ABSTRACT
The seventh and final chapter translates the onboard log of the ship Santiago when it sailed from Portugal to the Cape Verde Islands in 1526, and then navigated to West Africa and purchased captive Africans, before returning to Cape Verde, and finally sailing back to Portugal. The onboard log fills a lacuna left by the Cape Verde customs receipt book where nothing is said about how Cape Verde colonists secured captives in West Africa. Furthermore, the Santiago provides information about the Atlantic voyages from West Africa to the Cape Verde colony, and also reconstructed the sail from Cape Verde to Europe. The ship log provides sailing times for voyages from West Africa to Cape Verde, and chronicled the two month-plus sail from Cape Verde to Portugal. In addition, unlike the Cape Verde customs receipt book for 1513–16, the Santiago’s log provides mortality rates for captive Africans shipped from West Africa to Cape Verde, and then to Europe.
