Marine insurance on the Carrera de Indias: the underwriting code an official of the Casa de Contratación wrote down in 1672

The 1672 manual of the Seville Indies trade describes a working insurance market: printed policy forms, a registered broker forbidden to underwrite, a cap on hull cover, general average, abandonment of a missing ship after eighteen months, a four-year long-stop. One rule computes bad faith — a policy on a ship already lost is void if news could have reached the insured at a league an hour. Its author, a judge of the Casa, records that the bar on underwriters sitting as Prior was ignored.