Thomé Lopes

Thomé Lopes (sometimes modernized as Tomé Lopes) was a Portuguese scrivener, writer of an eyewitness account of the second journey of Vasco da Gama to India (1502–1503).

Thomé Lopes's background is obscure. All that is known is that he was a native of Porto, Portugal.

In early 1502, Thomé Lopes was hired as a escrivão (captain's clerk) aboard an unnamed ship owned and outfitted by Ruy Mendes de Brito (a gentleman of the royal chamber of King Manuel I of Portugal ) and captained by an Italian, Giovanni Buonagratia (João de Buonagracia) of Florence. This ship was part of a Portuguese squadron of five ships, under the overall command of Estêvão da Gama (cousin of Vasco da Gama). This squadron set out from Lisbon on April 1, 1502, intending to catch up and join the 4th Portuguese India Armada of admiral Vasco da Gama, which had left a few months earlier (February, 1502). According to Lopes, their squadron caught up with the main armada on August 21, 1502 at Anjediva Island, off the Malabar Coast of India.

Among the most memorable passages in Lopes's account, is a detailed description of the notorious massacre of the Muslim pilgrim ships (October 3, 1502 a day "that I remember every day of my life") on the orders of Vasco da Gama. Later Portuguese chroniclers have dealt uneasily with this act of cruelty, but Lopes's vivid and often heart-breaking narrative leaves little unmentioned.

Another famous episode reported by Lopes is the execution by impaling of three Muslims in Cochin, on the orders of the Trimumpara Raja, the Hindu prince of Cochin, for the sacrilege of selling a cow for beef to the crew of a Portuguese ship in harbor. It is notable that it was admiral Vasco da Gama himself (not usually known for his cultural sensitivity) who arrested the three men and handed them over to the Cochinese authorities for justice, and forbade any further purchases of cows by Portuguese sailors.

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