward journey
3rd Portuguese India Armada (Nova, 1501)
The Third India Armada was assembled in 1501 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of João da Nova. Nova's armada was relatively small and primarily commercial in objective. Nonetheless, they engaged the first significant Portuguese naval battle in the Indian Ocean...
of João da Nova
João da Nova
João da Nova , Xoán de Novoa or Joam de Nôvoa galician spellings, Juan de Nova, Spanish spelling, was a Galician explorer of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans at the service of Portugal...
, and some writers have questioned how Lopes could have known about that island as he left Lisbon before Nova's fleet returned. A clue is given in Lopes's own account, where he describes how, in August 1502, they picked up letters in Malindi
Malindi
Malindi is a town on Malindi Bay at the mouth of the Galana River, lying on the Indian Ocean coast of Kenya. It is 120 kilometres northeast of Mombasa. The population of Malindi is 117,735 . It is the capital of the Malindi District.Tourism is the major industry in Malindi. The city is...
left by the returning João da Nova . These letters might have described Nova's discovery of Ascension island on the outward journey (although not, of course, Nova's own discovery of Saint Helena on his return in May 1502). The only quibble remains with Lopes's use of the name "Ascension" island, as it is commonly thought Nova originally named it Conceição (Conception island), and it was only renamed "Ascension" later (May, 1503) by Afonso de Albuquerque
Afonso de Albuquerque
Afonso de Albuquerque[p][n] was a Portuguese fidalgo, or nobleman, an admiral whose military and administrative activities as second governor of Portuguese India conquered and established the Portuguese colonial empire in the Indian Ocean...
. One possible explanation is that Lopes's account might not have been written immediately in 1502, but a little later after his arrival in Portugal, after the name of Ascension island had already been settled upon. But the most probable explanation is simply that the name (and maybe even the locational information) was reported to Thomé Lopes precisely by the two 5th Armada ships that, as already mentioned, Lopes just encountered near the Cape of Good Hope (the two would have been coming precisely from Albuquerque's (re-)discovery of Ascension island).
The original Portuguese version of Thomé Lopes's account has been lost, but an Italian translation was published in 1550 in Venice, in a collection of travelogues collected by Giovanni Battista Ramusio
Giovanni Battista Ramusio
Giovanni Battista Ramusio was an Italian geographer and travel writer.Born in Treviso, Italy, Ramusio was the son of Paolo Ramusio, a magistrate in the city-state of Venice...
. A translation back to Portuguese was commissioned and published in 1812.
Thomé Lopes's account is one of several eyewitness account of the 4th Portuguese India Armada
4th Portuguese India Armada (Gama, 1502)
The Fourth India Armada was assembled in 1502 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of D. Vasco da Gama. It was Gama's second trip to India...
of 1502-03. It is widely regarded as reliable, and frequently resorted to by historians to correct the accounts by later 16th C. chroniclers (Joao de Barros
João de Barros
João de Barros , called the Portuguese Livy, is one of the first great Portuguese historians, most famous for his Décadas da Ásia , a history of the Portuguese in India and Asia.-Early years:...
, Gaspar Correia
Gaspar Correia
Gaspar Correia or Gaspar Corrêa was a Portuguese historian, author of "Lendas da Índia , one of the earliest and most important works about Portuguese rule in Asia, being referred to as a Portuguese Polybius.- Biography :There is little information about the life of the author...
, etc.)