Flotas y galeones — the escorted convoy of the Carrera de Indias
The scheduled Atlantic convoy of the Indies trade: two fleets a year, each sailing in company with warships, paid for by a levy prorated over every cargo aboard — the king's own silver included — and kept in a chest with three keys. The treasurer of the Casa de la Contratación printed its founding cédulas in 1672, and on the same pages the losses the escort did not prevent.
Why this wins its question: In English the Carrera de Indias is "the treasure fleet": a monopoly to be evaded and a target to be intercepted. What the accounts leave out is the design — a standing escort financed by a levy prorated over every cargo in the convoy including the king's own bullion, kept in a chest whose three keys were split between crown and merchants, with a statutory two-fleets-a-year calendar tied to the spring tides that let ships cross the bar at Sanlúcar. This object works from the 1672 Seville chapter that prints the cédulas themselves — 1521, 1522, 1525, 1528, 1565, 1574, 1582, 1601 — quotes them, and puts on the same page the failures the same author records: 23 ships lost in 1502, the plate taken in 1628 and engraved in triumph by Joannes de Laet, the captures of 1656 in sight of Cádiz. It also records what the escort was before it was galleons: one 300-ton warship with twelve guns.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The rule the whole system exists to enforce is stated in one clause. Opening chapter IV of book II of the Norte de la contratacion — printed page 66, headed "De la Armada Real de la Guardia de la Carrera de las Indias, y de las Armadas, y Flotas dellas" — Joseph de Veitia Linage writes that he will treat armadas and fleets together in order to follow in what is written "lo que tanto importa que se guarde en lo executado, que es el que las Flotas naveguen en conserva de las Armadas": merchant fleets sail in company with the warships.
The two words are not synonyms, and the same page defines them. Anciently, Veitia writes, armada meant few ships joined to fight and flota many; later and "con mas propiedad" armada was "la que se compone de Navios de guerra, y Flota la de las que son de mercancia", a distinction he takes from a law of the Partidas and from Juan de Hevia Bolaños. In practice, he continues, there is the Armada Real de la Guardia de la Carrera de las Indias "que vulgarmente llaman Galeones", and the Capitana and Almiranta of the New Spain fleet, "que guarnecidas sirven de escolta à las Naos merchantas"; there are fleets for New Spain and for Tierra Firme.
The escort began as an emergency and was paid for by the cargo it protected. The same chapter dates the origin of the guard squadron to 1521, "con el nombre de Armada de Haberias": against the corsairs then working the coasts of Andalusia and the Algarve, waiting for and robbing the ships coming from the Indies, it was ordered "Que se apercibiesse vna Armada de quatro, ó cinco Navios, cuya costa se sacasse de la plata, oro, y mercaderias que llegassen à los puertos de la Andalucia, assi de las Indias, como de las Islas de Canaria, y tanto del Rey como de personas particulares, repartiendolo sueldo à libra". Its general was D. Pedro Manrique, brother of the count of Osorno, and Veitia refers the reader for the rest to the chronicler Antonio de Herrera.
In 1522 the levy was widened and given machinery that survived it. Printed page 67 records that the armada was to be maintained at the cost of the gold, silver, pearls and other goods arriving from the Indies, from west of the Azores — "que son las Islas que oy llaman las Terceras" — from the Canaries, Madeira and Berbería at Seville, Cádiz, Jerez and the towns of El Puerto de Santa María, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Rota and Chipiona, "aunque el oro, plata, perlas, ò frutos fuesse del Rey, ò de otra qualquiera persona privilegiada, pues que se hazia para la guarda de todos", and that outbound cargoes from those ports were to contribute too. Collection was committed to Juan López de Recalde, contador and juez oficial of the Casa de la Contratación, together with the deputies of the merchants, with power to prorate the charge and to compel whoever would not pay; the money was to be put "en vna arca de tres llaves", one key held by a person named by the king and two by persons named by the Contratación; those three could appoint captains, veedores and other officers, set their salaries, charter ships and provide victuals, artillery and munitions; the prizes taken by the armada and the royal fifth of them went to its costs; and a scrivener was to keep the book of account. Veitia adds that from this one resolution came not only the armada but "la Haberia, el Iuez de ella, las arcas de tres llaves, el Contador diputado", and the part the merchants' Consulado had for many years in administering the armadas and collecting their haberías.
The price of protection is printed beside its design. The treasurer Pedro Suárez de Castilla, named diputado general in 1525, was charged to see that the repartimiento did not pass one per cent; "Bien que no pudo conseguirse à tan moderada costa, y assi en el año de 1528 se ordenò, que se pagassen de veinte, vno" — one in twenty, five times the intended rate, within three years, with further variation afterwards.
