2023-06-11 03:11:31
Gold, silver, gems, cocoa, spices, sugar, tobacco… There was no more attractive reward for the admirals, captains, commodores and pirates of half the world than the wealth transported by Spanish galleons from South America and the Philippines. “Before, we occupied the end of the world and now we are in the middle, with a change of fortune like never before seen, which will bring great prosperity to our homes,” the Cordovan humanist Hernán Pérez de Oliva had warned at the beginning of the 16th century. .
In April 1564 the first Fleet of the Indies was chartered and, since then, all of Europe tried to steal from Spain all the treasures that made it the richest and most powerful country in the world for more than two centuries. The most serious of all these robberies was that, at the end of the fifteenth century, the entire West considered the legitimate possession of the lands in favor of those who discovered, conquered and incorporated them into Christianity. Therefore, no one, except King Francis I of France, discussed the political, administrative and religious reasons behind this exclusivity.
The jurist from Cádiz rafael nunez He explained it this way in 1797: «By the tacit consent of all civilized nations, it has always been believed that the founder of the colony had given it to being. And that, since she had sent people and had kept them throughout her establishment, it was fair that she should exclusively enjoy the privilege of her fruits, as well as her trade ». Adam Smith, the most renowned of the fathers of economic liberalism, did not condemn the Spanish monopoly over the Indies either.
Despite this, the attacks did not stop for two centuries, many times camouflaged as pirates, but always secretly sponsored by foreign governments eager to hit the greatest power on the planet. What did Spain do to protect the precious fleet from her? The first to act was Felipe II with the Royal Decree of July 16, 1561, which expressly prohibited sending loose ships to America and ordered that “they form in the river of the city of Seville [el Guadalquivir]and in the ports of Cádiz and Sanlúcar de Barrameda, two fleets and a royal armada that go to the Indies: one in January and the other in August».
The dangers of the Caribbean
The Spanish monarch was aware of the presence in the Caribbean of numerous ships of different flags with not exactly good intentions. From 1530 to 1555 it was, above all, the French, as a consequence of the rivalry they maintained at that time with Spain. The first pirate attacks then took place, which did not end with the capture of the ship and its corresponding cargo, but rather they took the entire crew prisoner to demand a ransom and looted the nearby coastal towns. This was the case in Santiago de Cuba (1554) and in Havana (1555).
Starting in 1560, the attacks were mainly English, which became the main danger to the Fleet of the Indies until well into the 18th century. Pirates like John Hawkins and Francis Drake became famous for their threats, robberies, kidnappings, extortion and attacks on the nerve centers of the Spanish voyage. To avoid this, already on the aforementioned first voyage in 1564, the Fleet was accompanied by eight armed galleons, the embryo of the future Navy of the Ocean Sea. From then on, Philip II ordered the most important ships in the escort to have eight bronze cannons, four iron cannons, and twenty-four smaller pieces.
One of the first episodes of this selfless defense occurred on the night of September 22, 1568, when the fleet of the Indies commanded by Captain General Francisco de Luján confronted Hawkins and Drake, who were acting under the secret protection of Queen Elizabeth I. from England. The Spanish offensive was so surprising that four of their pirate ships were sent to the bottom of the sea and, in addition, they killed 500 enemies and captured all the profits they had accumulated from the slave smuggling.
This Carrera de Indias was divided into two fleets: the one from New Spain, which went mainly to Veracruz (Mexico) and the Antilles, and the one from Tierra Firme, which went to Nombre de Dios (Panama), Cartagena de Indias (Colombia). and other populations from the Caribbean coast of South America. In each of these ports, the arrival of the Spaniards meant the celebration of a fair of several weeks in which all the mercantile exchange took place, while the ships were repaired and equipped. Later they met in Havana to begin the return through Bermuda and expose themselves to danger again.
The failure”
All this escort was put up by the King, with high-board galleons and military weapons that sometimes loaded, although it was prohibited, with gold and funds belonging to the monarch. The cost of this protection was covered through a tax known as “avería”, which was charged on merchant ships. The ships destined for Tierra Firme, which also brought abundant silver from Peru, were protected by six and eight war galleons, sometimes more. The less rich fleets of New Spain used to have two: the captain and the admiral. Practically from the first trip it was ordered that these last two had to carry 100 sailors with their 100 corresponding muskets, in addition to eight bronze cannons, four iron cannons and twenty-four smaller pieces each.
As the danger from pirates increased in the Azores, reinforcement warships were sometimes sent to accompany the return. Another of the most famous episodes took place on these islands: the battle on the island of Flores on September 9, 1591. A total of 55 Spanish ships under the command of Alonso de Bazan They surprised and drove off another 22 British under Thomas Howard, who was trying to seize the great Fleet of the Indies as it passed through the Azores, laden with abundant treasures.
To avoid shocks, both warships and merchandise ships were thoroughly checked up to two times by experts from the Trading House, who gave their approval or indicated the repairs that needed to be carried out. And as if that were not enough, the fleet was complemented by the so-called warning ships: very light vessels, weighing less than 60 tons, which brought the news to America that the fleet was about to leave, so that the entire fleet could be prepared. negotiation. These ships could not carry passengers or merchandise, but they also regularly failed to do so.
Thus, the navigation system was fixed, which lasted, with some variations, almost as long as the ship itself. Indies race. “It was a pioneering and reliable attempt to move wealth and merchandise in large quantities across the great ocean, which would later be imitated by the Dutch with the Dutch East India Company and the British through the English India Company,” explains Víctor San. John in ‘Twenty-two naval defeats of the British’ (Renaissance, 2019).
small boats
The failures on the part of the French, Dutch and, above all, the English when it came to hunting down the Fleet of the Indies were abundant. In reality, they only managed to capture an entire annual fleet on very few occasions. The first was in 1657, in Tenerife; the second in 1702, in Vigo, and the last in 1804, off Cape Santa María, when it had practically disappeared. A few more times they seized loose galleons, like Wager in Barú, in 1708; Anson with the Nao de Acapulco, in 1743, and a long etcetera starring Drake, who rarely dared with the bulk of the squadron and went for the smallest and loosest ships.
The vast majority of attempts ended in crushing defeat. Some involved real disasters full of blood and economic losses for the main governments of Europe, whose prime ministers quickly tried to hide and forget. «It was the dramatic result of the hunt and the hunter, who counts the attempts by dozens, but only with the fingers of one hand the successes. However, propaganda, literature, Hollywood and addicted but liar historians lent a hand to highlight the latter and bury the former without leaving a trace”, says the Madrid writer and historian.
Take, for example, the humiliating defeat of England at the hands of the Fleet of the Indies, when it tried to invade the port of Cádiz in 1625. Today, considered one of the most significant disasters in Britain’s naval history. One can cite here the lesser-known beating that Antonio Gaztañeta inflicted on the British in 1727, when they tried to capture Spanish ships in Portobelo and Cartagena, with 50 million silver pesos on board. An attack that they carried out breaking, in addition, the peace in force between the two countries, but they lost three quarters of their crew and half of the ships, without having had the opportunity to fire a single cannon shot. Or that occasion in 1739 in which Edward Vernon attacked the coast of Panama and Colombia obstinately, with 186 ships, and was crushingly defeated by Blas de Lezo and his six ships.
The last Fleet of the Indies was dispatched from New Spain, in 1776, under the command of Antonio de Ulloa. In the 1780s, Spain opened up the colonies to the free market. In more than 250 years, losses from these attacks were minimal. It can thus be described as one of the most successful naval operations in history.
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