[6] Also apparently called Berrio, after the pilot from whom it was bought (?). Since Berrio = New (Basque berri) it was an appropriate name for a ship going to the discovery of mares nunca dantes navegados.
[7] It is said that only 55 out of the original 170 returned.
[8] This apparently continued to be his home for twelve years, since a document of November 7, 1519, has “in the city of Evora in the house in which now lives the magnificent Lord Dom Vasco da Gama, Admiral of India.”
[9] Now Kilwa; soon, perhaps, Quiloa again.
V
DUARTE PACHECO PEREIRA
(1465?-1533?)
O gram Pacheco, Achilles lusitano.
Luis de Camões, Os Lusiadas.
Diversas et incredibiles victorias obtinens.
Damião de Goes, Hispania.
One of the captains who sailed from Lisbon with the cousins Albuquerque in 1503 was Duarte Pacheco Pereira. Like the great Affonso de Albuquerque with whom he sailed, he was still unknown to fame. He may have been between thirty-five and forty years of age, but his subsequent glory has thrown no light for us on his earlier years; and beyond the fact that he was born at Lisbon, that he was a knight of the King’s household, and that under João II he was employed in the discovery of the west coast of Africa, we have to be content with silence.
Five years had passed since the Portuguese had first reached India, and instead of peaceful trade there was war between the King of Calicut and the Portuguese, and hostilities between Cochin and Calicut by reason of the King of Cochin’s friendship with the new-comers. The King of Cochin, indeed, had been uniformly loyal to the Portuguese and had shown conspicuous firmness of purpose, and to Cochin the Albuquerques directed their course.
It was in an expedition against one of the King of Cochin’s enemies, the Lord of Repelim (Eddapalli), that Pacheco first signalised himself for dashing bravery and learnt what daring and energy could do against a numerous but ill-equipped and undisciplined enemy. As he returned in four boats at ten o’clock one night from a long day’s victorious expedition against six or seven thousand natives he found his progress blocked by thirty-four ships chained to one another. After encouraging his men by a stirring speech he locked his own boats together and forced his way through, and then immediately went about so as to be able to stop the enemy’s pursuit with his artillery. A fierce combat ensued, but Pacheco had completed his victory before the Albuquerques could come to his assistance.