Feeding the City: From Street Market to Liberal Reform in Salvador, Brazil, 1780–1860

Chapter Four: "People of the Sea"

Salvador’s port formed the hub of the food trade, with some spokes radiating into the city, and others linking it to points of supply in the hinterland. Sailors, captains, and boat owners connected farmers to the city’s grocers and street vendors, making Salvador’s inhabitants utterly dependent on them. The bay served as a path for cultural interchange because people on shore daily interacted with those who brought food across the water, with taken-for-granted urban understandings penetrating the interior and vice versa. To a degree , the ranks of those who sailed reflected the shape of society at large, and for these men life was filled with both severe challenges and satisfying rewards. The bay facing Salvador constituted the city’s principal highway of supply, and Salvador relied on waterborne transport for almost all of its food except beef, which transported itself. In no other large Brazilian city, with the possible exception of Belém, was the population so heavily dependent on waterborne traders. The city’s location on a relatively narrow peninsula dictated such dependence, but easy accessibility to the bay proved a godsend, water transport being easily the least expensive way of moving goods. Already in 1612 an observer noted that “all movement of these people is on water.” In 1775 the governor-general reported that there were 2,148 craft based in the province. Twenty-three years later one of his successors noted that of those operating entirely within the bay, more than a hundred docked at Salvador each week. As for vessels engaged in coastwise trade, they numbered over a thousand arrivals per year. In 1856 the official number of boats and ships based in the area reached 3,441, worked by over 8,500 men (see Table 4.1).1 Their number created a striking visual effect when seen from the upper city: “thousands of boats that Chapter 4 “people of the sea” Graham-final.indb 74 Graham-final.indb 74 6/30/10 10:32:21 AM 6/30/10 10:32:21 AM “people of the sea” 75 Table 4.1. Ships and Crews at Salvador, 1856 Type of Vessel Number Total Crew Avg. Crew Lighters 1,543 3,559 2.3 Bay and Coastal Vessels Canoes 1,437 3,578 2.5 Lanchas 274 491 1.8 Barcos 55 135 2.5 Subtotals 1,766 4,204 2.4 Oceangoing Vessels Iates 46 172 3.7 Smacks 32 188 5.9 Pinnaces 26 193 7.4 Brigantines 22 80 8.2 Schooners 3 17 5.7 Steamboats 3 40 13.3 Subtotals 132 790 6.0 Totals 3,441 8,553 Source: Capitania dos Portos da Bahia, Mapa demonstrativo das embarcações nacionais de navegação de longo curso e cabotagem bem como do tráfico dos portos . . . e dos indiv íduos que n’elles trabalhão ou se empregão, 31 de dezembro de 1855, in Diogo Tavares (Chefe da Capitania do Porto) para José Maria da Silva Paranhos (Ministro dos Negócios da Marinha), Salvador, 20 de fevereiro de 1857, Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, SPE, XM-183. cross in all directions” creating a “forest of masts.” Other observers focused on their cargoes, on all the “tropical fruits and other vegetables . . . brought in small launches or boats from the neighboring coasts,” or on “the landing places [where] cluster hundreds of canoes, launches, and various small craft, discharging their loads of fruits and produce.”2 They proved especially important in supplying the city’s inhabitants with manioc meal (farinha de mandioca), their major source of calories. captains and sailors The essential role played by the men who brought food to the city was clear to contemporaries. As a governor explained in 1775 when he was ordered to conduct a general recruitment of personnel for the royal navy, he had limited himself to a minor effort, which he sucGraham -final.indb 75 Graham-final.indb 75 6/30/10 10:32:22 AM 6/30/10 10:32:22 AM 76 getting and selling food ceeded in carrying out “without the least stirring-up or upset among the people of the sea [gente do mar], which I so wish to maintain in quietude, principally those who sail within the bay, because of the dependence on them of all the inhabitants [of the city] for the transport of [our] daily food.”3 Even though documents like this one...