Publication Date
2009
Categories
Ribeira is a term which refers to a place of a locality near the river banks. In Lisbon, it identified an extensive strip near the Tagus, outside the medieval wall, starting at the Portas da Cruz, in the east, and continuing to the west until Porta da Oura (or do Ouro) and the Cata-que-Farás beach in Corpo Santo and Fontainhas. This stretch of beaches and of reclaimed land shaped Lisbon's socioeconomic topography during the centuries of expansion. The docking of barges and small ships made use of the quays that dotted the eastern side from the Porta da Cruz to the imposing Cais da Pedra (Stone Quay), whose construction began in the later years of the 15th century to allow the mooring of deep-draught ships. From the Cais da Pedra to the west, the sand of the Tagus was used for shipbuilding and for warehouses that supported this industry, many of which were poorly-built. The land of the Ribeira was owned by the township, and the ease with which these areas - one would say of public interest - were leased to private individuals justified a 1515 provision, which determined that no land would be leased at the Cata-que-Farás beach "as it goes up to Santos, so that the aforementioned beach may always be unoccupied, (
) respecting the necessity of a place in Lisbon where carrack ships can be flatten and fixed."
A landfill of mud and sand near the Cais da Pedra cut the continuity along the riverside and promoted a functional distinction of the two sides of the ribeira. At the beginning of King Dom Manuel's reign, a wide but never cobbled square was built in a place that became central in a city that spread itself to the west. Its identification as "terreiro do Paço" (Palace Square) was the result of a royal decision to bring the court's residence nearer the port area, a symbolic change to a new era during which the king and the nobility meddled with the maritime, mercantile and military spheres of the empire which, by then, was sustained by its link to the East through the Cape of Good Hope (further highlighting the originality of the relation).
The trade and fiscal services of the Carreira da Índia were accommodated near the Palace in separate buildings that were subjected to regular improvement and extension works, just as it happened with the Casa da Índia. But the Armazéns de Guiné e Índia, the body of the central administration that had under its jurisdiction the logistics of the fleets, deserved a place on the ground floor of the royal palace. One of its powers had to do with shipbuilding, developed on the beaches contiguous to the Palace towards the west. In the bureaucracy of the Armazéns de Guiné e Índia, the term Ribeira designated not only the whole riverside area, but specifically the shipyards and related services. The memory of the place is evoked by the current Avenida da Ribeira das Naus (Ribeira das Naus Avenue), despite the shipyards' location being further inland.
Notwithstanding the importance of the industry for the maintenance of the Carreira da Índia, the Ribeira das Naus was only isolated with "walls and beaching areas" from other construction works carried out by private individuals in 1546. The Olissipo de Braunio engraving already depicts the shipyards fenced and includes mills in them of which little is known, but of which contemporary treaties of shipbuilding and descriptions of the city refer as being specific units primarily devoted to the production of large-scale ships.
During the 16th century, regardless of the process adopted for the management of ship construction (contract or direct management), whoever paid the work always supplied the raw material, turning the Armazéns de Guiné e Índia and the warehouse of the Ribeira into the largest repositories of stock for the industry and for outfitting ships. The supply of raw material and of semi-processed good activated commercial circuits, both the internal ones and the ones that depended upon the articulation between Portugal and the European centres of redistribution. Timber for the hulls, part of the cloth for the sails and oakum were offered by the internal market, involving in the shipyards' supply network regions that produced linen, such as Entre Douro e Minho that shipped sailcloth from the Vila do Conde port. Bigger linen cloths were acquired in Brittany and shipped from Vitré and Pous-de-vis. Torre de Moncorvo complemented Ribatejo in the supply of hemp rope, which was used to build the shroud in Lisbon's ropery then located near the Santa Catarina gates (present-day Rua do Alecrim). The importance of the pine woods from the seaside of Leiria for Lisbon's shipping industry has been underestimated. Stone pine and cork oak trees provided irreplaceable timber for the techniques that were used, so the woods most pressured by the demand of the Ribeira das Nuas were located in Ribatejo and in the south bank of the Tagus, from Charneca to Aldeia Galega, and were starting to become insufficient by the time of the Iberian Union (1580-1640). The masts needed timber from the Scandinavian and central European forests (served by the Riga port), with single pieces of oak and Nordic pine being suitable to outfit the ships of an increasing tonnage which neared 500-600 tonnes of freight by the mid fifteen hundreds. Other important materials, such as pitch, nails and iron paste, regularly arrived from Biscay and relied on the work of blacksmith's shops near Porta da Oura.
