Three Portuguese merchant’s weights of probable early 16th century date from the wreck of the Schiedam (1684), Gunwalloe, Cornwall, UK
Gunwalloe Church Cove in heavy seas, with St Winwaloe’s Church visible behind the promontory in the centre. The wreck of the Schiedam lies in the cove of Jangye-ryn beyond, below Halzephron headland (photo: David Gibbins).
In September 2020 over the course of eight dives I excavated and raised the three 56 lb (25.4 kg) bronze weights in this photo from the wreck of the Schiedam, a Dutch-built ship of some 400 tons that was ‘cast away’ near Gunwalloe off the west coast of the Lizard Peninsula on 4 April 1684. The wreck was discovered in 1971 by Anthony Randall, designated under the 1973 Protection of Wrecks Act and since 2016 has been investigated under my direction and that of Mark Milburn, the current Licensees from Historic England for the site. On her final voyage from Holland, the Schiedam was captured by Barbary corsairs off Spain, captured again by the English ten days later and then put to use transporting guns, equipment, horses and people from Tangier in North Africa at the time of its abandonment by the English in 1684. Tangier had been given by the Portuguese to the English king Charles II as a dowry with his wife Catherine of Braganza in 1661, but proved too costly to maintain in the face of Moorish attack and did not live up to expectations as a trading port. The three weights are of great interest not only as objects in use in Tangier during this period, but also because they originated during the Portuguese occupation of Tangier (1471-1661) and are probably of early 16th century date. They are unique among surviving Portuguese weights for their age, size and decoration, and are among the oldest and most unusual artefacts to be recovered from a shipwreck off Cornwall.
Two of the weights as they were first seen on seabed, partly encased in ferrous concretion caused by the corrosion of tools and other iron objects that had surrounded them (photo: David Gibbins).
The Portuguese Royal coat of arms revealed on one of the weights moments after it had been freed from concretion (photo: David Gibbins).
David Gibbins with a weight from the wreck of the Schiedam (photo: Rachel Hipperson).
David Gibbins with a weight from the wreck of the Schiedam (photo: Rachel Hipperson).
David Gibbins with a weight from the wreck of the Schiedam (photo: Rachel Hipperson).
The most striking feature of the weights is the Portuguese royal coat of arms cast in relief on the side, comprising a shield surmounted by a helmet and dragon crest and flanked by armillary spheres, the symbol adopted while still a prince by the future King Manuel 1 (reigned 1495-1521) that became associated with Portuguese maritime domination in the Age of Discovery. The other markings visible on the weights are small symbols of a ship stamped above and below the coat of arms. It seems most likely that the weights were cast in a gun foundry, where expertise in bronze casting would have been found at a time when many cannon were made of bronze. The steps in gun-founding described by Biringuccio (1540) give an idea of how the weights may have been formed. Whereas each gun was unique, with the forming of the mould requiring the destruction of the model inside, the wax and clay models for the weights would have been created with a reusable wooden mould that would have allowed many castings, as is seen in the identical shapes of the three weights. Similarly, the decorations would have been created in wax in reusable wooden moulds, as is evidenced in the identical appearance of the armillary spheres and the coats of arms but with slight differences in their alignment resulting from the wax models being applied individually to the surface of the weight models. Expertise in casting ornamentation such as this existing in the cannon foundries, with many Portuguese bronze guns of the 16th century having similar relief decoration, as well as in the casting of rings similar to the carrying handle on the weights, with many guns of the period having lifting-loops (Kennard 1986: 11).
The coat of arms of King Manuel I of Portugal (ruled 1495-1521) on one of the weights, comprising a shield surmounted by a helmet and dragon and flanked by armillary spheres. The shield contains five ‘escutcheons’ arranged as a quincunx and is bordered by fourteen small castles (the castles are thought to represent the vanquished fortresses of the Moors during the Reconquista). The dragon - a symbol of the Royal House of Avis of Portugal (1385-1580) - has its wings swept to the right and its tongue extended. The armillary sphere (esfera armilar in Portuguese), showing the movement of celestial bodies (armilla is Latin for bracelet or arm ring), has the line of the ecliptic going from lower left to upper right, a less common depiction than the other way around (photos: David Gibbins).
