Pero de Ataíde or Pedro d'Ataíde[a] (d'Atayde, da Thayde), nicknamed O Inferno (Hell), "for the damage he did to the Moors in Africa",[2] (c. 1450 – February/March, 1504, Mozambique Island) was a Portuguese sea captain in the Indian Ocean active in the early 1500s.

He was briefly captain of the first permanent Portuguese fleet in the Indian Ocean, taking over from Vicente Sodré, and the author of a famous letter giving an account of its fate.

That members of both Ataíde families were involved in the early construction of the Portuguese Empire in the East Indies has led some historians to assume they were related and contributed to the confusion.

At São Brás, Ataíde wrote a letter relating the state of affairs in India, and warning future Portuguese captains to avoid Calicut, which was now hostile.

In February, 1503, as the armada was about to return to Portugal, Pero de Ataíde was appointed as captain of one of the six caravels that were to remain behind in India as a naval patrol under the command of Vicente Sodré (uncle of Vasco da Gama).

The naval patrol was ordered by Vasco da Gama to remain close to the Indian coast and protect the Portuguese factories in Cochin and Cannanore.

However, after the armada's departure, Vicente Sodré invoked his credentials and led the patrol across the ocean, into the Gulf of Aden, to prey on Arab ships going in and out of the Red Sea.

The patrol captains, already upset at leaving the factories unprotected, nearly mutinied when the Sodré brothers set about claiming the lion's share of the booty from captured Arab ships for themselves.

Given communications along the Indian coast, it would be almost impossible for Ataíde not to be aware that, at that very moment, the Portuguese factory in Cochin was being besieged by the Zamorin of Calicut, and that their compatriots were desperately holding out.

Gaspar Correia) however state that most of the intervening time was actually spent stuck on Kura Muria islands, and that the patrol only reached Anjediva in late August and that Ataíde intended to head immediately for Cochin, but was dissuaded from that by the Kolathiri Raja of Cannanore, who warned him he did not have nearly enough men (est.

[19] The patrol was still lingering in Anjediva (or in Cannanore according to Correia) in late August/early September when Francisco de Albuquerque, leading the vanguard squad of the 5th Armada stumbled across them.

In the aftermath, Pero de Ataíde took a leading role in several amphibian attacks around the Vembanad lagoon, to punish local princelets who had collaborated with the Zamorin against Cochin.

Stranded without supplies and far away from any large settlement (only a small peasant hamlet of four huts was found nearby), Ataíde set aboard a longboat with some fifteen crew members hoping to reach Mozambique Island, promising to arrange for a rescue party to pick up the remainder.

Evidently thinking that Campo would deliver an unfavorable report in Lisbon, Pero de Ataíde, already feverishly ill (probably malaria), set down to compose his famous letter to King Manuel I of Portugal in February, 1504, hoping to send it forward on the next Portuguese ship.

He rounds off the letter reminding the king of his loyal service and petitioning the monarch to bestow upon him the offices and benefices of the citadel of Tomar, which had belonged to the late Vicente Sodré.