1808: The Flight of the Emperor

by Laurentino Gomes

  At this point, at a safe distance from the Portuguese coast, the ships gathered one more time for inspections. One small warship, considered too fragile to cross the ocean, was sent back to Lisbon, where French troops immediately apprehended it. British officials also deemed a second ship inadequate for such a long voyage, but the Portuguese decided to risk it. Luckily, no vessels suffered shipwreck, although some arrived at Brazil in a pitiful state.

  On December 5, approximately midway between Lisbon and Funchal, on the island of Madeira, the British fleet divided itself in half. One part, under the command of Admiral Smith, changed course and, after a farewell exchange of volleys with the Portuguese fleet, returned to the now occupied Lisbon blockade. The other half, composed of the Marlborough, London, Bedford, and Monarch, under the command of Captain Graham Moore, continued escorting the Portuguese fleet to Brazil.15 Lord Strangford, the architect of the flight of the royal family, also returned to England. A few months later, he and Smith would meet again with Prince João in Rio de Janeiro.

  A little more than week after the departure, on December 8, just before approaching the Madeira archipelago, a thick fog enveloped everything. “It was so heavy that we could not see beyond a distance equal to three lengths of the ship,” wrote Captain James Walker aboard the HMS Bedford, a seventy-four-cannon vessel that began plying the world’s waters in 1775.16 But the worst hadn’t arrived yet. As soon as darkness fell, a violent storm further tormented the ships. Powerful winds whipped the decaying sails as the crew desperately tried to keep them fixed to the masts.

  The danger lay not on the ships themselves, but deep within the black of night blanketed by fog. A point known as the Eight Rocks, north of Porto Santo in the Madeira archipelago, posed a mortal pitfall for less experienced sailors. The partially submerged rocks had caused the wrecks of innumerable ships. To avoid this risk, the commanders of the fleet decided to wait for the weather to improve.17 The result surprised everyone: By dawn the next day, some of the ships had disappeared. Winds had dispersed the fleet during the night, and no one had noticed. “In the light of day, not a ship is in sight,” recorded James Walker in his captain’s log in the early hours of December 9.

  The storm continued for two days without respite. In the early morning of the 10th, the sail of the main mast of the Bedford was destroyed. While the crew tried to repair the damage, a violent gust of wind flung a sailor named George Green into the sea. A small rescue boat was sent to save him. After various attempts amid strong waves, the rescue party saved Green from death and brought him back aboard—to the relief of the entire crew.18

  On the Portuguese ships the damage was even greater. The main mast of the Medusa, which, according to the contingency plan, was making for Bahia, broke into pieces and came crashing down. Shortly thereafter, the third mast snapped, leaving the ship adrift in a choppy sea. “The great mast went without sails and collapsed because it was completely rotten,” witnessed Antonio de Araújo e Azevedo, future count of Barca. “The corporals are furious. Everything has contributed to putting our lives in danger and owes much to the activity and intelligence of the command of a few officials.”19

  The hours following the storm swarmed with confusion and uncertainty. Dispersed by the winds, the fleet followed different routes. Half the ships, including the Royal Prince and the Afonso de Albuquerque, sailed northwest. The rest of the fleet maintained a southwesterly course, in the direction of the agreed meeting place, the Cape Verde archipelago. The Queen of Portugal, damaged and transporting two of the prince’s daughters, began to lose track of the rest of the convoy but arrived in Cape Verde, where it underwent repairs before continuing on.

  After the seas had calmed, Princess Carlota Joaquina and her daughters decided to visit Prince João and Queen Maria I aboard the Royal Prince. They achieved this visit by means of a small boat hoisted by sailors over the gunwales and onto the ship. It was the royal family’s last contact before arriving in Brazil five weeks later. It was also the point at which Prince João decided to make for Bahia instead of Rio de Janeiro as planned.

