In June 1622, a Dutch fleet arrived off Portuguese Macau and began bombarding the fortifications before landing 800 men to storm the city. At the time Macau facilitated the indirect trade between Japan and China, and as a result was one of the wealthiest cities in the world. Despite all this wealth, its defences at the time were rudimentary, and the Dutch anticipated an easy victory.
Surprisingly though, the outnumbered Portuguese prevailed. Their gunners hammered one of the Dutch galleons so hard it later sunk, the Dutch commander ashore was wounded and retired to his ship, a lucky bombard shot fired by a Jesuit monk from the incomplete Monte Fort, hit the attacker’s powder barrel, and a spirited counterattack forced a Dutch withdrawal with hundreds of casualties.
The attack was a clear sign the time for complacency in Macau was over. A captain -general was appointed to manage the defences, the scattered forts were completed and linked, and a foundry and powderworks were built to arm their bastions with cannon.
The foundry was established initially in 1623 by two ‘long haired, heathen Chinese’ making iron guns, but two years later, Manuel Tavares Bocarro took over the role. Manuel was the grandson of a famous master gun founder, Franciso, and son of the equally renowned Pedro Dias Bocarro, both of Goa. One of Pedros weapons can be found today at Fort Nelson, and another in the Lisbon Military Musem. For decades the Bocarros had made the cannons for Portuguese India. Now Manuel would do so for Macau.
He started energetically, and soon the Macau ramparts were full. In 1635 Portuguese chronicler Antonia Bocarro (no relation to the gun founder) noted two 35 pounders, eighteen others between 20 and 30 pounders and two dozen smaller weapons arming the battlements at the forts of Monte, San Francisco, San Pedro, Bomparto, Penha, Barra, and Guia. The combination of fortifications and firepower deterred any further attacks by the Dutch, or anyone else.
Bocarro made iron guns, church bells and religious statues, but his specialty was magnificent bronze cannon, lavishly decorated with crests and coats of arms, ornate trunnions and cascabels. But this cannon were not just for show; they were dependable shipkillers. Gunners around the East knew and respected Bocarro’s guns and had confidence in the skills of his foundry. Taking shortcuts with pouring barrels could have deadly consequences, as the power of the ignition explosion could shatter poorly-built cannons and kill the crew. You needed to have confidence in the gun’s maker, or it was likely you may meet yours.
Foundries such as Macau’s at the time poured barrels vertically, breech down, and had carefully calculated the length of the barrel in calibres necessary for the pouring to achieve the required concentration at the touchhole. As JF Guilmartin clarifies in Galleons and Galleys, “The longer the gun, the greater the pressure; the greater the pressure, the denser the metal; the denser the metal, the stronger and safer the gun.”
In the early 16th century, cannon barrels were up to 28 calibres, and the great culverins up to 40 calibres long, but by Bocarro’s time in Macau, they had decreased to a length of around 25 times the bore width. Because copper–the main component of bronze–was expensive, and became more so compared to iron during the seventeenth century, using less of it was more economic. But thinner barrel walls could lead to devastating explosions if poured too thin, so founders like Bocarro had to achieve a balance.
Of course, cast iron guns were cheaper, though heavier and larger than bronze weapons firing a similar size ball. The lower cost ruled, however, and as ever larger Dutch and English fleets arrived in the East, their galleons (or Indiamen) were increasingly armed with utilitarian, standardised iron broadsides, outgunning the much more beautifully made and decorated Portuguese bronze guns.
Once Bocarro’s foundry had armed the Macau forts, more guns were produced for other Portuguese possessions in Asia, including Malacca and even Goa itself. In 1641, it was noted that Macau possessed 250 iron and over 50 bronze cannon beyond the city’s requirements, and a shipload of these were dispatched to Goa for onward transport to the Portuguese king in Lisbon. Unfortunately, the new India-built galleon Santissima Sacramento carrying them went down in a storm off Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where they lay for three centuries.
One bronze cannon was recovered in 1951, and a further 37 in the 1970’s, although some of these were irreparably damaged by natural scouring at the wreck site, and scrapped. A large number of cast iron guns from the wreck were not recovered. The majority of the salvaged guns that were identifiable were made by Bocarro at Macau, and carried his distinctive craftsmans ‘logo.’ The barrel lengths varied from 3.30 to 4.69 metres, with corresponding bores at 13 and 14 centimetres, suggesting they were 18 to 24 pounders. Most appear to have been sold to private collectors.
The best of the recovered guns had endured the bottom of the bleak Southern Ocean for over 300 years, but when raised was quickly restored to immaculate condition. Christened the ‘miracle gun’ because of its exceptional preservation, this 2.5 tonne weapon is now displayed near the wreck site at Schoenmakerskop, its maker, Manuel Tavares Bocarro clearly identified.
Other surviving guns from Manuel Bocarro’s Macau foundry include one at the Lisbon Military Museum, identified as an 18 pounder; one recovered from offshore the Spice Island of Tidore in 2005 and displayed there; a well-travelled one at Jakarta’s Fatahillah Square, captured from the Portuguese fortress of Malacca when it fell in 1641; and one, the St Lawrence cannon that was poured in 1627, gifted to the Chinese in 1717 and then captured by British forces in 1841 at the Pearl River near Canton, before ending up in the Tower of London. A bronze church bell dated 1633 in the Church of St Lawrence, Macau is all that remains of Bocarro’s work in that city; tragically, no cannons, though a decent replica of the St Lawrence cannon is displayed in the fascinating Macau Museum in the Monte Fort.
Manuel Bocarro ran the foundry until serving as Governor of Macau from 1657 to 1664. He died in 1672. The powderworks was no longer functioning by 1717, but cannon were still manufactured at the foundry up to about 1680. The foundry itself was located on the beach under the Penha Hill along what is now Rua de Chunambeiro, but has long since succumbed to the garish development that has characterised modern Macau.
It is fitting that a number of Bocarro’s cannon survive as beautiful testaments to the most famous gun founder of the East.
For more on this topic, read Richard J Garrett’s comprehensive The Defences of Macau
