This companion volume to Charles Boxer’s earlier work, The Tragic History of the Sea, 1589-1622 (Hakluyt Society, 1959), consists of three narratives. Translated into English for the first time, these are accounts of certain shipwrecks which befell the Portuguese in the mid-sixteenth century. The first of the eye-witness relations describes the wreck of the São Paulo off Sumatra, the second the sinking of two East Indiamen off the East African coast, and the third the misadventures of a voyage from Brazil to Portugal.
Though the narratives barely touch on Latin America per se, they do offer a vivid description of maritime life and lore during the 1500s. For anyone interested in the general subject of exploration and discovery (and particularly the level of Hispanic maritime technology of the period), this is an excellent volume to know.
