[Richard Alexander]

Hi Everyone; I am writing a novel based on the Portuguese expedition in Ethiopia and related events between 1520 and 1543. Key players were Father Francesco Alvarez (in Ethiopia 1520-26) and Christovao da Gama (Vasco's son) who met his demise there. I am particularly looking for details of clothing, arms, flags/standards they might have carried, and also the manning of the ships - numbers of soldiers/sailors - and the sort of cannon they would have taken on the expedition into the interior.
I have a copty of the record of Alvares, which is brilliant, but still lacks detail in some ares as above. If anyone can assist I would be most grateful
- Richard Alexander

[Gordon Frye]

Richard;

There isn't a lot of information out in English about the Portuguese conquests and exploration of any era, unfortunately. There IS however a fair amount on Spanish arms and armour, ships, etc. of the early to mid-16th Century, down to such things as the muster rolls of some of the Spanish expeditions. (The records of the Coronado Expedition of 1540-1543 being one in particular that I have studied closely.) One would assume that there was a fair amount of overlap between the Iberian nations, since there certainly were Portuguese participants in the expedition of Hernando de Soto's 1539 tour of the present South Eastern US ( http://www.siu.edu/~anthro/muller/Elvas.htm ).

One site that has a lot of different links that you might check out is Calderon's Company, a group of reenactors who portray members of the de Soto expedition: ( http://mywebpages.comcast.net/calderon/ ).

There is also a fair amount of information out on the Spanish ships of Columbus, and then on the ships of the Grand Armada sent against England in 1588, but not a huge amount on things in between those two events. But one certainly could do some extrapolating, one would think.

Anyway, good luck on this, I hope that you are able to find some more sources.

Allons!

Gordon