LOG ENTRY: A FART IN A STRAIT RUINS AN EMPIRE
That Time a Pissy Ocean Told Afonso de Albuquerque to Go Fuck Himself, and He Actually Did.
*LOG, STARDATE… ah, who gives a shit. August 1st, 1511, or thereabouts.*
So there he was: Afonso de Albuquerque. The Duke of Goa, the “Portuguese Mars,” a man whose own farts were probably perfumed with paprika and self-importance. He’s sailing his fleet of seventeen ships—a right proper armada for the time—up the Malacca Strait, planning to kick in the doors of the richest port in the goddamn world. The plan was simple: sail up, bombard the mosque, land the boys, and be home in time for tea and subjugation. The Sultanate of Malacca was about to get a masterclass in European gunboat diplomacy, which is a fancy way of saying “we have cannons and you don’t, so hand over the spices before we get inventive.”
Only one problem. The ocean, in its infinite and glorious indifference, decided to have a seizure that day. Not a storm, mind you. A proper sailor respects a storm. This was far more insulting. A tidal anomaly. A freakish, liquid middle finger from Poseidon himself. One minute, the Portuguese fleet is sailing in neat little rows like the King’s prize-winning ducks. The next, a current—moving with the speed of a greased weasel and the logic of a meth-addled goose—grabs them by the collective keel. Ships meant to be in deep channels found themselves hurtling towards sandbars that weren’t on any chart. The lead navigator was probably having an aneurysm, screaming things in Portuguese that would make a dockside whore blush.
Albuquerque’s flagship, the legendary *Frol de la Mar*—we’re talking the U.S.S. Enterprise of its day, crammed to the gills with gold, jewels, and Albuquerque’s oversized ego—was picked up and slammed onto a mudflat with the graceless thud of a fat man falling off a barstool. The sound of a hundred-and-ten-foot ship grinding to a halt in six feet of muck is… distinctive. Other ships collided, snapping bowsprits. One carrack, the *São João*, apparently just went in a circle for two hours. Instead of a terrifying invasion, the Sultan’s men on the shore were treated to a slapstick comedy routine. They watched from the walls as the great Portuguese fleet flopped around like dying fish, firing cannons at nothing but mud and each other’s rigging by accident.
The great Afonso, sputtering with impotent rage and probably covered in estuary slime, had to give the order to retreat before the tide went all the way out and left them truly, royally stranded. They spent three days trying to pull the *Frol de la Mar* free before abandoning the treasure-laden pig to its muddy grave. Albuquerque limped back to Goa with half a fleet and a reputation that had sprung a catastrophic leak. Sultan Mahmud Shah, who had been planning a strategic evacuation to the jungle, instead declared a national holiday and, according to one (invented) source, commissioned a tapestry depicting a giant wave kicking a tiny, mustachioed man squarely in the cojones.
