The shipyards of Guayaquil

The yards that built the Pacific fleet of Spanish America, described in 1741 by the governor who had administered the province: 176 vessels since the city's foundation, keels of guachapelí that resisted the shipworm, oakum spun from coconut husk, and hulls whose masts, rigging and cargo all came out of the same territory — a circumstance, he wrote, reported of no other port of Europe or of the Indies.