  The two fleets, Portuguese and British, had no further communication between them. Until recently, historians believed that they strayed from one another to the point of losing line of sight. But records aboard the British ships reveal, however, that the two convoys followed a parallel course, quite close to one another, until reaching the coast of Brazil. On the morning of January 2, 1808, the commander of the Bedford, Captain James Walker, who protected the convoy of Prince João heading to Bahia, recorded in his ship’s log having seen three vessels at a distance. He preferred not to approach them, though, so as not to lose contact with the rest of the group. The last point of contact between the two flotillas took place via a bright and wondrous signal in the dark night. That night, Captain Walker ordered a blue light installed atop the mast. Around 11:15 p.m., the commander of the Marlborough, Captain Graham Moore, who accompanied the convoy headed to Rio de Janeiro, remarks in his diary that he sighted a blue light on the horizon.20

  After several weeks’ travel, the cold of Europe’s winter gave way to unbearable heat, aggravated by the infamous doldrums of the Atlantic. Nearing the Equator, the ships of the fleet heading toward Salvador (Bahia) entered a calm zone, the same that had frightened Portuguese navigators since the Age of Discovery and which, in the official version, obligated Pedro Álvares Cabral to change course three centuries earlier, landing in Brazil while en route to India. Here the ships of the prince regent and princess took ten days to cover just thirty leagues, a distance that under normal circumstances required only ten hours.21

  We can only imagine the torment of the hundreds crowded on deck: ten days under the equatorial sun, where the temperature reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit in December, without even the waft of a miserable breeze to alleviate their suffering. The dense throng of passengers and the lack of hygiene and sanitation favored the proliferation of disease. On the Afonso de Albuquerque, aboard which Princess Carlota Joaquina sailed, an infestation of lice forced the women to shave their heads and toss their wigs into the sea. They dusted their tormented scalps with antiseptic powder and then smeared them with pig lard.22

  In total, sixteen British warships took part, directly or indirectly, in the transfer of the royal family from Lisbon to Brazil. These were wide, comfortable ships, well-organized and with highly professional, disciplined crews. Some were already legendary, having participated in memorable campaigns and battles. The largest, the HMS Hibernia, sailed under the command of Captain John Conn, one of the officials who massacred the French and Spanish squadrons in the Battle of Trafalgar alongside Lord Nelson two years earlier. Launched in November 1804 as a first-class ship of the Royal British Navy, the Hibernia had 110 cannons, stretched 203 feet long, and weighed 2,530 tons.23

  Traveling aboard the HMS London was First Lieutenant Thomas O’Neill, an Irishman who soon became fundamental in the history of the flight of the royal family to Brazil. O’Neill witnessed the embarkation of the Portuguese court in Lisbon and every event that marked the voyage to Rio de Janeiro. After the court’s arrival, he remained in the city for sixteen months before being recalled for another mission for the Royal Navy. In 1810, he wrote and published in London an eighty-nine-page book that describes the court’s voyage to Brazil.24 His lively reports contain much emotion and dramatic detail. One characteristic passage describes the discomfort of noblewomen aboard the Portuguese ships and frigates:

  Females of Royal and most dignified birth, nourished in the bosom of rank and affluence . . . compelled to encounter November colds, and tempests through unknown seas, and exposed to inclement skies, deprived of all the delicacies and most of the necessaries of life, without a change of raiment or even beds to lie on—constrained to huddle promiscuously together onboard shipping totally unprepared for their reception.25

  In another passage, O’Neill records the testimony of a Portuguese official who accompanied the part of
the fleet that moored in Bahia with Prince João:

  So great was the number of people . . . and so crowded were all of the ships, that there was barely space to sit on the decks. The women . . . lacked any apparel aside from that which they were wearing. As the ships had very few provisions, it soon became necessary to ask the British Admiral to house some passengers aboard his ships. And (for these people) it was tremendous luck, as those which stayed behind were the object of pity from Lisbon to Bahia. The majority slept on the quarterdeck, without beds or blankets. Water was the main article which begged our attention: the amount they received was minimal and the food of the worst quality, so deficient that life itself became a burden. Our situation was so horrible that I wish nobody should have to experience nor witness it. Men, women and children all formed the most devastating scene.26

  Despite their historical importance, O’Neill’s reports aren’t universally worthy of our credence. Obvious exaggeration and even fantasy pervade some of the scenes and situations that he describes. Relating the departure of the court from Lisbon, for example, he claims that some “ladies of distinction” drowned during the desperate attempt to gain a place aboard the ships.27 But no corroborating evidence exists that this really happened. O’Neill also claims that, before departing, Dom João met with General Junot, commander of the invading French troops, a story similarly unconfirmed by any other source.28 These exaggerations aside, however, his reports constitute some of the earliest coverage of these events.

