The wreck of the Flor de la Mar and the lost plunder of Malacca, 1511

The Flor de la Mar struck in the dark. She was off the north-east coast of Sumatra, bound from Malacca for India with Afonso de Albuquerque, governor of Portuguese India, aboard. Her pilots had not been watching for the shoals off the kingdom of Aru, and she ran onto them in the night. She was very old, and she broke in two almost as soon as she struck.2 sources2 sources

In the version Gaspar Correia heard, a storm had forced the ship to anchor, and as the pumps lost the fight Albuquerque had the masts cut away and lashed into a raft. The sick went into the ship's boat. He would board the raft in his drawers and jacket, he told the crew, and nobody would board it any other way.1 source1 source

The Commentaries, compiled by Albuquerque's son from his papers, tell it more simply. The seas had staved in the ships' boats, so he had boards laid across some timbers and climbed on in a grey jacket, roped on so the waves would not wash him off. Two sailors rowed with planks towards the Trindade, which had ridden out the gale at anchor nearby, and her crew hauled him aboard with ropes tied to buckets.1 source1 source

Not everyone had a place. Correia says the governor let none of the slaves, men or women, onto the raft and had them thrown into the sea, where they clung to its sides. João de Barros, the official historian of Portuguese Asia, says the only thing Albuquerque saved was a small girl, the daughter of one of his slaves, who had caught hold of him. He held her in his arms, standing, until they were rescued.2 sources2 sources

With the ship went most of what Albuquerque had taken at Malacca that August, including the presents he had chosen for King Manuel I and Queen Maria. Of everything aboard her and the junk sailing with her, the Commentaries say, nothing was saved except a gold sword and crown and a ruby ring sent to King Manuel by the King of Siam.1 source1 source

Malacca, on the west coast of the Malay peninsula, commanded the narrows between Sumatra and the peninsula through which the trade of India and China passed. Founded in the early fifteenth century, it had broken away from Siam. The historian R. S. Whiteway wrote that it was not a trading city in the modern sense but, in season, the site of a vast fair where the goods of China and the Far East were bartered for those of the West.1 source1 source

In 1509 Diogo Lopes de Sequeira's squadron was attacked at Malacca after ignoring warnings: some 60 Portuguese were killed and 33 taken prisoner, among them the factor, Rui de Araújo. Freeing them was the first demand Albuquerque made when he arrived two years later.1 source1 source

The Flor de la Mar was one of the biggest ships the Portuguese had in Asia. In 1506 her captain, João da Nova, tried to take her home, but she sprang a leak at the foot of the mast off the Cape of Good Hope and limped back to Mozambique. When the next fleet from Lisbon, with Albuquerque aboard, found her there, her cargo went home in another ship and she joined the newcomers.2 sources2 sources

In 1507, off Arabia and at Hormuz, Albuquerque said she alone could destroy that whole coast, and Correia called her more powerful than all the rest. On 12 December 1508 the viceroy, Francisco de Almeida, sailed in her, with João da Nova still in command, at the head of 21 vessels by Correia's count (Whiteway says 18); that campaign ended with the defeat of the Egyptian fleet and its allies off Diu on 3 February 1509.3 sources3 sources

Under Albuquerque she fought at Goa in 1510, where the Commentaries call her and the Cirne two ships powerful enough on their own to hold off the army of Bijapur. On 4 August that year she stuck on the Goa bar; her crew were ready to abandon her, but Albuquerque went aboard and stayed until she floated off. In his letters she is simply “a capitaina”, the flagship.3 sources3 sources

By 1511 she was worn out. Albuquerque later wrote that a single roll had torn a wale, one of the heavy planks along her side, out of her hull together with the chains of her shrouds. Sixty slaves worked her two pumps night and day. Castanheda says she leaked so badly that Albuquerque had meant to sail home in the Trindade, but when the men saw why he was leaving the flagship nobody would board her, so he went in her himself.2 sources2 sources

Albuquerque sailed from India in April 1511 with 18 ships. By his own count he had about 700 Portuguese and 300 soldiers from Malabar, the south-west coast of India. He called at Pedir and Pase on Sumatra and anchored off Malacca on 1 July. When the release of the prisoners was put off, he burned houses along the waterfront and some ships, and the captives were handed over.2 sources2 sources

His plan was to take the bridge over the river that split the town in two. The first assault, on St James's Day, 25 July, won the bridge but could not hold it; men hit by poisoned arrows died, and the troops were taken back to the ships that evening. For the second, a tall junk loaded with barrels, beams and field guns was worked closer tide by tide until it lay against the bridge.3 sources3 sources

