Madeira and Funchal

Where is Madeira, and who ruled it in 1715?

Madeira is a small group of volcanic islands in the Atlantic Ocean, out to the west of Morocco. The main island is also called Madeira, and its harbour town, Funchal, was the place ships called. The second inhabited island is Porto Santo. The game calls the port Madeira; the real harbour town was Funchal.

Portuguese sailors working for Prince Henry the Navigator reached Porto Santo in 1418 and the main island in 1419. They named it Madeira, Portuguese for “wood”, because it was covered in forest. Settlers arrived in the 1420s, and one of the first captains, João Gonçalves Zarco, made his home at Funchal.

In 1715 Madeira belonged to the Kingdom of Portugal, ruled by King João V from 1706 to 1750. Portugal was Britain’s ally, and that friendship shaped the island’s trade.

How did Madeira go from sugar to wine?

In the later 1400s Madeira grew rich on sugar, and Funchal’s harbour filled with ships from across Europe. Then cheaper sugar from São Tomé and Brazil took over, and Madeira’s sugar profits fell sharply during the 1500s. Farmers turned reed beds and fields into vineyards, and by the 1700s wine was the island’s great export.

The sugar estates were worked by enslaved people. Records describe enslaved Black Africans, captured North Africans and people from the Canary Islands clearing land and labouring in the cane fields and mills. The historian William D. Phillips Jr. sees Madeira as where the plantation system first took shape: big sugar estates, worked by enslaved people, growing a crop to sell abroad. The same system was later carried across the ocean to the Caribbean sugar islands. A church count of 1552 found about 2,700 enslaved people in Funchal alone. Slavery lasted on the island into the 1700s, and only ended gradually after Portugal applied a 1761 law against it to Madeira in 1768.

Why did so many ships stop at Madeira?

Sailing ships went where the winds let them. A ship leaving Europe for the Caribbean or North America usually ran south first, past Madeira and the Canary Islands, until it reached the trade winds, steady winds that blow from the east across the tropical Atlantic. These carried it west. Coming home, ships went north to find the westerlies, winds that blow from the west, and rode them back to Europe.

That route ran right past Funchal, so the town became one of the Atlantic’s great stopping places. Ships called for fresh water, food, ballast and casks of wine. In the 1700s Funchal was an important stop on the routes to both the West Indies and the East Indies, and ships of the Dutch East India Company bought wine there for their long voyages. A captain with spare room in his hold could fill it with wine to sell at the other end.

Why could Madeira wine sail straight to the colonies?

England’s Navigation Acts were laws meant to keep colonial trade in English hands. One of them, the Staple Act of 1663, said that goods from Europe had to be loaded in England before they could go to the English colonies. A short list of exceptions included salt for the fishing colonies, some supplies from Scotland and Ireland, and the wines of Madeira and of the Azores.

So while French or Spanish wine had to make an expensive detour through England and pay duty there, Madeira wine could sail straight from Funchal to Barbados, Charles Town or Boston. A treaty of 1703 between England and Portugal, the Methuen Treaty, helped too. It lowered English duties on Portuguese wine in return for letting English woollen cloth into Portugal. Port became hugely popular in Britain, but port sent on from Britain to America paid duty in England, so Madeira was often the better buy in the colonies. British merchants living in Funchal came to run much of the island’s wine trade.

What was Madeira wine like in 1715?

Madeira had one great advantage over other wines: it survived the heat. Many wines spoiled in a hot ship’s hold, but Madeira seemed to get better on a voyage through the tropics. Wine that had sailed there and back was prized as vinho da roda, “round-trip wine”.

The Madeira of 1715 was probably lighter than the strong, rich wine sold today. Adding brandy to make it stronger only became common during the 1700s, and heating the wine on purpose in warm rooms called estufas came later still. By the middle of the century Madeira was a favourite wine in colonial America. George Washington was ordering it from 1759, and in his last orders before the American Revolution, he paid for it with flour from his own farm. You can read more about the wine trade on the brandy and wine page.

What did Madeira need to buy?

Madeira’s steep hills were covered in vineyards, and the island never grew enough grain to feed itself. Historians of Funchal note that bringing in grain was a constant worry. Ships brought food and manufactured goods from Portugal and northern Europe. Later in the century, flour and wheat from North America were traded for wine, and a Royal Navy captain at Funchal in 1801 wrote about the price of American and North African wheat there. How much American flour reached the island as early as 1715 is less clear from the records.

Did pirates and corsairs attack Madeira?

They did. In 1566 French corsairs led by Bertrand de Montluc landed near Funchal. They looted the town, seized around 300 enslaved Black people and carried them away. Portugal then sent a military engineer to rebuild the town’s defences.

In 1617 corsairs from Algiers, licensed raiders of the Ottoman regency there, attacked Madeira and Porto Santo. A French priest writing in 1649 recorded about 1,200 islanders carried off to be sold into slavery in North Africa, and the island strengthened its forts afterwards. Corsairs from Algiers and from Salé in Morocco hunted ships across these waters for much of the 1600s. Enslavement and ransom ran both ways in this world: Christian and Muslim sailors alike could be captured and sold.