  Extremely battered, the Medusa moored in Recife, Brazil, on January 13, where, after undergoing repairs, she continued to Salvador, her original destination. On January 22, after fifty-four days at sea and approximately four thousand miles, the prince regent also landed in Salvador. The rest of the convoy had made port in Rio de Janeiro a week earlier, on January 17. Despite many dangers and hardships, the voyage brought on no deaths nor fatal accidents. The only known victim of the ocean crossing was Dom Miguel Álvares Pereira de Melo, duke of Cadaval, already ill when he departed Lisbon aboard the D. João de Castro, the most storm-battered of all of the ships. Separated from the rest of the fleet and sailing without its main mast, the ship docked in Paraíba completely smashed up and without water or provisions.29 After rescue and assistance, the crew continued to Bahia, but Álvares Pereira de Melo, in his weakened state, could no longer withstand the journey. He died shortly after arriving in Salvador.30

  Bahia, which three hundred years earlier had seen the arrival of Cabral and his fleet, now witnessed an event that forever changed the lives of Brazilians—and profoundly so. With the arrival of the court in the Bay of All Saints, the colonial era of Brazil concluded, and the first stage of an independent Brazil had begun.

  VIII

  Salvador

  Prince João’s layover in Salvador in 1808 remains a poorly understood episode in the history of the flight to Brazil. In the original plan, traced in Lisbon on the date of departure, the entire fleet was to maintain a consistently southwest course, heading straight for Rio de Janeiro. In case of unplanned diversions, the arranged meeting place was the Cape Verde archipelago off the coast of Africa, part of the Portuguese colonial empire, where ships could undergo repairs, take on provisions, and continue thereafter on the previously planned route. But the prince regent suddenly changed this plan during the third week of the voyage. Nothing seems to explain this decision. Why make an unplanned stop in Salvador, running unnecessary risks on an already complicated journey, when maintaining the original plan of sailing directly for Rio de Janeiro was not only easier but more prudent?

  Until recently, the most widely accepted hypothesis by historians centers on the storm that dispersed the fleet from December 8 to 10, near the Madeira archipelago. Amid the storm, the ships lost sight of one another. Part of the convoy—including the ships on which Queen Maria I, Prince Regent João, and Princess Carlota Joaquina traveled—drifted northwest, while the rest of the fleet continued on the original route, first toward Cape Verde and then to Rio de Janeiro. At a certain point, the story goes, discovering that they were nearing the Bahian coast, Prince João ordered the ships to dock in Salvador.1 According to this explanation, the prince regent landed in Bahia basically by accident.

  This questionable explanation began to fall from grace with the discoveries of historian Kenneth Light. A retired cigarette company executive, Light immersed himself in the archives of the British Navy, which stores the onboard logs of every one of its ships as well as letters and reports that its respective commanders sent to the admiral’s headquarters in London. This trove of correspondence explains some of the most important decisions made during the crossing, including the stop in Bahia. In meticulously analyzing these documents, Light reached two surprising conclusions. First, the hypothesis that part of the fleet went to Salvador after drifting in the storm made no sense. Second, Prince João went to Bahia deliberately, uninfluenced by any climatic accident on the high seas.

  Two hundred years ago, both the Portuguese and the British intimately understood the navigation routes of the South Atlantic. The logs of the British commanders prove that they knew perfectly well the coordinates of their ships at every hour of every day along the entire voyage. They were never lost. Furthermore, they easily could have corrected their route after the storm and proceeded to the agreed-upon rendezvous before departing again for Brazil. No, the decision to stop in Salvador had already taken place in the third week of the journey before duly being transmitted to the other ships.