Castanheda dates the second assault to “Friday, 10 August”; Whiteway gives 8 August. Nine days of street fighting followed, or ten in the Commentaries. Whiteway reckons the defenders at 30,000 to 50,000 against about 1,100 men on the Portuguese side, slaves included. Hindu, Javanese and Burmese merchants who had helped the prisoners were given safe-conducts; the Malays, the Commentaries say, were to be put to death wherever they were found.3 sources3 sources

Then the Portuguese, split into squads, sacked the city. Castanheda says 35 marks of gold and 25 of silver were dug up from buried stores and more than 2,000 bronze guns were taken; the Commentaries count 3,000 guns, about 2,000 of them bronze. After the men had their shares, the King's portion came to more than 200,000 cruzados, besides many slaves.2 sources2 sources

A fortress went up beside the river, built with forced labour, with Rui de Brito Patalim as its first captain. The chroniclers call it A Famosa, “the famous”; a list of the India fleets that Birch quotes gives its formal name as Nossa Senhora da Assunção. In November António de Abreu sailed with 120 men to find the clove islands of Maluku. The rest of the force was split between the fort and a squadron left to guard the sea.3 sources3 sources

Malacca's merchants begged him to stay, the Commentaries say, but he answered that the fortress at Goa was unfinished and he had no news of it. He sailed in the Flor de la Mar; Pero de Alpoim, the ouvidor or chief judge of Portuguese India, commanded the Trindade; Jorge Nunes de Leão had the Enxobregas.2 sources2 sources

Simão Martins took a large junk laden with goods from the sack, with 13 Portuguese, 50 Malabar guards and 60 Javanese shipwrights travelling with their families to repair the king's ships at Cochin. The ships also carried embroiderers and young people of noble families whom Albuquerque was sending to Queen Maria.1 source1 source

Correia's crew list differs. In his account Jorge Nunes died of pleurisy just before the fleet sailed and Dom João de Lima took the Enxobregas, while Simão Martins quarrelled with a shipmate and stayed in Malacca, so Simão de Andrade took the junk. Correia also has the Javanese families bound for Goa, not Cochin.1 source1 source

Once Albuquerque was safe on the Trindade, the Commentaries say, he remembered his promise to the men still clinging to the wreck. The Trindade's crew begged him not to take the ship in over rocks in such a wind. He overruled them, crept in under sail as the tide turned, anchored in three and a half fathoms and pulled the second raft's crew aboard with ropes, buckets and empty barrels. A land breeze before dawn let them get clear.1 source1 source

Castanheda adds that the stern stayed lodged on the rock above the water, so its people were taken off by the Trindade's boat, while the bow sank at once. A few men swam ashore on chests and reached Pase. Correia says some of the rescued had wrapped a great deal of gold around their bodies.2 sources2 sources

What happened to the junk depends on whom you read. In the Commentaries and in Castanheda, its Javanese crew rose and killed the Portuguese aboard; the Commentaries let four escape in a boat to Pase. Barros says the Javanese ran it into the port of Aru, where it was looted and Simão Martins died. Correia tells a different story: the Javanese slipped away at night in its boat, and the few Portuguese left aboard sailed the junk, badly, to the Maldives, where it ran aground but its cargo was saved.4 sources4 sources

On the crossing to Ceylon the crowded Trindade ran short of water. They survived by capturing two Muslim merchant ships from Dabul and Chaul, laden with pepper, silk and aromatic woods from Sumatra.3 sources3 sources

They reached Cochin in January 1512 according to Correia, whom Birch follows in his notes to the Commentaries, or early in February according to Castanheda and Whiteway. Albuquerque's enemies had spread word that he was lost with all his fleet. He came ashore, the Commentaries say, in the same grey jacket he had worn on the raft, and was taken under a brocade canopy to give thanks in church.4 sources4 sources

Modern accounts, and the On this day box on this site, date the wreck to the night of 20 November 1511. No sixteenth-century chronicle gives that date. Correia, who went to India in 1512 and became Albuquerque's secretary, writes that the governor left Malacca on 1 December. The Commentaries give no date, but place his departure after Abreu's ships had sailed in November, and Whiteway, working from the letters and the chronicles, says December.3 sources3 sources

So 20 November cannot be confirmed, and Correia's date would rule it out. The sources agree only on the order of events and on an arrival at Cochin in January or February 1512.3 sources3 sources

The place is just as loose. Three chroniclers put the wreck off Aru, on Sumatra's north-east coast facing Malacca; Barros names the point of Timia. Albuquerque himself, writing to the king in August 1512, said only that the Flor de la Mar “took up lodging” near Pase, further north-west along the same coast, and survivors who swam ashore turned up there. Correia has the fleet sailing along the coast of Pedir, further on again towards the island's northern tip.5 sources5 sources