The weights are of octagonal shape 19 cm across the base and 33 cm high, with the base tapering to narrow shoulders and a large carrying ring on top, all formed as a single bronze casting. The Museu de Metrologia at Lisbon has three octagonal weights of similar shape and size but from different moulds and weighing 29.3-29.4 kg, corresponding to two arrobas (half a quintal, a meio-quintal) in the Portuguese weight system. Several of these weights in the museum have a small stamp of an armillary sphere and one (MM 408) has a relief moulding of the shield on the side, surmounted by a crown. That weight is also stamped with the ‘gauging’ dates of 1688, 1772, 1811 and 1818, showing when the weight was tested and revealing the potential longevity of a weight of this type. The date of manufacture of this weight is unknown, but the gauging date of 1688 is the earliest recorded for a weight of this type in the museum; many earlier weights and standards were lost in the catastrophic earthquake of 1755 that destroyed much of Lisbon. No other weights are known with the relief decoration of the two armillary spheres and the crested shield seen on the Schiedam weights (Antonio Neves, pers. comm.).
The weight of the Schiedam weights, 56 pounds (24.4 kg), corresponds to half a hundredweight (cwt) in the English avoirdupois system. In the Portuguese system, the nearest equivalent to the hundredweight was the heavier quintal; accordingly, the Schiedam weights at their time of manufacture should have been half-quintal weights like those in the Museu Metrologica of about 29.3 kg, just under 4 kg heavier than their present weight. This inconsistency is explained by a 1663 Proclamation by the Governor of Tangier, Lord Teviot, to the inhabitants of the city, ‘to establish weights, measures and coinage as used in London’ (British Library, Sloane mss 3299, July 1663, F.85b). As the Portuguese weights in Tangier at the time would have been larger than their nearest English equivalent, it would have a straightforward if time-consuming matter to cut and file them down to size. One of the Schiedam weights shows evidence of filing at the shoulder for weight adjustment, though the main technique for removing nearly 4 kg of bronze would have been to saw about half an inch off the base. A comparison can again be made with bronze gun manufacture, in which it could take several days for a team of men using a thin saw with small teeth to cut off the ‘feeding head’ of the gun after casting, where bronze had solidified outside the muzzle (Kennard 1986: 16).
A large balance beam scale in the Museu Militar in Lisbon with an 18th century date on the beam (photo courtesy of Harold A. Skaarup).
Remarkably, an account of weights at Tangier of this size exists in the diary of John Luke, secretary to the Governor Lord Middleton in the early 1670s. On 23 March 1672 he wrote that soldiers of the garrison suspected that they had been short-changed in their provisions, leading Lord Middleton to go ‘ … in person and see all the weights tried, which were found right, but one half hundred weight that had been used of late could not be found’ (Luke 1670-3: 111). This shows how weights could be used for purposes other than purely commercial transactions, especially at Tangier where adequate victualling of the garrison was a constant issue. Half-hundredweight or half-quintal weights were especially useful as they could be managed by one man, but were sufficiently heavy that only a few of them might be needed on a large balance beam scale (called by the Portuguese a cabrilha) to weigh a typical cargo consignment, with the exact calculation being reached with the addition of smaller weights from a set.
The weights were probably stored either in the old Portuguese harbour area or on the newly constructed great Mole, perhaps in one of the buildings that can be seen in the etchings of Tangier made by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1669. The Schiedam was specifically tasked to take the workmen, tools and other stores from the Mole back to England, so it seems most likely that the weights – and perhaps others of different sizes yet to be discovered at the wreck, or salvaged soon after the wrecking – came from there. They were probably being taken back to England with a view to the bronze being recycled; weights emblazoned with the Portuguese coat of arms may have been acceptable for continued use in English Tangier, but are unlikely to have been so in England itself.
‘Prospect of Tangier from the S.E.’ by Wenceslaus Hollar, who went to Tangier in 1668 to draw the town and fortifications. The ‘Old Mould’ (sic), the mole or pier from the Portuguese period, can be seen in the centre of the image, with the new mole built by the Engish extending out to the right (Wenceslaus Hollar Collection, Fisher Library, University of Toronto).
