Conquerors

by Roger Crowley

  There was panic in the Portuguese fleet: men hurrying to rowboats to be ferried out to the offshore ships; buckling on armor; snatching up swords and helmets and muskets; unprimed cannons being rolled out; oarsmen frantically trying to spin the galleys so that they could deploy their forward guns; shouting and uproar, orders and counterorders. There was time to establish some semblance of discipline because Hussain had paused in the river mouth, waiting for Ayaz’s fustas, which seemed to be dawdling. The governor of Diu had in fact feigned some difficulties and anchored outside with the aim of watching to see who would win the contest—and then acting accordingly. Undeterred, Hussain swept on, passing the vulnerable Cochin merchant galleys without a shot fired, on toward the São Miguel and São António, perilously isolated in midstream from the rest of the fleet. His intention was to shatter Lourenço’s flagship at a first strike.

  As the distance closed, two of the Muslim cannons opened up broadside. An iron ball passed clean through the São Miguel but killed no one; the ship juddered from stem to stern. For the first time, the Portuguese were on the receiving end of artillery bombardment in the Indian Ocean. The Muslim archers, with their short, whippy Turkish bows, fired off a buzzing shower of arrows “that seemed like rain,” loosed at a rate of twenty a minute. The São Miguel’s mast was studded with arrow shafts; out of a hundred men, thirty were hit and wounded. But the men-at-arms fought back with their own torrent of crossbow bolts and shot from muskets, and the ship’s gunners had had sufficient time to prime their cannons and loose off their own counterblast. In the shattering roar of the guns, both ships vanished in the smoke and reappeared. Eight shots from the São Miguel hit the Muslim ship, crowded with four hundred fighting men. Netting was useless against this salvo; the cannonballs ripped through the closely packed ranks, shattering armor, dismembering bodies; splinters of wooden shrapnel increased the carnage. The deck was a scene of chaos. Hussain changed his mind about attempting to board. On the inshore breeze and the tide, he swept on past the Portuguese carracks, now supported by the two galleys, and anchored upstream on the opposite shore, followed by his other vessels.

  Lourenço, sensing the damage inflicted on Hussain’s flagship, was determined to press home the advantage. This required the leading carracks to be towed toward the enemy by their oared boats, but the execution was inept, as he failed to provide any support from his galleys. Hussain simply sent forward his own galleys, which put the fragile towboats under such a hail of fire that they were forced to withdraw. The attack had to be abandoned.

  It was the end of a tense day. The two fleets were locked into a small arena, anchored on opposite banks and separated by a mere five hundred yards. The Cochin merchant ships lay at anchor before the town, unmolested. Each side tended to its wounded and counted the costs. Hussain’s ships had been badly mauled; casualties were frighteningly high, and his supplies of gunpowder were running low. As night fell, the Portuguese captains were ferried to the São Miguel for a council of war. Without information, they were uncertain how to proceed. They decided to put ashore Balthazar, the son of the interpreter Gaspar de Almeida and also fluent in languages, to seek information in Chaul. He learned that Hussain was awaiting the arrival of Malik Ayaz before launching a further attack; in the meanwhile he was working to win the townspeople over to his side. For the moment they were also maintaining a cautious neutrality, watching to see how events turned out.

  With the return of day, Lourenço could see that Hussain had arranged his ships in a tight defensive formation. They were drawn up along the shore, chained together, prows to the river, and connected one to another by gangplanks, so that men could be moved from one ship to the next in the event of attack. This was tactical suicide. His carracks were no longer capable of using their broadside bombards; nor could they escape. Hussain had transformed his fleet from an attack force into a huddled encampment waiting for Ayaz to come. And Ayaz was still loitering offshore. In the interim, the fleet was a sitting duck.

  What Hussain did not know was that his opponent’s thinking had been similarly warped. When the council of war reconvened on the São Miguel the next morning, with the attitude of the enemy fleet now clear, the decision was taken to attack. This required an onshore wind, which would not arise until midday. There were two strategic options: either to bombard the Egyptian ships or to take them by storm.

