Cacao or Joseph Ermeler's Travels
Copyright© 2026 by Argon
Chapter 2: The Outward Journey
The large wagon train had crossed the Alps to the South and reached Genoa with the beginning winter rains. Jacob Fugger, the younger, and Joseph had presented the exchange bills and had received documents proving their share of the enterprise. Four of the five ships had already assembled and were being careened — one of the many new words Joseph had to learn — to scrape barnacles and seaweeds from their bottoms. Their trading goods had been unloaded into a large goods shed close to the harbour, and the younger Fugger was busy buying up trading goods for the homeward wagon train. Meanwhile, Joseph had quartered himself and his three companions in the goods shed, to keep their eyes on the cargo.
Joseph was also befriending Luis Nuñes, the navigator, trying to learn as much as possible about their destinations and the people living there. He also met the other partners frequently, and his Romance and Portuguese language skills improved over the winter months.
In addition to the navigator, other Portuguese sailors had been hired, too, because of their experience with sailing around Africa and across the Indian Ocean. The captains were of course Genoese masters, stout and experienced men, who were still apprehensive about the longest voyage of their lives.
Given the large share he represented, Joseph would sail in the lead ship, the carrack Dom Pedro, a huge ship of over 800 tons, on loan from Portuguese merchants, and under the command of Capitano del Nave Bartolomeo Ricci, the overall commander of the fleet. In the deep hold of that ship, the trading goods of the Augsburg merchants were stowed, except for the 30 tons of wrought iron ingots, which had replaced the regular ballast of the ship.
Come the March, Fugger and his wagons departed, and Joseph and his companions settled in the Dom Pedro whilst the fleet of five ships made ready to sail. On March 15, the wind was favourable, and they put to sea, leaving the harbour in a neat line. With the eastern wind, the Mediterranean Sea was calm enough, but poor Joseph was soon gripped by a violent seasickness, heaving his very heart out over the first days. The cook fed him uncooked salted meat twice daily, until after a few days, the sickness became less and less. When the stout ships passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, proudly flying the Genoese flag, Joseph was standing on the high poop deck and watching as they left the Mediterranean Sea behind.
If Joseph thought that he was over the seasickness, the towering waves of the vast Atlantic Ocean soon taught him differently. Dom Pedro and her consorts, the carracks Cristofero and Amerigo, and the two caravels Gaeta and Koroni, sailed in close formation and in southern direction, heading for Cabo Verde as first landmark. They were now pushed along by the Volta do Mar, the huge cyclonic wind system of the South Atlantic which close to Africa blew from the Northeast, and they made good progress according to Nuñes. The ships moved also steadier, calming the stomachs of the passengers, and for the first time in six weeks of sailing, Joseph could eat the ship’s fare with some appetite.
The weeks of seasickness had left him weakened, and his clothes hung loosely from his body, but he took heart from the way the ships cut through the azure sea. Nuñes observed their progress in southern direction using a wooden implement to gauge the height of the sun over the horizon at noon time, and once they were past the Cabo Verde and encountered wind from the East, he had the rudder laid to West, heading for the Cabo San Agostino, on the coast of Brazil, which was a Portuguese possession. At the Portuguese port of Salvador, they cast anchor, for a week of repairs, renewing their water supplies, and buying what provisions could be had, mostly fruits and edible roots, but also some meats which they salted and stored in casks.
Here, on the other side of the world, Joseph went ashore and saw the dark-skinned native people, the strange trees and flowers, and wondrous, colourful birds with huge beaks. Best of all, he ate his fill of fresh food and drank from the juice found inside huge nuts, called coco nuts, and ate from the delicious white fruit meat found inside the nuts. Seizing the opportunity, he bought a large sack of those nuts for his and his companions’ sustenance. He and the other merchants also traded part of their wares against Portuguese coins, which they could use at their other destinations. As Joseph had expected, his iron ingots sold well in the settlement, but also tools and weapons of Augsburg manufacture, and lace.
He invested part of the earnings in mahogany wood, which he expected to sell with profit, but also in the costly vainilla1 beans, which he knew to be traded at exorbitant prices both in Genoa and in Augsburg.
After a week in this paradise, the anchors were weighed again, to sail in southeastern direction, following the southern west wind zone, part of another Volta system, as Nuñes explained to Joseph. They would soon sail eastward for at least two months, pushed by steady western winds, before heading to the Northeast, to reach Colombo on Ceilão Island2, a Portuguese possession, where they would take fresh water and provisions for the last part of their journey.
Joseph was now completely over his seasickness, over three months into the passage, and he took a lively interest in the handling of the large carrack. He and the other passenger at the captain’s table, a man named Pietro Collani, took the meals with Capitano Ricci, the navigator Nuñes, and the quartermaster Del Piero. At first, they were still eating the fresh food bought at Salvador, but after a week, salted meats, rice and beans, all cooked in seawater, became their fare. At supper, Ligurian wines were added to the water from the casks, to cover the increasingly stale taste. During the day, they drank hot infusions of candied lemon and orange slices, yielding a fruity and sweet drink. Of course, as the days and weeks went on and the water got staler, the addition of wine or candied fruit could not cover the bad taste anymore, but eating salted meats daily made them thirsty enough to ignore that.
Two months were spent sailing eastward, with Nuñes measuring their speed with another implement, a wooden log on a long line, with knots at regular intervals. Throwing the log overboard and then letting the line pay out, his mate counted the knots running through his fingers until a one-minute glass had run through. The resulting number of ‘knots’ were then entered into the ‘log book’ and Nuñes made a reckoning of their speed and of the distance they covered each day. Then, one day, he closed the log book with a snap and went to see the captain. When the watch changed the next time, the quartermaster laid the helm to starboard, making the ship turn left, or to a northern direction.
Joseph was quite aware that this was not as accurate as counting milestones along a road, but he trusted Nuñes to find his way.