A Spanish Adventurer — The Wild Life Of Captain Alonso de Contreras — Part I

“…In those parts it was wiser to travel … well-armed and with a crew who all slept with one eye open and who understood each other like brothers.”

— Captain Alonso de Contreras

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I have never really given the Spaniards their due. Blame Anglophile tendencies. From tales of the Armada to Sir Henry Morgan’s exploits in Panama in 1671, up through Black Sails, and on to Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba, I have always tended to view the Spaniard as “the Adversary.” Faceless, and cruel but sort of hapless.

That’s a prejudiced, inaccurate view that sells the adventurous spirit and martial prowess of these men considerable short.

It was the Spanish who kicked the whole thing off in the Age of Discovery (them and the Portuguese). And you’d be hard-pressed to find a more hard-bitten, adventure-mad set of Frontier Partisans in all of history.

Take Captain Alonso de Contreras: Privateer. Soldier. Knight of St. John. Navigator. Lover of women. Killer of men.

Contreras operated from the Mediterranean to Mexico in the early 17th Century in the last decades of Spain’s glory days, when they were the preeminent military power in Europe and the great imperial power in the New World. He wrote a memoir in 1640 — and it’s a magnificent read. Historians have lined it up with known events and declared it an accurate depiction of a violent life on multiple frontiers.

The memoir is straightforward and plain-spoken. Contreras makes no effort to gloss his reputation. He reports matter-of-factly on his life of violence — he kills often and seldom with any compunction, does not hesitate to resort to torture to obtain needed intelligence, and his amorous exploits tend to be transactional, and sometimes end in violence, too.

For all that, he was clearly a masterful navigator and seaman, a skilled man-at-arms, an outstanding small-unit combat leader, beloved of his men, and an easy man to like — as long as you were not an enemy.

Oh, and if you’re getting a strong Captain Alatriste vibe here, you’re right. Contreras was a primary inspiration for Arturo Perez-Reverte’s swashbuckling hero.

Contreras was born and raised in a poor family in Madrid. His father was not in the picture. He was exiled from Madrid for a year after he stabbed another boy to death in a street fight. When he returned, his mother apprenticed him to a silversmith, but that lasted three days. Alonso begged his mother to let him enlist in the army, and she eventually relented. At 15, he became a soldier. Or, at least, a soldier’s servant.

He was marched off to the wars in Flanders, but the man he served deserted, and he ended up in the Mediterranean. After a series of misadventures, which included brawls and other assorted violent trouble, he found himself at sea, serving as a corsair in the never-ending war between the Ottoman Empire and the Knights Hospitaller, the Order of St. John, aka the Knights of Malta, aka The Religion.

In the early 17th Century, the eastern Mediterranean Sea was a maritime frontier, a contested zone between the fleets of the Ottoman Empire, allied Muslim corsairs, and the fleets of Christian kingdoms and the Order of St. John. Raids were constant.

Contreras made his bones as a privateer, attacking Muslim shipping and battling corsairs. He “fell in love with navigation,” and embarked on an intensive study of the art and science, becoming so skilled that he would develop a set of maps and charts that would serve his military masters well. He also had a knack for languages, and he learned that of the Turkish enemy, which was a useful tool in the trade he would soon embark upon.

Still in his teens, he was given command of a ship and assigned the classic role of a Frontier Partisan.

He became a scout.

His memoirs recount a key mission:

After I had been a few days in Malta, his highness Grand Master Vignacourt sent for me. He had heard that I was very familiar with the Levant and that I spoke the language well. He gave me orders to go to the Levant to spy out all I could about the Turkish fleet.

Contreras secured the intel required, including the target of the Turks’ annual naval raid-in-force. That led to a second mission:

The governor of Reggio, a knight of the Religion called Rotinel, received me well. He quickly made his preparations and massed his knights and his troops, who were then spread around the countryside, as well he might. The Turks were already anchoring off San Giovanni (in the Straits of Messina) only fifteen miles away.

After three days, we got news from the knights who were riding between San Giovanni and Reggio that the Turks had landed their troops.