Left and centre, two examples the identical small stamp (1 cm across) that appears above and below the coat of arms on each of the weights. The image to the right is the identical stamp on a one-arroba nested weight of the Manueline issue (1499-1503/4) in the Núcleo Museuológico de Metrologia/Casa da Balança, Évora (Lopes 2018, Fig 9). The image shows a ship of late mediaeval appearance with a single mast and raked yard, with four rolls of waves below and a large crow perched on the stern and another on the forecastle, both facing inwards (photo: David Gibbins).
The small stamp above and below the coat of arms may be the best dating evidence for the weights. It shows the symbol of Lisbon – a ship with crows facing inwards on the stern and forecastle, in a scene from the story of St Vincent, patron Saint of Lisbon. This particular stamp is only seen elsewhere on the so-called ‘Manueline’ nested cup weights issued by King Manuel I to all Portuguese cities in 1503-4 as part of his reform of the weights system (Lopes 2018, 2019). The nested weights, of which at least 128 were issued, were ordered from Flanders in 1499, and those for Lisbon would have been stamped on their arrival in the city. It is clear that the same stamp was used in Lisbon on the Schiedam weights. The stamp could have remained in use for some time after this date, but in the capacity standards of King Sebastian, dated to 1575, the Lisbon mark – while showing the same symbolic content – is of a different design (Luís Seabra Lopes and Antonio Neves, pers. comm.). The evidence of the stamp therefore strongly suggests a date for the weights in the first half of the 16th century, with the possibility that they were issued at the same time as the nested weights as part of the Manueline reform during the early part of his reign.
Manuel’s coat of arms with flanking armillary spheres in the Foral (Charter) of Lisbon, 1500 (Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa).
The shield flanked by armillary spheres on the Torre de Belém in Lisbon, built by Manuel I in 1514-19 to guard the entrance to the Tagus river.
Shield with 14 castles in the Livro Carmesin of 1502 (Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa).
Shield with 14 castles, flanking armillary spheres and a dragon on the Manueline charter for the city of Évora, 1501 (Arquivo Distrital de Évora).
Shield with 14 castles and flanking armillary spheres in the Leitura Nova of 1504 (Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo).
The Royal coat of arms of Portugal on a seal attached to a letter dated 1507, showing the helmet and dragon crest very similar in configuration to the crest on the Schiedam weights (Sousa 1738, p 43 no LXXII and pl. O. Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal).
Manuel’s reform of the weights was carried out in conjunction with his renewal of the municipal charters of cities and towns in Portugal. These new charters include the Royal coat of arms flanked by two armillary spheres, as on the Schiedam weights. The same arrangement is found on sculptural decoration on ‘Manueline’ architecture, including the Torre de Belém in Lisbon – the point of departure for Portuguese voyages of discovery – and the nearby Jerόnimos Monastery. This arrangement of a shield flanked by two armillary spheres appears to be particular to the reign of Manuel 1. From Manuel’s reign onwards the number of castles in the border of the shield was most often 7, but shields with larger numbers of castles are known from the early part of his reign - including two of the depictions shown here, on the Lisbon charter of 1500 and the royal seal of 1507, respectively with 11 and 13 castles. The only known parallels for the 14 castles of the Schiedam weights are also shown here, on the Manueline charter for the city of Évora (1501), on a shield in the Lisbon Livro Carmesin of 1503 and in the two frontispieces of the Leitura Nova of 1504 (Garcia 2005: 43). All of these examples and most later depictions of the Royal coat of arms have the shield surmounted by a crown, but the crest of the helmet and dragon as on the Schiedam weights is also seen on several depictions from the reign of Manuel shown here as well.
The Royal coat of arms of Portugal with the helmet and dragon crest as depicted by Antόnio Godinho, who was ‘Escrivão da Câmara’ (‘Clerk of the Chamber’) under King João III but began his heraldry in the final years of the reign of Manuel I (Godinho 1517-28, Fol. 6v. Arquivio Nacional da Torre de Tombo).
