Madre de Deus (Mother of God; also called Mãe de Deus and Madre de Dios) was a
Portuguese ocean-going
carrack, renowned for her capacious cargo and provisions for long voyages. She was returning from her second voyage East under Captain Fernão de Mendonça Furtado when she was captured by the English during the
Battle of Flores in 1592 during the
Anglo–Spanish War. Her subsequent capture stoked the
English appetite for trade with the Far East, then a Portuguese monopoly.
Description
Built in Lisbon in 1589, she was 50 metres (165 ft) in length, had a beam of 14 metres (47 ft), rated 1,600 tons, and could carry 900 tons of cargo.[3] She had seven decks, and her
draft was 26 feet (7.9 m) at her arrival in Dartmouth. Her several decks; consisted of a main
orlop, three main decks, and a
forecastle and a
spar deck of two floors each. The length of the
keel was 100 feet (30 m), the
main-mast was 121 feet (37 m), and its
circumference at the partners was just over 10 feet (3.0 m). The
main-yard was 106 feet (32 m) long.[4] She was armed with thirty-two guns in addition to other arms, with 600 to 700 crew members, a gilded superstructure and a hold filled with treasure.[5]: 294
Among these riches were chests filled with jewels and pearls, gold and silver coins,
ambergris, rolls of the highest-quality cloth, fine tapestries, 425 tons of
pepper, 45 tons of
cloves, 35 tons of
cinnamon, 3 tons of
mace, 3 tons of
nutmeg, 2.5 tons of
benjamin (a highly aromatic balsamic resin used for perfumes and medicines), 25 tons of
cochineal and 15 tons of
ebony.[γ]
There was also a document, printed at
Macau in 1590, containing valuable information on the
China and
Japan trade;
Hakluyt observes that it was "enclosed in a case of sweet Cedar wood, and lapped up almost an hundredfold in fine Calicut-cloth, as though it had been some incomparable jewel".
Aftermath
The carrack whilst anchored at
Dartmouth was subject to theft by curious locals; it attracted all manner of traders, dealers, cutpurses, and thieves from miles around. By the time Walter Raleigh had restored order, a cargo estimated at half a million
pounds (nearly half the size of England's treasury and perhaps the second-largest treasure ever after the Ransom of
Atahualpa) had been reduced to £140,000.
^The draught as stated by Hakluyt is 9.45 m (31 ft) in loaded weight and 7.92 m (26 ft) after some of the cargo has been transferred, but this is manifestly absurd considering that it would be deeper or equal with
1st rate ships of the 18th–19th centuries. Jordan noted a supposed frigate named Madre de Deus with 5.12 m (16.8 ft) draught, he noted that this ship's depth is unusually deeper when compared with other frigates and might be an error in transcription.[1]
^The
Gulf Stream and the
Westerlies converge near the Azores, where ships coming from both areas would pass.
^An inventory was taken, and the report produced mentions "Gods great favor towards our nation, who by putting this purchase into our hands hath manifestly discovered those secret trades & Indian riches, which hitherto lay strangely hidden, and cunningly concealed from us". It also speaks of the following goods aboard, besides jewels: "spices, drugs, silks, calicos, quilts, carpets and colors, &c. The spices were pepper, cloves, maces, nutmegs, cinnamon, greene,
ginger: the drugs were benjamin,
frankincense, galingale, mirabilis, aloes zocotrina,
camphire: the
silks,
damasks,
taffatas, scarceness, alto bassos, that is, counterfeit, cloth of gold, unwrought China silk, sleeved silk, white twisted silk, curled
cypresse. The
calicos were book-calicos, calico-launes, broad white calicos, fine starched calicoes, course white calicos, brown broad calicos, brown course calicos. There were also canopies, and course diapertowels, quilts of course sarcenet and of calico, carpets like those of
Turkey; whereunto are to be added the pearl,
muske,
civet, and
amber-griece. The rest of the wares were many in number, but less in value; as
elephants teeth,
porcelain vessels of China,
coco-nuts, hides, ebenwood as black as jet, bested of the same, cloth of the rind’s of trees very strange for the matter, and artificial in workmanship".[7]