Porto Calvo, the Stage of Brazilian Historical Events
Porto Calvo is a municipality of Alagoas, founded in 1636. Its foundation is attributed to Cristóvão Lins, to whom lands that extended from Rio Manguaba to Cabo de Santo Agostinho was donated. Lins cut down the jungle and started the sugarcane culture, built a chapel and seven mills. The illustrious sons of Porto Calvo are Calabar and Zumbi. Domingos Fernandes Calabar, who fought first for the Portuguese and then allied with the Dutch, became the most famous case of desertion in the country’s history. He is widely discussed by historians of two antagonistic currents, some considering him a hero and others considering him a traitor to his country.
Memorial Calabar Alto da Forca
Allegedly, Domingos Fernandes Calabar was hanged at the top of this hill, where the São Sebastião Municipal Hospital now operates. The place is similar to an open air museum where the images of Calabar and his executioners are fixed.
Church Nossa Senhora da Apresentação
It is believed that the other illustrious son of Porto Calvo, Zumbi, the King of Palmares was raised by a priest in this church, built in 1610
From Port of Varadouro, located in Porto Calvo to the mouth of the river, between Porto de Pedras and Japaratinga, the Manguaba River offers 42 km of navigable waters. Porto Calvo was the stage of numerous battles between the Dutch and the Portuguese in the 17th century and most recently, archaeologists from Iphan and the University of Pernambuco catalogued 12 ports created at that time along the River Manguaba. Cannonballs, house utensils, furniture, priestly garments, objects of devotion are some of the relics that were found excavating area and at the bottom of the river.
An archeological project had been comparing many Dutch drawings of the time with current maps for the localisation of ports, mills, and villages. In 2015, a 17th-century Dutch mud fort called Bass Fort, located in the Island of Guedes, on a private farm at the banks of Manguaba river was revealed. The construction was made of clay, probably because of the difficulty of transporting or finding stones in the area. Yet, from a military point of view it was better to have clay walls, as bullets and cannonballs penetrated the clay and did not bounce back. The fort occupied an area of 472.37 m² and remained complete buried until 2015, the reason why it was found in good condition. It had four half bastions, all with an anti-clockwise flank. The flanks had the function of defending the fort from a possible attack from enemies inside the moat. During the excavations, a double moat, an escarpment and a counter-scarp (internal and external sides of a ditch or moat used in fortifications), a parapet and a storage of weapons were also found. Fort Bass is the most complete and unique fort ever found in the country.
Cannonballs, house utensils, chains, bricks, priestly garments were some of the objects found by the archeologists