  Salvador in the mid-eighteenth century, one of the most beautiful cities of the Portuguese Empire.

  Prospecto que pella parte do mar faz a cidade da Bahia, drawing of Salvador in about 1756 from Luis do Santos Vilhena’s book, Notícias soteropolitanas e brasílicas (Salvadoran and Brasilian News), 1801. Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro

  According to the documents collected by Light, on December 21, 1807, the prince regent communicated to Captain James Walker, commander of the Bedford, that he had decided to sail to Salvador instead of carrying out the planned route. This was eleven days after the storm. On this same occasion, the frigate Minerva was dispatched to São Tiago in Cape Verde, where it communicated Dom João’s change in plans to the rest of the ships.2 This intermediate mission further proves that the Portuguese and British commanders knew the locations of their own ships and of the rest of the fleet. But if the change in destination wasn’t accidental, what compelled the prince to make for Salvador?

  Arriving in Bahia fulfilled a political point of strategy. As we will see in more detail, the political and administrative units in the Brazilian colony two hundred years ago were quite shaky. More than ever Prince João needed a Brazil unified in favor of the Portuguese crown, and the success of his plans in 1808 depended on the financial and political support of all of the provinces. Almost half a century earlier, in 1763, Salvador had lost its status as first capital of the colony. It remained an important center for commerce and colonial decisions, true, but its residents profoundly resented the transfer of the capital to Rio de Janeiro. An attempt at secession took place ten years earlier, in the 1798 Tailors’ Revolt, and signals of discontent still floated in the air.

  Arriving in Salvador, therefore, providentially and diplomatically ensured the loyalty of the Bahians and the northern and northeastern provinces in a moment of great difficulty. João not only stopped there, but later, in Rio de Janeiro, he appointed as Bahia’s governor the count of Arcos, previously the viceroy of the entire colony. In Salvador, the prince also announced the most important of all the measures he undertook during his thirteen years in Brazil: the opening of the ports to foreign trade. Thus did he demonstrate Bahia’s significance within the political landscape of the monarchy’s New World interlude.

  This newer theory—that the prince planned the Bahian layover rather than drifting into it by accident—significantly changes interpretations about the transfer of the court t
o Brazil, starting with the image of the prince regent himself. Few dispute the characterization of Dom João as fearful and indecisive in Portugal, preferring escape to facing the French troops, even if it did seem the most sensible decision, given Napoleon’s power. Upon arriving in Brazil, however, João’s actions took on a more insightful and resolute character. Choosing Salvador made for a skilled political maneuver at a moment when the weakened and impoverished Portuguese court needed all the support it could get—and that was exactly what happened.

  When notice of the voyage reached the colony, the governor of Pernambuco, Caetano Pinto de Miranda Montenegro, sent to sea the brigantine Three Hearts, a small ship with two masts that, in the absence of wind, could also be oared.3 Carrying a load of cashews, pitanga cherries, and other fruits and refreshments, it had the mission of trying to locate the prince regent in the vicinity in which they calculated the Portuguese to be.

  Three days after leaving the port of Recife—and sailing blind—the Three Hearts amazingly managed to locate the Portuguese ships in one of the most extraordinary naval feats during the royal family’s trip to Brazil.4 In a time without radio, GPS, or satellite communications, imagine a small boat fewer than thirty feet long finding another ship at high sea without any precise information about its location. For the passengers and crew of Dom João’s fleet, the brigantine came as a welcome relief. After almost two months’ voyage, subsisting on a diet of salted meat, dry biscuits, wine gone bad, and contaminated water, they could finally enjoy fresh fruit and other nutritious fare. Even better, these tropical species were of an appearance, consistency, and flavor never before experienced in Portugal. Thus did Brazil present itself in the fruits of its exuberant and prodigious nature to Prince João and his court, fugitives of the torments of war in Europe.