Sanches (Afonso)

Closely related to the articles Columbus and Esmeraldo in this Elucidário are the following words, transcribed from the Lello Universal dictionary, about the Portuguese seaman Afonso Sanches: ‘... Portuguese pilot born in Cascais. Setting out in a caravel (caravela) for the East Indies in 1486, he was, some say, driven by a storm to America. There are others, however, who assert that he deliberately tried to reach India by crossing the Atlantic, and so arrived south-east of Florida, at the Lucayan Islands, recorded the island of São Salvador in his log and, on his way back to Lisbon, put in at the island of Madeira. Sanches died in the house of his friend and colleague Christopher Columbus, who had settled and married there.

Sanches’s log remained in Columbus’s possession. This assertion has been made by various writers, although it cannot be put forward as an undisputed truth. Of considerable interest on this subject is the note that the illustrious writer and academician Major J. Reis Gomes left in his book A Filha de Tristão das Damas, which we shall place on record here:

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Linked with Columbus’s stay in Madeira and with his plan of sailing westwards is the tradition that he received from the hands of a dying pilot the chart on which the latter had marked what his eyes had seen during a tragic episode of forced navigation towards the west, carried along by stormy winds and seas.

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This, in brief, is the story – disputed, it is true, but referred to by many authors, such as Frutuoso in Book I of the ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) and Father Simão de Vasconcellos in his description of the Descobrimento d’America, besides the testimony of Friar António de São Romão, Garcilazo de la Vega, Pizarro e Araújo, Father Manoel Fialho, Friar Apollonio da Conceição, Mariz and others:

Afonso Sanches, pilot of a caravel from Cascais that carried sugar between Lisbon and Madeira, was caught by a violent storm that drove him, dismasted, westwards for many days (some put the length of this forced crossing at precisely 22 days). He discovered a new land (probably somewhere around the Gulf of Mexico), which he marked on his chart along with other details of the voyage, but he and his companions were so weak from hunger that he could not explore it. Anxious to save his life and mindful of the lack of provisions, he took advantage of favourable weather to make for the island of Madeira, where he found shelter in the house of Columbus, a pilot like himself and one of his acquaintances. But he arrived so worn out by hunger and hardship that he soon felt his last moments approaching. Seeing that he was dying, and that it was therefore impossible for him to attempt a fresh voyage and return with wealth and glory, he confided his secret in detail to Columbus in return for the hospitality he had received. He left him his annotated chart, which was for the Genoese the irrefutable proof of the soundness of his plans and the sure guide of his voyage to discover not the West Indies, as he himself supposed, but the New World.

Luciano Cordeiro also relates this tradition in his paper L'Amerique et les Portugais, which forms part of the Compte rendu du Congrés Internacional des Americanistes – 1875.

Spain, like us, also has its Afonso Sanchez. For that nation, the man who bequeathed his precious map to Columbus was an Andalusian.

Some scholars, among them the American Henry Harrisse, maintain that the whole affair is no more than a legend. So be it… Might the legend be seeking to embody in a single man all the longing that gripped most Madeiran seafarers of that time, who never tired of turning their hopeful eyes to the west, believing, though fearful?

None of them may have travelled on the wings of the storm until the ‘Indies’ came into view; but these, or rather America, would in a certain sense have come to them, borne on the ocean currents, setting before their astonished eyes exotic trees, timber carved in a barbarous and unknown style, and even corpses with truly strange faces. Seen in this light, the tradition, fabulous though it may be, has nonetheless given the fact a better explanation and a more picturesque character.

What does it matter whether the visionary was called Afonso Sanches, António do Leme, Pedro Correia, Vicente Dias or André Valente?