The Commentaries give the fullest list of the loss: the brocaded wooden castles that the King of Malacca's elephants carried, his gold-plated palanquins, a great store of jewels for King Manuel, and a table with legs overlaid in gold, a present for the king from Milrrhao, the Hindu lord to whom Albuquerque had handed the lands of Goa, which he had forgotten to leave at Cochin. The men lost most of their own shares too.2 sources2 sources

Correia, who heard Albuquerque describe the cargo, put prices on some of it. A four-legged seat at which the Queen of Malacca ate, which his captains had let him have for 80,000 cruzados, was set with stones that Malacca's merchants valued at 300,000. Four seated golden lions, hollow to hold perfume, with eyes, tongues, teeth and claws of precious stones, were valued at 200,000. Correia heard Albuquerque swear on his habit of the Order of Santiago that the king's presents, delivered in Lisbon, were worth “hum conto d'ouro”, a million in gold.2 sources2 sources

The lions show how unreliable those valuations are. In one chapter the Commentaries say Albuquerque kept six large bronze lions for his own tomb; in another, that they were iron and, as the translator reads the passage, of little value. Barros says there were two, cast in iron, a gift from the King of China that had stood at the door of the sultan's palace. Only Correia makes them gold.3 sources3 sources

Albuquerque did not give up on them. Barros says he asked Jorge Botelho, captain of a caravel bound for Malacca, to find out whether local pearl divers could bring the lions up, at any cost: having lost the treasure, he did not mean to lose the honour. Whiteway says divers were employed and nothing was recovered.2 sources2 sources

Not every loss was gold. On 1 April 1512 Albuquerque sent the king part of a great chart drawn by a Javanese pilot, with names in Javanese script, which showed the Cape of Good Hope, Portugal and Brazil, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the clove islands and the routes of the Chinese ships. He called it the best thing he had ever seen. The piece he sent had been traced by the pilot Francisco Rodrigues; “the main chart”, he wrote, “was lost in the Flor de la Mar”.1 source1 source

Albuquerque wasted few words on the disaster. Listing his fleet for the king on 20 August 1512, he wrote only that the Flor de la Mar “took up lodging near Pase”. To a friend at court he complained that he had left all the sound ships at Malacca and sailed in a rotten one.1 source1 source

The Commentaries already called the cargo the richest spoils seen since the Portuguese reached India. Five centuries later the claim has become a number. A Daily Beast headline in 2017 put the treasure at $2.6 billion and said the wreck was still waiting for a lucky diver.3 sources3 sources

No sixteenth-century writer made an inventory of the cargo or gave it a total. Castanheda's figure of more than 200,000 cruzados is the King's share of the whole sack, not the contents of one ship, and Correia's “million in gold” names no currency. Castanheda even says the King's goods went in the junk, because the flagship leaked so badly. A dollar figure would need a list of what was aboard, and none survives.3 sources3 sources

The American treasure hunter Robert Marx said he had found the wreck. A 2015 notice for one of his lectures called it “the richest treasure-laden ship ever lost, discovered and salvaged in history”, found by him in 1991, with part of its treasure excavated. His obituary in the diving newsletter Undercurrent says Indonesia called him in in 1992 and he located the wreck within three days, more than 100 miles from where the government had been searching.2 sources2 sources

Neither gives a precise position or names anything brought up from the site. They disagree on the year, and the lecture notice has the ship bound for Lisbon, not Cochin, and wrecked off the northern tip of Sumatra rather than off Aru. Two years after the lecture, the Daily Beast was still describing the treasure as lost.4 sources4 sources

The wreck cost Albuquerque his trophies, not his conquest. He found Goa under siege and, by his own account, several of the ships he had left in India lost, broken up or burned as rotten. He spent 1512 refitting and relieving Goa, and wrote to Duarte Galvão, a friend at court, that the men he had left at Malacca had routed a large Javanese fleet without him.2 sources2 sources

Portugal held Malacca for 130 years, until the Dutch took it in January 1641. Albuquerque died off Goa in December 1515, without the lions he had wanted on his tomb.3 sources3 sources

In Melaka, as the city is now called, the ship has a second life. The state's Maritime Museum, Muzium Samudera, is housed in a replica of the Flor de la Mar built from around 1990 and opened by the prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, on 13 June 1994. Its displays follow the port from the sultanate through the Portuguese, Dutch, British and Japanese periods.1 source1 source