Thomé Lopes (sometimes modernized as Tomé Lopes) was a Portuguese

scrivener A scrivener (or scribe) was a person who, before the advent of compulsory education, could literacy, read and write or who wrote letters as well as court and legal documents. Scriveners were people who made their living by writing or copying w ...

, writer of an eyewitness account of the second journey of

Vasco da Gama Vasco da Gama ( , ; – 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and nobleman who was the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India, first European to reach India by sea. Da Gama's first voyage (1497–1499) was the first to link ...

to India (1502–1503). Thomé Lopes's background is obscure. All that is known is that he was a native of

Porto Porto (), also known in English language, English as Oporto, is the List of cities in Portugal, second largest city in Portugal, after Lisbon. It is the capital of the Porto District and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto c ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

. In early 1502, Thomé Lopes was hired as a ''escrivão'' (

captain's clerk A captain's clerk was a naval rating, rating, now obsolete, in the Royal Navy and the United States Navy for a person employed by the Captain (nautical), captain to keep his Document, records, communication, correspondence, and Account (accountanc ...

) aboard an unnamed ship owned and outfitted by Ruy Mendes de Brito (a gentleman of the royal chamber of King

Manuel I of Portugal Manuel I (; 31 May 146913 December 1521), known as the Fortunate (), was King of Portugal from 1495 to 1521. A member of the House of Aviz, Manuel was Duke of Beja and Viseu prior to succeeding his cousin, John II of Portugal, as monarch. Manu ...

) and captained by an Italian, Giovanni Buonagratia (João de Buonagracia) of

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

. This ship was part of a Portuguese squadron of five ships, under the overall command of Estêvão da Gama (cousin of Vasco da Gama). This squadron set out from

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

on 1 April 1502, intending to catch up and join the 4th Portuguese India Armada of admiral

, which had left a few months earlier (February 1502). According to Lopes, their squadron caught up with the main armada on 21 August 1502 at Anjediva Island, off the

Malabar Coast The Malabar Coast () is the southwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. It generally refers to the West Coast of India, western coastline of India stretching from Konkan to Kanyakumari. Geographically, it comprises one of the wettest regio ...

of India. Among the most memorable passages in Lopes's account, is a detailed description of the notorious massacre of the Muslim pilgrim ships (3 October 1502 a day "that I remember every day of my life") on the orders of

. Later Portuguese chroniclers have dealt uneasily with this act of cruelty, but Lopes's vivid and often heart-breaking narrative leaves little unmentioned. Another famous episode reported by Lopes is the execution by impaling of three Muslims in

Cochin Kochi ( , ), formerly known as Cochin ( ), is a major port city along the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of Kerala. The city is also commonly referred to as Ernaku ...

, on the orders of the Trimumpara Raja, the Hindu prince of Cochin, for the sacrilege of selling a cow for beef to the crew of a Portuguese ship in harbor. It is notable that it was admiral

himself (not usually known for his cultural sensitivity) who arrested the three men and handed them over to the Cochinese authorities for justice, and forbade any further purchases of cows by Portuguese sailors. Lopes and the armada left India in February 1503, beginning its return journey back to Portugal. Lopes reports how his ship was nearly sunk in a collision with another off Mozambique Island. Somewhere around the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( ) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A List of common misconceptions#Geography, common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Afri ...

in July, Lopes reports an encounter with two of the ships of the outgoing 5th Armada of

Afonso de Albuquerque Afonso de Albuquerque, 1st Duke of Goa ( – 16 December 1515), was a Portuguese general, admiral, statesman and ''conquistador''. He served as viceroy of Portuguese India from 1509 to 1515, during which he expanded Portuguese influence across ...

. On 30 July 1503 Thomé Lopes's ship, accompanied by two others, came across and landed on the South Atlantic island of

Saint Helena Saint Helena (, ) is one of the three constituent parts of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory. Saint Helena is a volcanic and tropical island, located in the South Atlantic Ocean, some 1,874 km ...

. Lopes refers to it as an unknown island, and gives its position relative to

Ascension Island Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island, 7°56′ south of the Equator in the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic Ocean. It is about from the coast of Africa and from the coast of South America. It is governed as part of the British Overs ...