  In a speech probably fabricated by a chronicler, Lourenço’s master gunner, the German Michel Arnau, proposed a simple solution. “Don’t put yourself and your men at risk, because what you want can be done without any danger, except to me and my companions.” If Lourenço would allow the carracks to be positioned where he indicated, all his men could disembark and his gun crews could sink the entire fleet by nightfall, “and if not…you may order my hands to be cut off.”

  The shadow of the flunked engagement at Dabul hung over the group of men assembled in the cabin. Lourenço needed to reestablish honor and the credibility of prizes. Cannon fire, the simple and deadly solution, had almost come to be associated with cowardice in the honor code of the fidalgos. Glory came from individual courage, hand-to-hand fighting, and the winning of booty. And so, as Correia put it with the benefit of hindsight, “avid to gain honor and wealth…the German’s advice went unheeded. They decided to board, so that they might win glory at the point of the sword.” It is possible that Pêro Barreto, the second-in-command and a cooler head, backed Arnau up. They were overruled. The council chose to fight on Hussain’s terms.

  Despite the damage inflicted on the Rumes’ fleet, the task was not straightforward. Their carracks were considerably larger and higher than Lourenço’s. They could rain missiles down on his decks, and maneuvering the sailing ships into a boarding position promised to be tricky, given the shifting winds, tidal pulls, and cross-currents. A plan of attack was drawn up. The São Miguel and São António would tackle Hussain’s flagship fore and aft. The other ships would engage the rest of the line to prevent men from being transferred to help, with the light caravels and galleys falling on the opposing galleys.

  Early on Saturday afternoon, on the surge of the tide and the breeze off the sea, the ships weighed anchor and started to move up the river. As the São Miguel, leading the line, approached the target, it was again met with a torrent of arrows. The Portuguese limited their cannon shots with a desire not to damage the potentially valuable prizes. Despite the whip and buzz of missiles from Hussain’s higher vessel, the São Miguel was closing in, only ten or fifteen yards away, when the plan of attack started to unravel. The wind shifted, then died. The ship was drifting on the current; forward momentum was sufficient to bring the São Miguel in to grapple with the enemy flagship, with the São António following behind, but Hussain, seeing the moment, managed to effect an extraordinary maneuver. By slackening the forward anchor cables and hauling in the stern cables tied to the bank, his sailors managed to pull the ships back to the shore—out of the path of the oncoming attack. The rudder of the São Miguel was unable to correct its course. It began to drift past its target.

  Instinctively, the boatswain’s mate decided to drop anchor to prevent the ship from overshooting, and the vessels behind were similarly forced to pay off and anchor to avoid colliding. The attack ground to a halt. The squadron hung motionless in the river, in disarray. Lourenço, furious at this sudden disruption, advanced down the deck, sword in hand, to kill the man responsible for botching the attack. The boatswain’s mate, weighing his options, leaped overboard and swam to the shore—where he was killed anyway.

  For Lourenço’s crew, the situation was now perilous. The São Miguel was swinging idly on its anchor in the current close to the enemy ship, which was able to shower missiles on the deck from its higher vantage point. It became unwise to expose oneself without good armor. Ducking the field of fire, Michel Arnau, the master gunner, again came to propose that if the ship were swung broadside on its cables he could blast the Egyptians out of the water at point-blank range. Lourenço would not count
enance the idea of leaving the battlefield without trophies and honor. The missiles continued to sweep the deck. Conditions on the São Miguel were becoming uncomfortable. The men were completely exposed, and Lourenço, heedlessly brave, insisted on barking orders from the open deck. He became an obvious target. A first arrow merely grazed him; a second hit him full in the face. Streaming with blood, he finally gave the order to raise anchor and escape the blizzard of projectiles. The São Miguel and São António passed downstream and anchored out of bowshot.

