Paper short abstract:

This presentation's purpose is to analyse the information produced and conveyed among survivors of Portuguese shipwrecks who literally walked the African East coast in the 16th and 17th centuries, upon accounts of shipwrecks both present in and absent from the História Trágico-Marítima.

Paper long abstract:

Africa's East coast, today's Mozambique and South Africa, was the main set of Portuguese shipwreck accounts, written in the 16th and 17th centuries. Besides the sea voyages and the shipwrecks also the ordeals of the survivors are rigorously described, especially of those who made ashore and walked all the way to the known places where they could find their countrymen for help, mainly towards Lourenço Marques. There are accounts that were written on purpose to inform on how to prevent accidents at sea or to instruct survivors on how to make the right decisions when walking along the coast. For instance, which were the locally sought metals to trade with the Africans, and which were the most secure ways to follow, as it is shown in the statement of first lieutenant of São Tomé carrack, Gaspar Ferreira Reimão, and the account of the Santo Alberto carrack from João Baptista Lavanha. However, a few narratives weren't known back then as they weren't published in the fascicles or, later, in the compilation known as the História Trágico-Marítima (The Tragic History of the Sea) published in two tomes in 1735 and 1736 by bibliophile Bernardo Gomes de Brito. In this presentation and working on printed or manuscript descriptions, we analyse the information that shipwreck survivors already knew when travelling by sea, as well as other information that was brought in through former survivors who stayed in Africa and even from Africans themselves who knew the stories of other Portuguese survivors for decades-long.