(which he refers to by that name). It is commonly accepted that Ascension Island was first discovered in May 1501 on the outward journey of

João da Nova João da Nova (; ; ; in Maceda, Ourense, Galicia, Spain – July 16, 1509, in Kochi, India) was a Galician-born explorer in the service of Portugal. He is credited as the discoverer of Ascension and Saint Helena islands. The Juan de Nova ...

, and some writers have questioned how Lopes could have known about that island as he left Lisbon before Nova's fleet returned. A clue is given in Lopes's own account, where he describes how, in August 1502, they picked up letters in

Malindi Malindi is a town on Malindi Bay at the mouth of the Sabaki River, lying on the Indian Ocean coast of Kenya. It is 120 kilometres northeast of Mombasa. The population of Malindi was 119,859 as of the 2019 census. It is the largest urban centr ...

left by the returning João da Nova. These letters might have described Nova's discovery of Ascension Island on the outward journey (although not, of course, Nova's own discovery of Saint Helena on his return in May 1502). The only quibble remains with Lopes's use of the name "Ascension" island, as it is commonly thought Nova originally named it ''Conceição'' (Conception island), and it was only renamed "Ascension" later (May 1503) by

. One possible explanation is that Lopes's account might not have been written immediately in 1502, but a little later after his arrival in Portugal, after the name of Ascension Island had already been settled upon.However, if written after his return using prior information, this raises the query (e.g. Livermore, 2004: p.628) as to why Lopes did not ''also'' refer to Saint Helena by name? One possible explanation is simply that Lopes didn't know it - that Nova's discovery of Saint Helena was largely kept secret by the Casa da India. But this is speculation. But the most probable explanation is simply that the name (and maybe even the locational information) was reported to Thomé Lopes precisely by the two 5th Armada ships that, as already mentioned, Lopes just encountered near the Cape of Good Hope (the two would have been coming precisely from Albuquerque's (re-)discovery of Ascension Island). The original Portuguese version of Thomé Lopes's account has been lost, but an Italian translation was published in 1550 in Venice, in a collection of travelogues collected by

Giovanni Battista Ramusio Giovanni Battista Ramusio (; July 20, 1485 – July 10, 1557) was an Italian geographer and travel writer. Born in Treviso, Italy, at that time in the Republic of Venice, Ramusio was the son of Paolo Ramusio, a magistrate of the Venetian ...

. A translation back to Portuguese was commissioned and published in 1812. Thomé Lopes's account is one of several eyewitness account of the 4th Portuguese India Armada of 1502–03. It is widely regarded as reliable, and frequently resorted to by historians to correct the accounts by later 16th-century chroniclers (

João de Barros João de Barros (; 1496 – 20 October 1570), nicknamed the "Portuguese Livy", is one of the first great Portuguese historians, most famous for his (''Decades of Asia''), a history of the Portuguese in India, Asia, and southeast Africa. Early y ...

Gaspar Correia Gaspar Correia (1492 – c. 1563 in Goa) was a Portuguese historian who wrote ''Lendas da Índia'' (Legends of India), one of the earliest and most important works about Portuguese rule in Asia.

, etc.)

Notes

References

* homé Lopes (Ital.)"Navigatione verso l'Indie orientali scritta per Thomé Lopez, scrivano de una nave Portoghesa", first pub. in Italian in Venice (1550), by

, ed., ''Primo volume delle navigationi et viaggi nel qua si contine la descrittione dell'Africa, et del paese del Prete Ianni, on varii viaggi, dal mar Rosso a Calicut,& infin all'isole Molucche, dove nascono le Spetierie et la navigatione attorno il mondo.'
online
* homé Lopes (Port.)"Navegação as Indias Orientaes, escrita em Portuguez por Thomé Lopes, traduzida da lingua Portugueza para a Italiana, e novamente do Italiano para o Portuguez", trans. 1812 into Portuguese, by Academia Real das Sciencias in ''Collecção de noticias para a historia e geografia das nações ultramarinas: que vivem nos dominios portuguezes, ou lhes são visinhas''
Vol. 2, Pt. 5
* Livermore, H. (2004) "Santa Helena, a Forgotten Portuguese Discovery", in ''Estudos em Homenagem a Luis Antonio de Oliveira Ramos'', Porto, p. 623-31. * Subrahmanyam, S. (1997) ''The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama''. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lopes, Thome Maritime history of Portugal Portuguese Renaissance writers Portuguese travel writers Writers from Porto 15th-century births 16th-century deaths 15th-century Portuguese people 16th-century Portuguese people

See also

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