  Meanwhile, the two Portuguese galleys and the light caravel, able to maneuver in the slackening wind, had fared better. They bypassed their immobilized carracks and bore down on the Egyptian galleys anchored a little farther down the line. Again as they closed to board, they rowed through the buzz and sting of the arrows; the unprotected galley slaves were hit repeatedly until they fell on their oars, but the assault was unstoppable. They crashed into the moored ships. The men-at-arms, well protected by chain mail, steel breastplates, and helmets, smashed their way on board and swept down the decks, trampling the chained oarsmen underfoot, scything and hacking armed men down, butting them into the sea with lances, halberds, and huge two-handed swords. The onrush of this highly trained and armored phalanx was irresistible; each ship was reduced to a shambles, the decks slippery with blood. Men died where they stood, or threw themselves overboard, or fled to the adjoining galleys along the connecting gangplanks. As each vessel was swept clean, the Portuguese pursued the fleeing enemy, hammering up the gangplanks after them. Those who leaped into the sea were hunted by other Portuguese in rowboats; then their route to the shore was cut off by one of the caravels. Boxed in, like tuna in a fish trap, they were mercilessly harpooned from the boats. It was a massacre.

  Four of the abandoned galleys were towed away as prizes, while the São Miguel and the São António took to firing at the Egyptian carracks from a distance, aiming at their rigging. A lucky shot brought down the crow’s nest from one ship, killing all the men. The other masthead battle stations were abandoned. Among those killed in the cause of holy war was Mayimama Marakkar, standing on his poop deck spurring his men on with verses from the Koran.

  With the massacre on the galleys and the crews of the carracks cowering from the Portuguese bombardment and shocked by the catastrophe that had befallen their comrades, the advantage seemed to swing back to Lourenço. This encouraged him to think again of attacking Hussain’s flagship and making a clean sweep of the day. Aboard the São Miguel, a further heated debate about how to proceed ensued. There was no wind; Lourenço wanted the ship’s boats to tow his sailing vessels in for a second attempt. Lourenço met considerable reluctance from the captains: the men were physically exhausted; many were wounded, including Lourenço himself; it was late in the day; any spirited resistance could lead to disaster. Again Arnau offered to sink the ships from a safe distance. Lourenço remained obdurate—he wanted, needed, the trophies of war to lay before his father, rather than see the ships sunk. Although the commander could be outvoted, the captains were probably unwilling to do so after Dabul. The matter was still unresolved when events took a fresh turn.

  It was almost twilight. Looking back toward the open sea, they could make out a line of light galleys entering the mouth of the river. It was Malik Ayaz with his thirty-four fustas. After a day of agonized waiting to see the outcome of battle, the governor of Diu had come to the conclusion that he could delay no longer: to be accused of foot-dragging or cowardice in the Islamic cause was perilous to his own position. In the Rume fleet there were shouts of joy. They mimed hanging the Portuguese by the neck, and the largely Muslim community of Chaul, who had also been adopting a wait-and-see approach to events, began to openly demonstrate their fervent desire for an Islamic victory. They came down onto the beach and loosed off their bows at the exhausted enemy. The council on the São Miguel was forced to rethink its options yet again. They were now facing three opponents within the river mouth—and the Cochin galleys near the town, forgotten during the events of the day and for which they had responsibility, were in increasingly grave danger.

  Ayaz’s approach was tentative. Instead of coming forward in line of battle to support Hussain, he drew his ships up near the southern bank of the river, in the position occupied by the Portuguese that morning. He was still maintaining a cautious attitude to the unfolding events. He tried to send three ships to establish contact, but Lourenço drove them back. It was not until darkness fell that he was able to make it across to meet Hussain. The admiral wanted gunpowder and cannonballs, of which he was in short supply. He also wanted to give Ayaz a piece of his mind for turning up after the day’s fighting and the loss of some two hundred men.

  In the Portuguese fleet, the mood was sober. After the twists and turns of the day, the attacks and retreats, the men were spent, and stocks of gunpowder were also running short. The triumphant shouts of the Muslims rang out across the water in the dark. The wounded Lourenço had been confined to bed with a fever; the doctor in attendance was bleeding him.

