Ilhéu

This is the name by which we know the islet that lies at the western end of the harbour of Funchal and that today (1921) forms one of the limits of the Pontinha (‘little point’) mole (breakwater), or harbour of refuge. On it stood the small Fortress of Nossa Senhora da Conceição do Ilhéu (‘Our Lady of the Conception of the Islet’), a red light that marked the harbour entrance, and a signal station. It has been reproduced in engravings in countless Portuguese and foreign works, in many magazines, on postcards, etc., and it also frequently appears as a design in Madeiran inlaid work (embutidos), on sewing boxes and other products of local cabinet-making.

Referring to the first exploration along the coast, made by the discoverers, Gaspar Frutuoso says: ‘at the end of which (the valley of Funchal) there are two islets, where they went to shelter because it was already late’. The two islets were the one now called the Ilhéu (‘islet’), although today it is joined to the land by the mole, and the one that ceased to bear that name when the small Fort of São João da Pontinha (St John the Baptist) was built at the end of the 18th century, and which has since also been connected to the land. Anyone who knows the place is aware that the two small islets lay a short distance from each other.

In his Epanaphoras de Varia Historia Portuguesa, where he deals with the supposed story of Robert Machin, Francisco Manuel de Melo makes some mistaken references to these islets, to which the illustrious annotator of the Saudades responds with the following words:

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On a par with this runs the fiction, no lesser in its way, that Zarco “took on water and wood” at the two islets, which, in Melo’s picturesque phrase, are the windbreaks of the harbour of Funchal. Of these two islets, the one further out to sea is still surrounded by water as before (this was in 1873), and so keeps the name Ilheo; the other, joined for a long time to the island’s shore by strong walls, is for that reason called Pontinha. Both are bare crags, lashed and swept by the waves in the swells and storms from the south, which are unfortunately not rare at this spot; both, therefore, bear only the vegetation of marine slime and moss; both are without any spring of drinking water; both are unshakeable witnesses, testifying with their eternal nakedness against the assertion that they gave water and wood to Zarco and his companions.

The Fortress of Nossa Senhora da Conceição do Ilhéu was built around the middle of the 17th century (see fortifications (Fortificações)), and its chapel was built by royal decree (alvará régio) of 9 November 1682, with its own chaplain. See chapel of the Immaculate Conception of the Islet (Nossa Senhora da Conceição do Ilhéu).

The harbour light on the islet came into operation on 18 May 1866 (see Faróis (‘lighthouses’)). In 1890 the islet was permanently joined to the shore by a breakwater linking the two points, which forms the most substantial part of the Pontinha mole (breakwater).