28 alongside a carrack(1) and captured a flag from it. All the other captains behaved valiantly that day throughout the fighting, and certainly if the wind had allowed boarding, the enemy would have been completely routed. When the battle began again in the morning Rui Freire, the Commander of the Strait, appeared with three ships from the direction of Ormuz, and with them he attacked three enemy patachos who were approaching from that side which fired several shots at him with their cannon before joining the body of their fleet. Rui Freire went within hailing distance of Commander Nuno Alvares Botelho, and because of the calms threw him a cable so that he could take him alongside some enemy carrack. This was done by Rui Freire with great valour and speed, but the desired result could not be attained because the enemy was moving away and in the end decided to take to flight, making full sail towards Gombroon. This is now a fortress belonging to Persia, situated on the edge of the mainland opposite Ormuz. Commander Nuno Alvares Botelho followed them, firing his guns, until it was dark, when he anchored close to the enemy, who had retreated to the fortress. In the battle he had lost four men killed and twenty wounded, including one Dom Fernando (illegible) from a cannonball which struck his leg when he was on the gangway above the boarding net, close to the commander, who was also hit in a leg bay a splinter. In spite of this he carried 1- This was the Dutch carrack “Dordrecht”. V. Dagh-Register gehoudem in’t Casteel Batavia Anno 1624-9. The Hague, 1896, p. 158.
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