The governor set an ambush for them and slaughtered three hundred Turks and took sixty prisoners. After this defeat, they reembarked and gave no further trouble.

The governor instructed me to go aboard my frigate, to cross the straits, and to alert Taormina, Syracuse, and Augusta. All these towns were on the Sicilian coast. Taormina, the nearest, was only twenty miles away from San Giovanni. This I did by fighting my way through the middle of the Turkish fleet. I carried out my orders and then went on to Malta to tell them the news.

The knights there immediately prepared to defend themselves. Shortly after my arrival, the Turkish fleet arrived off the isle of Gozo, the well-fortified island that lay next to Malta. They had been warned in good time, so that when the Turks tried to get ashore, our garrison of knights prevented them from landing in force and did not even give them the opportunity of getting fresh water. And that was how the Turkish expedition of that year ended.

Contreras became a highly successful raider, and won the love and loyalty of his crew through astute combat leadership that got them into tight places and out again, and a generous division of loot. Contreras was a prodigious looter, and he blew it all on good times and fast women. One woman in particular, on Malta, whom he refers to has his quiraca, a courtesan and mistress. She wound up with the lioness’ share of the proceeds of his loot and used it to build herself a very fine home.

The Grand Master of Malta sent Contreras out on numerous recon missions, and he undertook the occasional covert op — such as kidnapping the Hungarian concubine of a corsair warlord of the Aegean Sea named Soliman. The op was successful, and Contreras ran off with the Hungarian woman, whom he described as the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

The Hungarian was not the legitimate wife but only the concubine of Soliman. But I treated her with great courtesy. I learned later that Soliman, thinking that I had slept with her, condemned me in my absence and swore to search me out and have me outraged by six negroes and then impaled. But he did not have the good luck to catch me, even though he finally had portraits of me made and put up in various Levant and Barbary ports.

Contreras was not a man to be fucked with. When a former comrade-in-arms ripped off a prize cargo of grain, Contreras kidnapped him, stripped him and had him lashed 100 times across the ass with a rope dipped in tar, followed by a dousing with salt water and vinegar. He then told him to send to his men for a ransom payment or he would be hanged. Contreras got his ransom payment, and his humiliated and very sore former comrade was allowed to swim to shore.

Contreras served as a maritime scout and corsair for six years. The gig went sour on him when his quiraca betrayed him.

While I was in Malta squandering my money, which had been earned the hard way, I surprised my quiraca in bed with a friend of mine. Imagine, being in bed with my acquaintance while I was being good enough to build her a house! Well, she ran away and hid.

I ran my sword through him twice and left him for dead. But he recovered and, before he was mended, fled from Malta fearing that I would kill him.

Though everybody begged me, men and women alike, to take her back, I could not see why I should. Especially as I was then able to take my pick of the other quiracas, who were fighting over me as though I were some vacant post in the government.

Despite the charms on hand, Contreras decided to move on. He had not been home to Spain in years, and wanted to see his mother. The Grand Master of the Knights of Malta was, for obvious reasons, loathe to lose an asset of his quality. Contreras describes the end of his corsair career.

I stayed in Malta, without leaving once, for many months; it was a miracle. Then, at last, I was sent to Barbary with a frigate. I went and returned in nine days, bringing back a coaster loaded with enough fine cotton to open a shop, and fourteen slaves as well. It was, for me, a very profitable voyage.

In the days that followed, a Catalan galleon arrived. It was on its way from Alexandria to Spain and was loaded with all sorts of luxuries. This ship reminded me of my country, and I thought of my mother to whom I had never written and who had had no news of me. I decided to ask the grand master for permission to go home. He agreed, though he did not wish to lose me. And when the time came for our farewells, he put his arms around me and laid his cheek against mine.

Conteras made it back home for a family reunion, but it didn’t take him long to get restless, and soon he was a Lieutenant recruiting troops for the Spanish Army and seeking the rank of Captain. The warrior’s career had moved to land.

And that, amigos, is another story…