Albuquerque Captures Hormuz
Afonso de Albuquerque took Hormuz in 1515, closing the last of the three chokepoints on which his strategy for the Indian Ocean rested. The island at the mouth of the Persian Gulf was barren, without fresh water, and immensely rich — every cargo passing between India and the Gulf paid its customs, and the pearl fishery and horse trade ran through it. He had taken it once before, in 1507, with six ships, and had been forced to abandon it when his own captains mutinied and sailed for India rather than spend a season building a fort on a rock. He returned as governor with twenty-seven ships and about 1,500 men. The kingdom was in the hands of a vizier, Reis Hamed, who controlled a boy king; Albuquerque had him killed in the king's presence during an audience and took the surrender the same day. Hormuz became a Portuguese protectorate paying tribute, with a fortress and a garrison, and it stayed one for over a century. With Goa taken in 1510 and Malacca in 1511, the Portuguese now held the entrances to the Gulf, the Malabar coast and the Strait of Malacca, and could licence or exclude the shipping of the whole ocean. Only the Red Sea escaped him, Aden having repulsed an assault in 1513. He died at sea off Goa in December 1515, weeks after learning that court enemies had procured his dismissal. He asked to be buried at Goa, and was. The English and the Persians took it together in 1622. His strategy of holding narrow waters with a small fleet is the model every later maritime empire followed.
- Year: 1515 CE
- Category: War
