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Fernão Lopez (14??—1545) was the first known permanent inhabitant of the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, an island that later became famous as the site of Napoleon's exile and death. Lopez was a 16th Century Portuguese soldier in India. He was tortured and disfigured in punishment for siding with Rasul Khan in a rebellion against Portuguese rule in Goa. On his way home to Portugual after these events, Lopez chose voluntary exile on the island of Saint Helena, where he lived in almost complete solitude for more than 30 years.

In Portuguese service

In 1503 Lopez, a minor nobleman and soldier, accompanied the Portuguese naval general Alfonso de Albuquerque on his first voyage to Goa on the west coast of India. Shortly after his arrival, Albuquerque returned to Portugal for reinforcements, leaving Lopez behind in charge of a garrison, with orders to keep the peace and rule over the local population. When Albuquerque returned two years later, he found the garrison was no longer in Portuguese possession. Some of the men had married local women, and some, possibly including Lopez himself, had converted to Islam. Lopez's troops also sided with the Muslim resistance against Portuguese occupation.

Albuquerque's men regained possession of the territory and Lopez and the other Portuguese renegades were turned over to the Portuguese on condition that their lives be spared. Instead they were tortured so savagely that half of them died within three days. Lopez, as the leader of the group, received the harshest punishment. He was bound with ropes to two wooden posts, and Albuquerque's men severed his nose, ears, right arm, and left thumb (according to others, his index and middle fingers as well). His hair and beard were scraped off with clam shells. The survivors were then released, and fled to the jungle where they could hide their deformities and be left alone.

Lopez stayed in India until the death of Albuquerque in 1513, when he set sail for Portugal, allegedly as a stowaway on a Portuguese vessel bound for Lisbon. The ship stopped at Saint Helena for food and water. Saint Helena was discovered by the Portuguese João da Nova on 21 May 1502, and with its abundance of fresh water and fat, tame birds became a regular port of call for Portuguese ships en route between the East Indies and Europe via the Cape of Good Hope. Unwilling to face life in Portugual, Lopez asked to be left behind on Saint Helena. He was landed in company with three or four African slaves (history does not record their fate). They were left to fend for themselves with a few supplies from the ship's stores: a barrel of biscuits, some dried meat and fish, a tinderbox and a saucepan.

Marooned on Saint Helena

Nearly a year passed before another ship docked at Saint Helena. Lopez acclimatised himself to his new home, a 122 km² volcanic island almost 2000 km off the coast of Africa. The climate was tropical and mild, tempered by trade winds. At the time, Saint Helena's original ecosystem was almost intact, although goats introduced by the Portuguese were quietly ravaging the island's unique plant species (no mammals or reptiles occurred on Saint Helena before introduction by humans). The interior of Saint Helena was a thick old-growth forest of ancient gumwood trees and native plants that had colonized the island as many as 10 million years ago.

The following is from a contemporary account of the first ship to encounter Lopez after he had been left on Saint Helena, found in a Hakluyt Society journal:

"The crew was amazed when they saw the grotto and the straw bed on which he slept...and when they saw the clothing they agreed it must be a Portuguese man.

So they took in their water and did not meddle with anything, but left biscuits and cheeses and things to eat and a letter telling him not to hide himself the next time a ship came to the island for no one would harm him.

Then the ship set off, and as she was spreading her sails a cockerel fell overboard and the waves carried it to the shore and Lopez caught it and fed it with some rice which they had left behind for him."

The cockerel that Lopez saved from the ship became his only friend on the island. During the night, it roosted above his head and during the day it followed behind him, and would come if he called to it. As time went on, Lopes began to be less and less afraid of people. When a ship would lay anchor in what would later be known as Jamestown harbour, Lopez would greet the sailors, talking to them as they came ashore. Lopez began to be considered something of a saint, because of his deformities and the fact that he would not leave Saint Helena for any reason. Many people thought him to be the embodiment of human suffering and alienation, and they took pity on him. The travellers who stopped at Saint Helena gave Lopez many things, including livestock and seeds. Eventually, Lopez became a gardener and a keeper of livestock, working the soil, planting fruit trees, grasses and many other forms of vegetation.

Lopez visits Portugal and Rome

After 10 years on the island, Lopez agreed to return to Portugal to see his family, visited King João III and then travelled to Rome, where Pope Clement VII absolved him of the sin of apostasy and granted him an audience. The Pope was very impressed with Lopez, and decided to grant him a wish. Lopez had one desire, and that was to return to his home on Saint Helena. The Pope sent Lopez back to Portugual with a letter for João III, requesting that Lopez be transported back to Saint Helena. Lopez returned to the island and died there in 1545, after 30 years of almost complete solitude.

Online references

• Historical Chronology of Saint Helena
• Fernão Lopez: The First Robinson Crusoe]
• Chapter 2 of Brooke's 1808 History of the Island of St. Helena

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Fernando Lopes