Universidad de los Mareantes de Sevilla
The seamen's corporation of the Carrera de Indias. Begun as a Triana confraternity, it founded a house and hospital in 1569, ran a mutual fund out of a levy on every ship's freight that cured sick sailors, ransomed captives and relieved the imprisoned and the orphaned, won the crown's order that a dead sailor's wages go straight to his widow, sat and voted at the pilots' examinations — and gave no vote to the sailors whose wages paid for it.
Why this wins its question: The Universidad de los Mareantes appears in English, when it appears at all, as a guild that later founded a naval college. Read from the Casa de la Contratación's own manual and from the Laws of the Indies, it is a working mutual-aid society with a balance sheet: a levy fixed first at a ship's-boy's share of every voyage, then at half a man's, then at a real y medio per ton; named benefits for the man robbed by corsairs, the captive of the Moors, the imprisoned, the sick and the orphaned daughter; an alms box aboard every merchant ship; a 1564 cédula sending a dead sailor's wages straight to his widow instead of into the bienes de difuntos; a seat and a vote at the pilots' examinations; and a room in the Lonja whose key the law made the cargadores hand over. It also carries what a celebratory account would leave out — that the sailors levied had no vote in it, and that when the corporation reached for the appointment of the ships' escribanos the crown's own judges said no.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
It began as a confraternity and was chartered as a corporation. Veitia Linage, libro II capítulo VII, page 112, writes that in imitation of the Colegio de los Cómitres of Seville it seemed convenient, some years after the discovery of the Indies, to raise another body of the owners, pilots and masters of ships, "que tuvo su origen en forma de Cofradia, y despues el año de mil y quinientos y sesenta y nueve se hizo fundacion de Casa, y Hospital"; its ordinances were presented in the Council and confirmed, and it was named Universidad de los mareantes, "debaxo de cuya nominacion se comprehenden todos los dueños de Naos, Pilotos, Maestres, Contramaestres, Guardianes, Marineros, y Grumetes" as regards preeminences and exemptions.
Membership was wide and the franchise was narrow. The same passage adds that as to the persons who are elected, and who elect the mayordomo and diputados, "no entran mas que los dueños, y Pilotos de Navios examinados". The sailors, apprentices and ship's boys were inside the corporation for what it gave them and outside it for what it decided — and, as claim c6 shows, the fund was drawn from their wages as well.
The hospital was theirs, in their own quarter, and the crown approved its rule. Veitia, page 113, records a royal provision given at Galapagar on 22 March 1569 approving the ordinances, rules and constitutions that the universidad of masters and pilots of the Carrera made for the governance and administration of "el Hospital, y Cofradia, que con la advocacion de Nuestra Señora de Buenayre, San Pedro, y San Andres, fundaron en el barrio de Triana de la Ciudad de Sevilla" — some of them made on 13 March 1561 and others on 28 December 1562, and afterwards confirmed again by a cédula given at Valladolid on 3 July 1603.
The rule reads as a list of the disasters of a seafaring life and what the fund owed each of them. Veitia, page 113, summarises the assigned portions: to succour the man robbed by corsairs; to help ransom the man held captive by Moors; to the estate of the man who leaves poor daughters; to the man imprisoned; how sailors who fall ill in the Carrera de las Indias or working in one of its ships are to be cured; the form of voting when they assemble; that every merchant ship carry an alms box "con la insignia de Nuestra Señora de Buenayre"; what is to be done for those who die; how the mayordomo and diputados are elected; that the eldest son of a member who dies inherits the entry, provided he is not a cleric; and that what passes in the cabildos be kept secret.
Its most consequential win was over the wages of the dead. Veitia, page 113, found in the corporation's archive two cédulas dated Madrid, 13 December 1564, granted at the petition of the masters and pilots of the Carrera: by one, that a sailor or ship's boy who stayed behind at the departure from Sanlúcar without going to the Indies, attested by the ship's escribano, not be charged to the ship on the return inspection; and by the other "que las soldadas de la gente de mar que muriesse en el viage se pagassen à la muger, hijos, ó herederos, con vna fiança de que seria siempre bien pagado, escusando las diligencias que se haziã para los bienes de difuntos" — the widow paid directly, instead of the estate going into the bienes de difuntos machinery, with the president and judges ordered to give entire and brief justice.
The money came off the top of every voyage, and Veitia sets out the whole division. On page 116 he explains that the freight earnings were reckoned as the monto; from it the damages were deducted, "que oy se llaman haberias"; of the net, two and a half per cent went to the quintaladas, distributed as advantages to the sailors and boys who had served and worked most; the remainder was divided in three parts, two to the owner and one to the sea people, apportioned as a whole soldada to a sailor, two thirds of one to a grumete and a quarter to a page. "La primera imposicion que tuvo el Hospital de los mareantes, fue ir ganando en cada vaxel lo mismo que vn page; y despues se dobló llamandole media soldada, y vltimamente se cobra por las toneladas de los Navios à razon de real y medio" — the hospital held a ship's-boy's share in every vessel afloat, then half a man's, then a levy on tonnage.
The corporation had a written place inside the state's navigation machinery. Recopilación libro VIIII, título 23, ley vj — Philip IV, Madrid, 23 May 1622 — orders the prior and consuls of the Universidad de Cargadores to give the deputies of the Universidad de los Mareantes one of the lower rooms of the Lonja "y les entreguen la llave", so that the chair of cosmography be read there and the mareantes assemble in it. Ley xj fixes the seating when the piloto mayor and cosmographers meet to examine or to amend the padrón, and provides for the case where "concurrieren los Diputados, y Mayordomos de la Universidad de Mareantes". Ley xvij requires the informaciones of candidates for pilot to be taken before an escribano of the Casa "en presencia del Piloto mayor, Mayordomo, y Diputados de la Universidad de los Mareantes, que siempre sean llamados", and read out before the examiners, "porque han de votar en ello".
Its reach was checked when it grew. Veitia, page 116, records that in 1586 the universidad asked that the ships' escribanos be named by it, arguing that nobody would choose better than the mareantes themselves, who were the principal parties interested in the escribanos getting it right, and that to show it was not greed it was content that the fees usually paid for the escribanías go to the Consulado; the president and judges informed the king against it — that being so interested was precisely why they should not appoint — and the appointment stayed with the tribunal. In 1589 a proposal to create an office of contador to adjust the montos of the freights, pressed on the pretext of protecting sailors from wrong, was likewise reported to have grave drawbacks and dropped.
It also pushed for a school. Veitia, page 116, notes that the seminary for orphan boys "fue vna de las cosas, que con particular conato, è instancias solicitó la vniversidad de los mareãtes el año de 1607" — the corporation pressing, long before any such college opened, for an institution to bring up orphan boys of Seville to the sea.
What the sources cannot show is how much of this reached anyone. Veitia is the treasurer and juez oficial of the tribunal that supervised the corporation, and his chapter is a digest of its rule, its privileges and its lawsuits, taken from the Casa's own contaduría books; the Recopilación prints the orders the crown gave. Neither states how many sailors the Triana hospital cured, how many captives were ransomed, or whether a widow in Sanlúcar was in fact paid her husband's soldada. The grants are documented; the delivery is not.