Apart from the Manueline nested weights, the most extensive survival of bronze relief-cast Portuguese coats of arms and armillary spheres is on guns of the 16th century. These include 26 guns in the Museu Militar in Lisbon (itself housed in a gun foundry of the period)(Marzia 2014), several in the Museu de Marinha, also in Lisbon, several in the Museu de Angra in the Azores (Hoskins 2003), one in the British Museum (Smith 1995), several at the Portuguese ambassador’s residence at Bangkok, and a number from wrecks and other underwater contexts around the world, including the mid-16th century São Bento wreck off South Africa (Auret and Maggs 1982), a mid-16th century wreck in the Seychelles (Blake and Green 1986), a wreck recently discovered in the Tejo (Tagus) river in Portugal, and - the only other known example from UK waters - ‘an Old Piece of Ordnance, which some Fishermen dragged out of the Sea near the Goodwin Sands, in 1775’, reported in Archaeologia magazine by Edward King, Esq., F.R.S., in one of the first scholarly accounts of an underwater find in British waters (King mistakenly associates the letters CFR in a cartouche on the gun with a mediaeval Portuguese king, whereas in fact they are those of the gun-founder of the 16th century: see Smith 2000: 184 and Smith 1995: 198, 200).
Illustration in Archaeologia magazine from 1779 of the castings on a bronze swivel gun found in the Goodwyn Sands off Kent, by Edward King, F.R.S., F.S.A. Although possibly not an entirely accurate sketch - the escutcheons in the shield should number five, in a quincunx - the large number of castles shown in the border is of interest as a comparison with the Schiedam weights.
Of these guns that can be dated, either by a datable wreck context, a date on the gun itself, the known dates of the gun-founder or on stylistic grounds, all are of the 16th century. All have the shield capped by a crown rather than a helmet and dragon, and none of the decorations are from the same casting moulds as the Schiedam examples. Most have a single armillary sphere above or below the shield. Only three are known with two or more spheres flanking the shield, all in the Museu Militar in Lisbon (Marzia 2014): one (MML/01500) with the shield on the chase and the two spheres on the second reinforce, and a Manueline date (1495-1521) suggested on stylistic and decorative grounds; another (MML/0020), dated 1533, with two spheres flanking the shield on each side; and a third (MML/1510) with the characteristic Manueline arrangement of spheres flanking a shield, but dated to 1578. This is the only known example of that arrangement not of Manueline date and is the latest dated of these 16th century guns bearing armillary spheres, but it was on a highly decorative piece dedicated to King Sebastian in the year of the battle of Alcácer Quibir against the Moroccans - in which Sebastian disappeared, presumed killed – and the gun-founder may consciously have used symbolism that harked back to the achievements of Sebastian’s great-grandfather Manuel.
Another remarkable example of a bronze-cast shield and armillary sphere is on an astrolabe discovered in 2014 at the Sodré shipwreck site at Al Hallaniyah, Oman, where the Esmeralda and São Padre from Vasco da Gama’s fourth armada were wrecked in 1503 (Mearns et al. 2019). The shield, surmounted by a crown, appears to have 11 castles in the border, and the sphere has the ecliptic going from lower right to upper left. The certain date of the astrolabe – manufactured before the armada set off from Lisbon in February 1502 – puts it very close to the date of the Manueline nest weights as well as the new city charters with their shields and armillary spheres. In common with the Schiedam weights, the astrolabe is the earliest of that type of artefact known and unique in having these decorative embellishments characteristic of the reign of Manuel. The evidence reviewed here strongly suggests that the Schiedam weights are also of Manueline date, possibly from the early years of the 16th century - making them unique artefacts not only from English Tangier in the 17th century but also from the Portuguese Age of Discovery more than a century and a half earlier.
