Porto Santo (raids on the island)

The small island of Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’), isolated and undefended, was raided and sacked several times by corsairs and pirates. Although they could not hope to find rich and plentiful plunder there, they could at least count on complete impunity and on the hasty flight of the inhabitants to the mountain tops, which left the field clear for the raiders’ rapacity. It was chiefly the summit of Pico do Castelo (‘castle peak’), difficult to reach and easy to defend against anyone trying to climb it, that served as a refuge for the poor inhabitants of the neighbouring island, who sheltered there from the ferocity of the pirates. The steep mountain gained regular defences, with guns and battlements, only at the beginning of the 18th century. In earlier times the inhabitants relied solely on the sheer slopes of the peak, where plain boulders rolled freely down the sides were enough to repel any assault. The fort of the town (vila), which was named São José in honour of King Joseph I, was built in the time of the Marquis of Pombal. We do not know what means of defence Porto Santo had before that time in the event of an attack, but they must have been very weak and useless, for there is no record of any resistance to the various pirate raids (see Preston).

The earliest recorded raid was the one carried out there by French pirates on 2 October 1566. On the following day they landed at Funchal and made the terrible assault on the city of which the Madeiran chronicles speak with such horror.

In 1617 the Moroccans attacked Porto Santo and sacked the town (vila). Among other damage, they completely destroyed the archives of the municipal council and of the parish church. The same happened in 1667.

On 11 December 1690 two French corsairs ‘invaded this island, says an eyewitness, and sacked it, above all the church, which was stripped of everything, of vestments, silver and books... and the vicar, Dr Estêvão de Vasconcelos, could do nothing but consume the Most Holy Sacrament. . . and with only the ampulla in his hand he withdrew to the Pico do Castelo. . . ’ No further details of this attack are known.

In January 1708 the island was sacked again by French pirates, who, besides the plunder in which they indulged, set fire to the parish church and to some houses in the town.

Rebelo da Silva relates in his Historia de Portugal that in 1641 Porto Santo was all but blockaded by a squadron of twelve Ottoman sail. However, when the inhabitants learned of the revolution of 1 December 1640, they ‘greeted the news with repeated salvoes of artillery and musketry, and the Turks, alarmed by the noise and ignorant of its cause, judged it prudent to yield and disappeared’.

It is certain that Algerian pirates attacked and sacked the neighbouring island of Porto Santo on various occasions, chiefly during the 17th century, but we cannot establish the years in which these attacks took place, since we have found no detailed account of them.