The Ribeira das Naus was an industrial complex that hosted several processing industries that were subsidiary to shipbuilding, but that were not all confined to the shipyard facilities. Being a unit that was part of the royal administration provided it with the financial and organizational conditions necessary for its greatness, but it shared this feature with other shipyards geared to fulfil State orders, and it is equally known that the few processing units of modern Europe with a capitalist appearance operate under the same institutional framework.
A comparative study of these arsenals will permit the verification of what is specific of Lisbon, but the productive capacity of this shipyard in the first decades of the fifteen hundreds alone was only matched by what happened later in the shipyards of the monopolist companies from northwestern Europe. Nonetheless, at the Portuguese scale, it always stood out as the largest production centre of ships for the India fleets.
The best-documented calculations to gauge production levels point towards a minimum launching capacity of 750 tonnes of freight per year, a figure which places the Ribeira das Naus in a magnitude that was nearly two times bigger than the other equally active shipyards of the kingdom. Financing fundamentally depended upon the transfer of funds from the Casa da Índia, which covered between 75 and 92% of the Ribeira's total revenue.
In addition to the availability of funds, work at the Ribeira das Naus demanded a numerous but specialised labour force (carpenters, regarded as property of the Ribeira, and caulkers). Royal decrees created a body inside the guild of these artisans comprising 150 carpenters and 150 caulkers who were forced to work on royally ordered ships whenever requested, despite receiving lower wages (60 reais) when compared with privately ordered ones (80 reais).
The activity of the Ribeira das Naus gained importance in the city's social topography, in the hillock overlooking the Cata que Farás beach towards Santos. The new neighbourhood, recently urbanised and featuring wider streets than the old eastern neighbourhoods, was called Bairro Alto and hosted many houses that belonged to carpenters and caulkers.
The expansion of the urban perimeter to the west reinforced the centrality of the Ribeira das Nuas's location and of the contiguous palace. And so it appeared in the contemporary iconography that always portrayed Lisbon as a shipyard-city and a seaport. A shipyard for the construction of large ships destined to the Indian sea next door to the royal palace - here it is the inescapable image of its singularity.
Bibliography:
CAETANO, Carlos (2005), A Ribeira de Lisboa na Época da Expansão Portuguesa (séculos XV a XVIII), Lisboa, Pandora. CASTILHO, Júlio (1893), A Ribeira de Lisboa. Descripção histórica da Margem do Tejo desde a Madre de Deus até Santo-o-Velho, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional. COSTA, Leonor Freire (1997), Naus e Galeões na Ribeira de Lisboa. A construção naval no século XVI para a Rota do Cabo, Lisboa, Patrimónia. SENOS, Nuno (2002), O Paço da Ribeira, Lisboa, Editorial Notícias.
Translated by: John Silva
A landfill of mud and sand near the Cais da Pedra cut the continuity along the riverside and promoted a functional distinction of the two sides of the ribeira. At the beginning of King Dom Manuel's reign, a wide but never cobbled square was built in a place that became central in a city that spread itself to the west. Its identification as "terreiro do Paço" (Palace Square) was the result of a royal decision to bring the court's residence nearer the port area, a symbolic change to a new era during which the king and the nobility meddled with the maritime, mercantile and military spheres of the empire which, by then, was sustained by its link to the East through the Cape of Good Hope (further highlighting the originality of the relation).
The trade and fiscal services of the Carreira da Índia were accommodated near the Palace in separate buildings that were subjected to regular improvement and extension works, just as it happened with the Casa da Índia. But the Armazéns de Guiné e Índia, the body of the central administration that had under its jurisdiction the logistics of the fleets, deserved a place on the ground floor of the royal palace. One of its powers had to do with shipbuilding, developed on the beaches contiguous to the Palace towards the west. In the bureaucracy of the Armazéns de Guiné e Índia, the term Ribeira designated not only the whole riverside area, but specifically the shipyards and related services. The memory of the place is evoked by the current Avenida da Ribeira das Naus (Ribeira das Naus Avenue), despite the shipyards' location being further inland.
Notwithstanding the importance of the industry for the maintenance of the Carreira da Índia, the Ribeira das Naus was only isolated with "walls and beaching areas" from other construction works carried out by private individuals in 1546. The Olissipo de Braunio engraving already depicts the shipyards fenced and includes mills in them of which little is known, but of which contemporary treaties of shipbuilding and descriptions of the city refer as being specific units primarily devoted to the production of large-scale ships.
