SAO BENTO carrack 1553 and Camoes

[aukepalmhof]

The MS from Portugal shows us on the left of the stamp a ship. Camoes sailed on 24 March 1553 from Lisbon to China on board of the carrack SAO BENTO, a vesel from the fleet of Cabral, most probably she is depict. The SAO BENTO wrecked on her homeward voyage


Camões - 500 Years
With this stamp issue marking the fifth centenary of the birth of Luís de Camões, the greatest poet of the Portuguese language, CTT Correios de Portugal makes its own valuable contribution to the official programme of commemorations celebrating the poet’s life, at the same time enriching Portuguese philately.
These stamps are postal documents of incalculable value to the country’s heritage. They combine contemporary graphics with classical typography, in a harmonious palette of soft and appealing colours. Not only are they a treat for the eyes, but they also reflect the beauty and musicality of some of the most significant verses of Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads).
Luís de Camões lived at a time of confrontation between human beings and the world around them, marked by new experiences and the new challenges stimulated by the Renaissance period. He stands apart from other great poets of the period for combining a vast culture with his exceptional travel experiences, which took him to Africa and the East, where he spent around 17 years. He received literary tradition, creating a new poetry for it and through it, as a challenge that allowed him to forge dialogue between experience and knowledge, disappointments and dreams, confusions and victories. An epic poet and a lyrical poet, the author of theatre plays and prose letters, he appears to have been an unsatisfied soul. But that restlessness asserted itself as a privileged means of exploring both the great contradictions buried within him, and the paths of the vast world that opened before him.
The language that Camões shaped and perfected in his unusually refined verses is now one of the most widespread in the world, used by roughly 280 million speakers around the globe. The link between the poet, the Portuguese language and the people who use it is so strong that Portugal Day, celebrated on 10 June, the date of the poet’s death, is also officially the day of Camões and of the Portuguese Communities.
This philatelic tribute gives continuity to one of CTT Correios de Portugal’s own traditions, that of, for the last hundred years, devoting exquisite stamp issues to Luís de Camões and his work. Dating from 1924 to the present day, they continue to transform the milestones of Camões’ life into a celebration that extends beyond a mere date. Indeed, each collection becomes a piece of history that will reach into the future, for generations to come, through a legacy able to share with an ever-growing audience the name of Luís de Camões.
This gives us more than enough reason to be grateful to CTT Correios de Portugal for reviving a tradition that projects the poet’s exceptional worth by bringing him into the contemporary world.
Rita Marnoto
Commissioner of the Commemorations of the 5th Centenary of the Birth
of Luís de Camões
https://www.wopa-plus.com/en/stamps/product/&pgid=92664
See also: viewtopic.php?p=15933&hilit=bento#p15933


SAO BENTO (Saint Benedict), commanded by captain Fernão de Álvares Cabral, the son of Pedro Álvares Cabral, was a Portuguese carrack of 900 tons wrecked in April 1554 near the mouth of the Msikaba River, midway between Port Edward and Port St. Johns on the Transkei coast of South Africa. The ship had left Cochin on 1 February 1554 and was en route to Lisbon with a cargo of spices, coconuts, silks, porcelain, cornelian beads, cotton cloth and other luxury goods. There are no hull remains at the site.

On the night of 24 April 1554, SAO BENTO was sailing in stormy weather off the Transkei coast. The ship was in a poor state of repair and overloaded, and when she ran aground, she quickly sank at the mouth of a gully on the seaward side of the island at the river mouth, with the loss of 44 Portuguese and over one hundred slaves. Two years earlier on 10 June 1552 SAN JOAO had been wrecked along the same stretch of coast at Port Edward, almost certainly accounting for the name of the nearby settlement of Port St. Johns.

The survivors, one of whom was Manuel de Mesquita Perestrelo and who later wrote an account of the disaster, made camp on the south bank of the river and put up a shelter which was "a superb lodging made of rich carpets, pieces of good cloth and silk, put to very different use from that for which they were made."

On 28 April 1554, after crossing the Msikaba River on rafts made from barrels lashed together, a party of 224 slaves and 98 Portuguese headed north along the coast to the Portuguese trading post established at Inhambane in 1534, and a distance of some 970 km (600 mi) as the crow flies from the site of the wreck. Some able-bodied men were armed with lances and swords, but there was only one musket between the lot. "Having crossed the river, we put ourselves in marching order, carrying a crucifix bound upon a lance… We arranged ourselves in single file, and set our faces towards the interior by a path made by elephants, directing ourselves towards a height where it seemed to us we might discover some settlement."

Only twenty Portuguese survivors and three slaves managed to reach safety in Mozambique.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A3o_ ... carrack%29
Portugal 2024 3.50€ sgMS? Scott?