Ship Modelers Database
Cinco Chagas (1594 carrack)
Sunk (destroyed by fire and powder magazine explosion, 22-23 June 1594)
Cinco Chagas (Five Wounds) was a large Portuguese nau, or carrack, built in Goa and used on the Carreira da Índia trade route between Portugal and the East Indies. She is remembered chiefly for her dramatic destruction in 1594, after which she was described as having been one of the richest ships ever to sail from the Indies.
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Resources
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- Wikipedia: Action of FaialArticle
Detailed account of the battle in which Cinco Chagas was destroyed, including ship strengths and casualty figures useful for context.
- Wikipedia: CarrackArticle
General reference on carrack design, rigging, and famous examples including Cinco Chagas, useful for understanding the type's construction for modeling.
- Wikipedia: Cinco Chagas (1594)Website
Main overview article covering the carrack's construction, voyage, and destruction at the Action of Faial.
History
Specifications
Contemporary accounts give her a burden of around 2,000 tons and an armament of roughly thirty-two guns, with a complement that swelled to about 1,400 people including passengers, crew, and an estimated 270 enslaved persons by the time of her final voyage. Her hull form followed the typical late-16th-century Portuguese India carrack pattern, though by this period her design had already diverged somewhat from the earlier "classic" carrack silhouette, a nuance worth noting for anyone building a model based on generic period carrack plans.
Service history
Departing Goa in 1593 under Captain Francisco de Mello, she was reportedly overloaded with cargo and wintered in poor condition at Mozambique, where she also took on cargo, diamonds, and survivors from two other carracks that had been wrecked. On 22–23 June 1594, while nearing the Azores, she was intercepted off Faial Island by an English privateer squadron under the Earl of Cumberland (ships including Mayflower, Sampson, and Royal Exchange) in the Action of Faial; after a day-long battle in which the English exploited her lack of aft guns, boarders set her alight and she burned through the night until fire reached her powder magazine and blew the ship apart.
Notable facts
The explosion and sinking killed well over five hundred people, with only thirteen survivors spared by the English, and the vast treasure she carried — reportedly worth millions of ducats in gold, diamonds, rubies, and pearls — was lost to all parties in the wreck. She is sometimes confused with an earlier, differently-fated Portuguese carrack also named Cinco Chagas (built 1559, later laid up as a hulk), so modelers should be careful to distinguish sources referring to the two ships.