During the 16th century, regardless of the process adopted for the management of ship construction (contract or direct management), whoever paid the work always supplied the raw material, turning the Armazéns de Guiné e Índia and the warehouse of the Ribeira into the largest repositories of stock for the industry and for outfitting ships. The supply of raw material and of semi-processed good activated commercial circuits, both the internal ones and the ones that depended upon the articulation between Portugal and the European centres of redistribution. Timber for the hulls, part of the cloth for the sails and oakum were offered by the internal market, involving in the shipyards' supply network regions that produced linen, such as Entre Douro e Minho that shipped sailcloth from the Vila do Conde port. Bigger linen cloths were acquired in Brittany and shipped from Vitré and Pous-de-vis. Torre de Moncorvo complemented Ribatejo in the supply of hemp rope, which was used to build the shroud in Lisbon's ropery then located near the Santa Catarina gates (present-day Rua do Alecrim). The importance of the pine woods from the seaside of Leiria for Lisbon's shipping industry has been underestimated. Stone pine and cork oak trees provided irreplaceable timber for the techniques that were used, so the woods most pressured by the demand of the Ribeira das Nuas were located in Ribatejo and in the south bank of the Tagus, from Charneca to Aldeia Galega, and were starting to become insufficient by the time of the Iberian Union (1580-1640). The masts needed timber from the Scandinavian and central European forests (served by the Riga port), with single pieces of oak and Nordic pine being suitable to outfit the ships of an increasing tonnage which neared 500-600 tonnes of freight by the mid fifteen hundreds. Other important materials, such as pitch, nails and iron paste, regularly arrived from Biscay and relied on the work of blacksmith's shops near Porta da Oura.
The Ribeira das Naus was an industrial complex that hosted several processing industries that were subsidiary to shipbuilding, but that were not all confined to the shipyard facilities. Being a unit that was part of the royal administration provided it with the financial and organizational conditions necessary for its greatness, but it shared this feature with other shipyards geared to fulfil State orders, and it is equally known that the few processing units of modern Europe with a capitalist appearance operate under the same institutional framework.
A comparative study of these arsenals will permit the verification of what is specific of Lisbon, but the productive capacity of this shipyard in the first decades of the fifteen hundreds alone was only matched by what happened later in the shipyards of the monopolist companies from northwestern Europe. Nonetheless, at the Portuguese scale, it always stood out as the largest production centre of ships for the India fleets.
The best-documented calculations to gauge production levels point towards a minimum launching capacity of 750 tonnes of freight per year, a figure which places the Ribeira das Naus in a magnitude that was nearly two times bigger than the other equally active shipyards of the kingdom. Financing fundamentally depended upon the transfer of funds from the Casa da Índia, which covered between 75 and 92% of the Ribeira's total revenue.
In addition to the availability of funds, work at the Ribeira das Naus demanded a numerous but specialised labour force (carpenters, regarded as property of the Ribeira, and caulkers). Royal decrees created a body inside the guild of these artisans comprising 150 carpenters and 150 caulkers who were forced to work on royally ordered ships whenever requested, despite receiving lower wages (60 reais) when compared with privately ordered ones (80 reais).
The activity of the Ribeira das Naus gained importance in the city's social topography, in the hillock overlooking the Cata que Farás beach towards Santos. The new neighbourhood, recently urbanised and featuring wider streets than the old eastern neighbourhoods, was called Bairro Alto and hosted many houses that belonged to carpenters and caulkers.
The expansion of the urban perimeter to the west reinforced the centrality of the Ribeira das Nuas's location and of the contiguous palace. And so it appeared in the contemporary iconography that always portrayed Lisbon as a shipyard-city and a seaport. A shipyard for the construction of large ships destined to the Indian sea next door to the royal palace - here it is the inescapable image of its singularity.
Bibliography:
CAETANO, Carlos (2005), A Ribeira de Lisboa na Época da Expansão Portuguesa (séculos XV a XVIII), Lisboa, Pandora. CASTILHO, Júlio (1893), A Ribeira de Lisboa. Descripção histórica da Margem do Tejo desde a Madre de Deus até Santo-o-Velho, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional. COSTA, Leonor Freire (1997), Naus e Galeões na Ribeira de Lisboa. A construção naval no século XVI para a Rota do Cabo, Lisboa, Patrimónia. SENOS, Nuno (2002), O Paço da Ribeira, Lisboa, Editorial Notícias.
Translated by: John Silva