Note
For the association of Samuel Pepys with the wreck of the Schiedam see Gibbins 2020, and for discussion of Dutch weights found at the nearby Mullion Pin Wreck (1667) see Gibbins 2019a and 2019b. Frequent updates on our discoveries on wrecks off the Lizard Peninsula can be found on our Facebook page Cornwall Maritime Archaeology.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Hefin Meara, Maritime Archaeologist at Historic England, and to Alison James, formerly of Historic England, for granting permission for the recovery of these artefacts and for their assistance with this project. The weights have been declared to the UK Receiver of Wreck and are currently under conservation in preparation for museum display. For assistance in the identification of these artefacts, and for much comparative material and discussion, I am grateful to Antonio Neves (Curator, Museu de Metrologia, Lisboa), Luís Seabra Lopes (Associate Professor, University of Aveiro) and Ritzo Holtman (editor of the journal Meten & Wegen). I am also grateful to Harold A. Skaarup, Vittorio Serafin and Gonçalo Bioucas of The Big Cannon Project for pointing me to guns bearing the Portuguese coat of arms, and to Harold A. Skarrup for allowing me to use his photo of a scale in the Museu Militar in Lisbon.
References
Auret, C. and Maggs, T., 1982. The Great Ship São Bento: remains from a mid-sixteenth century Portuguese wreck on the Pondoland coast. Annals of the Natal Museum 25.1: 1-39.
Biringuccio, V., 1540. Pirotechnia. Venice. Reprint, 1966, trans. C.S. Smith and M.T. Gnudi, Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.
Blake, W. and Green, J., 1986. A mid-XVI century Portuguese wreck in the Seychelles. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 15.1: 1-23.
Garcia, J.M., 2005. As Illuminuras de 1502 do “Livro Carmesim” e a Iconologia Manuelina. Cadernos do Arquivo Municipal 8 (11): 38-55.
Gibbins, David, 2019a. A two-pound Amsterdam blokgewicht (block weight) from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England. www.davidgibbins.com
Gibbins, David, 2019b. Three more marked merchant weights from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England. www.davidgibbins.com
Gibbins, David, 2020. Samuel Pepys, English Tangier and the wreck of the Schiedam (1684). www.davidgibbins.com
Godinho, A., 1517-28. Livro da Nobreza e da Perfeição das armas dos Reis Cristãos e nobres linhagens dos Reinos e Senhorios de Portugal. Arquivio Nacional da Torre de Tombo.
Hoskins, S.G., 2003. 16th century cast-bronze ordnance at the Museu de Angra do Heroísmo. M.A. Thesis, Texas A&M University.
Kennard, A.N., 1986. Gunfounding and gunfounders. London: Arms and Armour Press.
King, E., 1779. An account of an Old Piece of Ordnance, which some Fishermen dragged out of the Sea near the Goodwin Sands, in 1775. Archaeologia 5: 147-59.
Lopes, Luís Seabra, 2018, As pilhas de pesos de Dom Manuel I: contributo para a sua caracterização e avaliação. Portvgalia, Novo Série 39: 217-51
Lopes, Luís Seabra, 2019. The distribution of weight standards to Portuguese cities and towns in the early 16th century. Administrative, demographic and economic factors. Finisterra LIV (112): 45-70
Luke, J. 1670-3: Kaufman, H.A. (ed), 1958. Tangier at High Tide: the Journal of John Luke, 1670-73. Geneva: Librarie E. Droz/Paris: Librairie Minard.
Marzia, E.M. de M.., 2014. Inventário da artilharia histórica dos séculos XIV a XVI do Museu Militar de Lisboa: bases para uma proposta de salvaguarda e valorização. Universidade de Évora.
Mearns, D.L., Warnett, J.M. and Williams, M.A., 2019. An early Portuguese mariner’s astrolabe from the Sodré wreck site, Al Hallaniyah, Oman. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 48.2: 495-506
Smith, R.B., 2000. A comparative study of 16th century Portuguese and East Mediterranean artillery. Anatolia Moderna 9: 183-210.
Smith, R.D., 1995. A 16th century Portuguese bronze breech-loading swivel gun. Militaria. Revisto de Cultura Militar 7. Servicio de Publicaciones, UCM, Madrid, 197-205
Sousa, A.C. de, 1738, Historia genealogica de Casa Real Portugueza: desde a sua origem até o presente, com as Familias illustres, que procedem dos Reys, e dos Serenissimos Duques de Braganca: justificada com instrumentos, e escritores de inviolavel fé: e offerecida a El Rey João V. Tomo IV. Lisboa. Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal.