  On the São Miguel, the debate among the captains raged on. It was certain that with the return of day the Cochin galleys, at last fully loaded, would be in grave danger. Their destruction would mean an unacceptable loss of face and a further erosion of Portuguese credibility. The practical solution was to slip away under cover of darkness, catching the night wind. There was furious opposition to this from the interim commander, Pêro Barreto, supported by another captain, Pêro Cão, who said “that because their sins demanded that they flee, at least let them not show that they were doing so, that the Portuguese might not lose their reputation in India. If the Malabar ships left first and they then departed in the morning light, the enemy couldn’t then claim that they were leaving the field of battle out of fear.” It was again a question of honor. They cajoled the others into agreeing to sail out at daybreak, towing the captured galleys behind them as a calculated snub.

  At midnight under the light of the moon, the Cochin merchant ships began silently to slip their moorings and push out to sea on the wind. Toward dawn the Portuguese stealthily followed suit. No whistles. No shouts. They started to hoist their anchors, or in some cases cut the cables, leaving the anchors on the seabed. This strategy was undone by the obdurate Barreto, who refused to cooperate with such a demeaning retreat. He climbed into the ship’s boat with the greatest ostentation and hauled in his anchor. He was immediately spotted by the enemy and fired on. With the anchor retrieved, he boarded the ship again. Lourenço had by this time recovered somewhat. He had demanded that the São Miguel should be the last to depart, and he resolved to follow Barreto’s daredevil attitude and personally supervise the lifting of his anchor.

  By this time Hussain had also quietly raised the anchors of his two remaining undamaged carracks, and Ayaz, concluding that the Portuguese were fleeing the scene of battle, finally decided that it was time for a “brave” show of force and similarly prepared his fustas for action. Lourenço was in the ship’s boat, in the process of raising anchor, when behind him the ship’s master, seeing the growing daylight and the enemy preparations, lost his nerve. He cut the anchor cable, leaving Lourenço stranded for a while outside his own vessel.

  The Muslims were now pursuing their enemy downriver on an ebb tide. Most of the Portuguese ships were able to fight off their assailants and make it out of the river mouth; the São Miguel, however, was the laggard, and also slowed by towing one of the captured galleys. It was the most attainable and attractive target. The incentive to down the flagship immediately made it the focus of all Hussain’s efforts, and the captain of the São Miguel, instead of following the line of the departing ships, swung his vessel toward the further bank to distance it from the enemy fleet.

  The light bombards of Ayaz’s fustas tried to disable the ship by hitting its rudder. One stone ball struck the stern close to the waterline and stove in a plank. No one on the Portuguese ship was aware of this. Their attention was fixed on fighting off the snapping fu
stas and Hussain’s two carracks. The ship sailed on with water starting to seep slowly into the rice store in the hold. Still as yet unnoticed, it was gradually getting heavier, more sluggish to respond. And then the wind dropped. At once the São Miguel was at the mercy of the current, which was pushing it toward the southern shore, where fishermen had planted rows of stakes in the water for mooring their boats. Drifting on the current, the ship became entangled among these obstacles, paralyzed by the increasing weight of the water. Attempts to shift it were useless. One of the Portuguese galleys, captained by Payo de Sousa, tried to take it in tow, to no avail. Men were sent overboard to hack away the stakes with axes. Each time, the weight of water in the hold settled the São Miguel more securely on the stakes; there was now a discernible list, the deck sloping and the bows tilting upward.

  For a time it was impossible to understand the problem. Only when the tilt on the ship became pronounced was it clear that its stern was dragging. Lourenço sent the pilot down into the hold to investigate. In the gloom, the man saw with horror the truth of the situation: the hold was filling with a sloshing soup of water and rice. He came back to report, ashen-faced. It was impossible to bail out; the water was too deep, and the rice would impede the operation of the pumps—and there were too few able-bodied men left to work them. The ship was effectively lost. And having delivered his report, the pilot “went back down into the hold and they say that he died of fright.” The order was given to cut loose the prize galley in tow. Ayaz, realizing that the São Miguel was wounded prey, started to encircle it with his fustas, while Hussain’s two carracks moved closer.