Chapter 5 – PIONEERS AND PIRATES

In an exceptionally busy reign that started at the age of 18 and lasted until his death in 1325 at the age of 63, King Dinis, through his royal chancery, officially designated many cities, towns and villages in addition to Porches. He also defined the nation’s borders, stimulated national identity and arranged unprecedented international trade agreements. With a personal passion for the arts and literature, he declared Portuguese the country’s official language and founded Portugal’s first university.

While none of this had a direct bearing on the parish of Porches, a couple of his other initiatives were much more relevant. He oversaw the structuring of the Portuguese navy as an effective force and set up the Order of Christ. The latter was a purely Portuguese order for members of the religious-military Knights Templar organisation who sought sanctuary from banishment across most of Europe on charges of heresy by Pope Clement V.

Just 25 km west of Porches, largely due to Portuguese sea power and Order of Christ funds, things began happening in the 15th century that would change the direction of world history. The central figure was an Anglo-Portuguese prince, Henrique, who became known in the English-speaking world as Henry the Navigator.

It is highly likely that young men from Porches were involved in the planning, building, refitting and provisioning of ships in Sagres and Lagos during the Age of Discovery. Some probably joined the crews of caravels setting off from Lagos to sail down the west coast of Africa into the unknown. In two incredible, revelatory years - between 1444 and 1446 - as many as 40 of Prince Henry’s ships sailed beyond the southern edge of the Sahara Desert over which the Muslims had long monopolised commerce. The Portuguese thus placed themselves in the forefront of exploring new lands and developing trade in such valuable commodities as gold and slaves. The opening of a sea-route to India followed, as did the establishment of a Portuguese empire and the expansion of the slave trade across the Atlantic.

What astounding tales of adventure on far-off shores must have filtered through to the people of Porches locked into the grind of subsistence farming. And local fishermen in small boats must have marvelled on stories about the doldrums, Monsoon winds and vast open oceans. Information seeped in slowly at first but after several disjointed decades an ever clearing picture must have built up of life out there far beyond the horizon. It must have been one of contrasts that evoked mixed emotions.

For those, especially the young, entrapped in working the land or coastal waters of Porches, a new life of opportunity abroad must have seemed attractive. At the same time, accounts of the deprivation and sickness suffered on long return voyages on open decks and crowded holds on slave slips must have made the people of Porches grateful indeed for small mercies at home.

It is often overlooked nowadays that slavery was a two-way trade. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the parish played its part in the defence of this section of the south coast against pirates and privateers from North Africa. Some of these were based in Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers on the Barbary Coast in the Mediterranean and were thus known as the Barbary corsairs. Much closer to home were pirates and privateers from Tetuoan and Salé, just a day or so’s sail away in Morocco. These unromantic Maghreb marauders, operating either as freelances or under the authorisation of Arab states, had been active during the Moorish occupation of the Algarve. In the fifteen and sixteen hundreds  they considerably stepped up their activities. Attacks along the coast of the Algarve coast were almost common.

Mauraders seizing ships was one thing, but of greater concern to the people of Porches and elsewhere were organised raids on coastal villages and towns. The attackers’ objectives were not only to plunder material goods, but also to seize Christians as slaves. Barbary and Moroccan corsairs carried off hundreds of thousands of European men, women and children as slaves, mainly from coastal villages in southern Italy, Spain and Portugal. So feared were the corsairs in their heyday that many southern European villages were almost completely abandoned. While the precise location of Porches in those days is not known for sure, it is likely to have been near the coast and rather isolated. Historical records indicate that in 1560, Porches Velho –‘old’ Porches - as it is now known, shifted inland to the site of the present village.

In his 1841 book Corographia do Algarve , Baptista Lopes noted a fierce battle fought due east of Cabo Carvoeiro in August 1554 between a notorious corsair, Xaramet-Arraes,  and vessels of the Algarve coast guard. That action was probably not far from Nossa Senhora da Rocha – and Porches Velho.

Later that century, the British also became a menace along the Algarve coast. They were at war with Spain and Portugal was under Spanish control at the time. After famously “singing the King's beard” in a devastating attack on Spanish warships in the Bay of Cádiz in 1587, Sir Francis Drake patrolled the waters off the Algarve to intercept galleons supplying the 'invincible' Spanish Armada being assembled in Lisbon. The people of Porches and other villages along the coast may not have been much bothered by the British interception of Spanish vessels. What would have concerned them were Sir Francis Drake’s devastating attacks on fortifications at Baleeira, Sagres, Beliche and St Vincent.  Even worse was the destruction of Faro in July 1596 by a British fleet under the command of Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex

The walled and naturally fortified headland of Nossa Senhora da Rocha, and that of nearby Cabo Carvoeiro and the watchtower at Alfanzina, would have allowed early warning of such attacks. The military fortification or castrum mentioned by both Afonso III and Dinis in the 14th century may have been manned in the 16th and 17th to give protection to the inhabitants of Porches.

Armação de Pêra would have been an easy landing spot for pirates and privateers had it not been for the fortress built there in the 16th century during the reign of João III. Situated at the eastern end of the cliffs, the fortress had a commanding view over the sea and the beach now used by local fishermen. Like Armação de Pêra today, Porches in the 16th century was under the jurisdiction of Silves. The people of Porches were able to count on the degree of security provided by Armação de Pêra’s fortress  – and others at Carvoeiro, Ferragudo and Praia da Rocha - right up until the corsair menace had been largely brought under control in the 18th century. 

By then there were other, less dramatic hardships to be endured on a daily basis. While it had been at the very nerve centre of the Age of Discovery, the Algarve was a remote and backward region. It was bypassed by the Age of Enlightment that in the first half of the 18th century had already brought great social change elsewhere in Europe. Conditions were so dire in places like Porches that many farm workers and fishermen migrated to other areas of Portugal and to Spain in search of better incomes to provide for their families back home.

And then, in 1755, Porches and the whole of the south coast were to face a natural catastrophe unequalled in the history of Europe.