Building a barca from scratch

We don’t know exactly what kind of boats the Spaniards built at the Bay of Horses or how they did it. The vessels were all wrecked and lost on the coast of Texas two months later. According to Cabeza de Vaca, it seemed impossible to build boats “…because we did not know how to make them, nor had we any tools, iron, forges, oakum, pitch, or rigging. In the end, out of all the many things that would be needed, we had none, nor did anyone know anything about their fabrication.” That is bound to be an exaggeration. Any such expedition into an unknown wilderness at that time would have had enough means and talent to at least build rafts for river crossings, fortifications if necessary, and even crude shelters for a settlement, as originally planned. Not to mention, the soldiers and horsemen had to maintain their fighting gear. Building boats was a new challenge, but building other items of wood and metal would have been routine.

   Functionally, these barcas were probably a much-simplified version of the Spanish bergantín, a type of coastal vessel that would have been very familiar to explorers of that period. Nautical historian Steve Harris has proposed and modeled their most likely design, based on the resources and talents they had available, the capabilities they needed for sailing and rowing them, and the advice of other nautical experts on Spanish boats of that period (The Narváez Expedition Barca, 2019. Nautical Research Journal, 64 (3): 209-224.) We do know that the five boats were crowded with 242 men, their gear, and food, and they sat very low in the water. Days later, they raised the sides somewhat with planks salvaged from native canoes.

   The historical illustration in the previous post shows them building planked vessels, and that would not be unrealistic even under primitive conditions. Builders in the Middle Ages commonly used the technique of “riving” planks out of logs with hand tools. At St. Marks in 1528, they had virgin long-leaf pines that grew over 100 feet tall and up to three feet in diameter, far up the trunks. Long planks about 3 inches thick could be split from those logs with simple wooden mallets and wedges. There are plenty of videos online that illustrate the method.

The Narváez expedition “barcas”

"Having lost [track of] their ships and exposed to death by starvation, the people of Panfillo de Narvaez build boats with admirable ingenuity on the beach of Ante." (From History of the Royal Spanish Navy)

How did a bunch of desperate, debilitated soldiers build good seagoing boats in a hostile wilderness? In Cabeza de Vaca’s account*, written with input from three other survivors, he claims that, at first, they didn’t have any of the knowledge or tools to do it. Not to mention, many of the men were sick, wounded, and half-starved. Even so, they managed to build five, ~40-ft vessels that carried about 250 men and their equipment some 800 miles along the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas—a very impressive feat. They called their escape vessels barcas, Spanish for “boats”, but didn’t describe their construction. Nonetheless, historians have interpreted the term barcas in various ways, sometimes translating them as barges, rafts, and even boats made of horsehide! Could the word refer to rafts at all? In the last few lines of chapter 17, CdV mentions one of their barcas that carried Narváez away, and balsas or rafts that they later improvised to cross some smaller body of water. They did distinguish between those two terms, and so the escape barcas were evidently not rafts. There are many other reasons why clumsy log rafts would not be feasible for such an 800-mile voyage along the open Gulf Coast. As for horsehide boats? Out of the question. They did make horsehide bags for carrying water, but they soon rotted. All of this might seem like a rather nerdy focus on one detail, but it's a good example of translators and historians looking at the same word and coming up with different interpretions of how some major event was accomplished.

As for the Narváez men being totally unprepared and unqualified to build such boats, it seems like Cabeza de Vaca was trying to make their achievement—impressive as it was—sound a bit more heroic. Spanish expeditions to the New World recruited people with all kinds of knowledge, skills, and experience. Even though only one of the Narváez party, the Portuguese Álvaro Fernández, was identified as a carpenter and sailor by trade, many others had practical talents they could put to good use. After all, every soldier and horseman had to repair and maintain his own weapons and tack gear. No doubt in their hometowns and villages, they had seen all kinds of constructions, including small boat building. It was all done with manual labor, and young people grew up helping with it. Still, designing and constructing a seagoing 40-ft. (12-meter) was not trivial. We’ll say more about how they might have done it in the next post.

While these desperate men were not so elegantly dressed as the Spaniards in this illustration, they built their escape boats remarkably well.

*Read a copy of the CdV’s account of 1555, with its parallel translation here:

https://exhibits.library.txstate.edu/s/cabeza/page/larelacion

The loyal María de Valenzuela

Portrait of a Lady, possibly Infanta Catalina Micaela of Spain (1567-1597). Wikimedia Commons

This is not a portrait of María de Valenzuela, wife of Pánfilo de Narváez. If there is no portrait of her anywhere, there should be. Surely, no wife was more loyal to her husband and protective of his interests, but to no avail. His blind ambition finally made her a widow. His friend, the New World historian Oviedo, had something to say about that.

When he [Narváez] had conquered and pacified Cuba, he lived prosperously on the island, having good possessions; and even afterward, when he got out of the prison and talons of Cortés, he found his wife, María de Valenzuela, then waiting upon him for some years, with the honor and reputation of Penelope; but instead of tangling and untangling for any doubts or fears that her husband would not return; when informed of the capture and misfortunes of her Ulysses, she set about to improve and husband his estate as the means of his relief. In this state did Narváez find matters on returning to his house; for besides what he had left, and beyond the increase of his property, the wife had laid up for him thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars in gold dust, which she obtained from the washing by the labor of his slaves and Indians. These facts he told me himself in Toledo, in the year 1525, the Imperial Majesty of Charles at the time being there. (Translation by Buckingham Smith, 1851)

For that time and place in the New World, María must have been an exceptionally determined and competent woman, given all the practical demands of running a large estate in a frontier, male-dominated society. Narváez recognized her talents and gave her power of attorney to handle his affairs during the years he was absent in Spain and Mexico. There must be more records about this remarkable woman yet to be discovered in the Spanish Archives. I hope that will include her portrait.