Convoy became statute rather than expedient. Printed page 68 states what "lo prevenido por leyes, y ordenanças" is: "que cada año, no aviendo orden en contrario, salgan dos Flotas, vna para Tierra firme, y otra para Nueva España, y la Armada en su guarda", so ordered by cédula of 18 October 1574, "de que se recopiló ley" — that is, the rule had by 1672 been carried into the printed law of the Indies.
For most of the sixteenth century the escort was thinner than the later name "galeones" suggests, and the source says so. The same page records that the galleons or Armada de la Guardia did not then sail in company with the fleets, and that at first the convoy was a single warship of 300 tons carrying eight bronze and four iron pieces, by cédula of 19 January 1565 — a cédula which states in its own text that until then the merchantmen had sailed with a hundred tons less cargo and thirty soldiers each, because no warship went with them.
The sailing calendar was fixed by cédula given at Lisbon on 20 January 1582 and is printed on page 69: the New Spain fleets were to leave through all of May and those of Tierra Firme "en las primeras aguas de Agosto", as the most convenient time both for a good and safe passage and for the merchants to work their goods and await the gold and silver "de su Magestad, y de particulares" and return in season. The same cédula sets the machinery: the capitana and almiranta of the New Spain fleet named at the beginning of the year, the merchantmen inspected by 8 January and all at Sanlúcar by the end of March under penalty of losing the visita and of 500 ducados on the master, the fleet to sail "en las primeras aguas de Mayo"; for Tierra Firme the flagships named on 1 May, the merchantmen inspected on the 8th, all at Sanlúcar through June, with victuals, arms and munitions embarked by set days. Veitia records that the term "primeras aguas de Mayo" had to be construed, and that a lettered person read it not as rain but as "las primeras aguas vivas de conjuncion, ò oposicion de Luna, para que los vaxeles pudiessen montar la barra".
Departures were a matter of state, not of trade. By cédula given at Madrid on 16 November 1601 no fleets were to be published nor capitanas and almirantas chosen for them without order of the Council, and by letter of the Council of 30 April 1582 the publication was to be made at one time in Seville and in Cádiz; and Veitia notes from the books of the Casa that from 1605 the despatch of the fleets was governed by the Junta de Guerra de Indias.
The first squadron the sources call a flota was also one of the costliest. Page 68 records that it was fitted out in 1501 by the contador Ximeno de Briviesca, of 31 ships, its general Antonio de Torres, carrying the governor Nicolás de Ovando; it sailed from Sanlúcar on 13 February 1502, survived a great storm on leaving, and then, sailing from Santo Domingo for Spain in July of that year, met another so great "que se perdieron los 23 Navios".
What the convoy did not prevent is printed in the same chapter as what it was for. Veitia's own list on page 68 includes the treasure lost in 1628 "de que los Olandeses blasonaron tanto, como se vè en la estampa que Iuan de Laet pone al principio de sus navegaciones"; a galleon taken in 1665 by Moorish ships, whose forces he says had always been contemptible to Spanish armadas; English captures in 1656 made within sight of Cádiz, "desgracia antes no conocida por los nuestros"; and the armadas of 1638 and 1640 fighting the Dutch and the French. The counterweight to all of it is the author's position: as treasurer and juez oficial of the Casa he writes that the armada's progress produced "tan buenos efectos en servicio de su Magestad, y bien de la causa publica", which is an institution's judgement of itself.
Thirty years later the working rules were in English. The London 1702 abridgement by Captain John Stevens gives, on its printed page 173, that the admirals have order to put captured pirates to death or deliver them prisoners at the India house, and that "formerly all were reputed Pyrates that were found beyond the Canary-Islands, Sailing towards the West-Indies"; that "it was formerly the custom for the several Fleets to expect one another at Havana; but since, this has not been found so convenient, and therefore is not practis'd"; and that when provisions run short the admiral may buy them in the presence of the escrivano and veedor and draw on the plate master, "so that if there be none of the Duty for Convoys, it must be taken out of the King's Revenue, for the President and Judges of the India-house to Refund it" — the avería named to English readers, in 1702, as the duty for convoys.
What this object does not claim. No tonnages, arrival rates, loss rates or smuggling volumes are asserted here, because neither source read supplies them; nothing is claimed about whether the levy was efficient, about how far the calendar was kept, or about what the system cost the American ports that could only trade through it. Both witnesses are officials of the trade — a treasurer of the Casa de la Contratación and his English translator — so what these pages establish is the design of the convoy and the texts of the cédulas behind it, not the conduct of any fleet.