Indian Antiquary Vol 52

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 458

30
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ AUGUST, 1923
rather than be captured and made slaves. One of their number, a barber, who was a man of very great strength, held on to Zudamecio's boat, whilst his companions boarded it, then followed them and the gallant five killed or drove into the sea Zudamecio and all his men, estimated to have been 150 in number (Osorio, II, 303).
109. In 1521 the great Portuguese navigator Magellan was killed in a fight with the inhabitants of Zebu Island, one of the Philippines. His successor, Juan Serrano, foolishly accepted the islanders' invitation to a feast and was murdered with 24 of his companions (Zuniga, Philippines, I, 49; Prince, New England Chronology). Oviedo (Historia General, XXV, vii, ii, p. 201) says that Magellan was killed at Coro in Venezuela (La Roncière, III, 267).28
110. Some time between 1526 and 1529 the King of Achin treacherously killed Simon de Sousa and other Portuguese bound for Malacca. Under pretence of restoring de Sousa's galley he entrapped other Portuguese, including Emmanuel Pacheco, in a galley well provided with men and cannon, and killed them all (Faria, I, 381. See para. 115 below).
Chinese.
111. Chinese pirates in the Canton River have already been mentioned (see para. 101 above). In 1522 the Chinese pirate She Tsung-li plundered the shipping at Shanghai, but was captured and decapitated (Rev. C. Schmidt, R.A.S. North China Branch, Journal, N. S. VIII, 39).
Turks.
112. In 1525 Sultan Sulaiman appointed the corsair Salman (Sulaiman) Reis a Capudan and commander, and sent him with 20 galleys to the Indian Ocean. He proceeded along the coasts of Aden and Yemen and plundered the lands of the rebels (?) and of such as were not well affected to the Porte, until the Shaikhs and Arabs submitted and promised to remit their taxes (Haji Khalifeh, p. 20). It is said that Sulaiman Reis quarrelled with and was killed by one Hayraddin (Haidar, who succeeded Sulaiman as Governor of Jedda, Dames, p. 12), another corsair who had been sent to him with reinforcements. Hayraddin in turn was killed by Sulaiman's nephew Mustapha who fled for refuge to the King of Cambay, with a few ships, the rest of the fleet returning to Suez (Faria, I, 301):
Arakanese.
113. In 1526 Ruy Vaz de Pereira, commanding the annual Portuguese ship to Bengal, found at Chittagong a galleot belonging to Khwaja Shihabu'ddin (Coge Sabadim), a rich Persian merchant (resident at Chittagong), "built after the Portuguese fashion in order to plunder merchant ships and ascribe the crime to the Portuguese ". This he took, with all its cargo, and carried away. In 1527-8 Martin Alphonso de Mello was wrecked on the coast of Chittagong. His men were taken prisoners and carried to Codovascan (Khuda Bakhsh Khan) of Chakaria (in the Chittagong District), a vassal of the King of Bengal, and were employed by him to fight his enemies. An attempt to escape was punished by the murder, before his eyes, of his nephew, Gonzales Vaz de Mello, chosen by the Brahmans, who were jealous of the Portuguese and had sworn to sacrifice to their gods the handsomest man of that nation who should fall into their hands. Meanwhile, Shihabu'ddin had referred the matter of his galleot to Nunho da Cunha, then Governor in Goa, and offered to pay a ransom of 3,000 cruzados for de Mello on condition that the galleot should be restored to him. This offer was accepted; de Mello was released and sent to Goa, and Shihabuddin now became a great friend of the Portuguese (Campos, pp. 30-33). The murder of the handsome young Portuguese reminds one of the story in Herodotus (VII, 180) how, when Xerxes
23 One of Magellan's Captains, Sebastian del Cano (or John Sebastian Cano, Faria, I, 252), commander of the Victoria, returned to Lisbon on the 7th September 1522, being the first sea-captain to circumnavigate the globe (Zuniga, Philippine Islands, pp. 49-52).