Gold & Galleons: The Battle for Control

“…Proceed against the Spaniards and Portuguese…suffer trade to be free within the lands and seas of the Indies and America that [we may] do business there”

orders of king, Francis I of France (1494-1547) to his privateers

Spanish settlement was concentrated in the Greater Antilles and Hispaniola, where they established their first permanent settlement at Santo Domingo. Although the Spaniards failed to find much gold there, Santo Domingo rapidly became the mother settlement from which relay migration funneled settlers to Mexico and other areas of Latin America.

When Cortés defeated the Aztec people, he sent back to Spain a cargo of treasure that included two gold necklaces, one studded with 185 emeralds, the other with 172 emeralds and 10 pearls. That was the beginning of Spain’s system for acquiring New World gold: steal it, stamp it, ship it.

With treasure, of course, came crime. As shipping cargoes increased in size and value, so did their risk of capture and theft. Piracy was inevitable.

When the treasure fleets, called flotas, began sailing in the 16th century, Spain’s powerful, royally controlled House of Trade (Casa de Contración) ordered merchant ships to travel in convoys guarded by armed warships. Colonists could trade only with merchantmen approved by the House of Trade. Most authorized trade was bestowed on the flota, which typically numbered from 30 to 90 ships.

In a typical year the first of the two annual treasure fleets left Spain, entering the Caribbean near Margarita Island off the coast of Venezuela. Here the flota usually split in two and followed courses that took them to the ports of the Spanish Main, as the English called the northern coast of South America and the Caribbean islands. One convoy sailed to Veracruz where it unloaded its goods. The second followed a course that took the ships to Cartagena, Colombia, and west to Porto Bello, Panama, which was the collecting point for silver from the mines of Peru. In late summer the merchant ships and war galleons sailed to Havana to form the treasure fleet. In theory, the warships defended the merchant vessels against pirates. Often, however, ships were scattered due to bad weather or poor seamanship. Undefended ships often fell victim to pirates on the high seas.

In April 1562, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés sailed from Spain to the Caribbean as captain general of the treasure fleet. His orders carried this warning, “In the Indies sailing routes go some French English and Scottish corsair ships seeking to steal what comes.” It recommended ruthless treatment of any pirates he caught. Spain sought to eliminate foreign threats to its claim of exclusivity in the Americas. Menéndez de Aviléssuggested implementing naval escorts for the transatlantic fleets and the creation of cruiser squadrons based permanently in the Caribbean that would go on seek-and-destroy missions. He also suggested building fortifications in Caribbean cities and manning them with permanent garrisons, and throughout the Caribbean and Florida the many forts begun in the 1560s remain the hallmarks of several cities such as St. Augustine, Havana and San Juan.

In this document, Don Cristobál de Eraso is given complicated and detailed instructions. He is admonished not to proceed beyond a designated rendezvous without further instructions from Menéndez “which would be according to whatever news I might have of [enemy] corsairs” and warning him against “contravening [these orders]... under penalty of paying with his person and his property, for an injury to His Majesty of his royal treasury...”

At this time, Menéndez de Avilés was evidently the Governor of Florida, as he is described as “Adelantado” in these sailing orders.

Pagus Hispanorum in Florida (St. Augustine)
Ogilby, John, 1600-1676
America: being the latest and most accurate description of the new world
London, published by the author, 1671

After: Arnoldus Montanus, 1625?-1683,
De nieuwe en onbekende weeereld, Amsterdam, 1671

Bry, Theodore de, 1528-1598
Map of Francis Drake’s attack on Santo Domingo.
(after Baptista Boazio)
Frankfurt, 1600.

In 1585, Elizabeth placed Sir Francis Drake (1540?-1596) in command of a fleet of 25 ships. He was ordered to cause as much damage as possible to the Spaniards’ overseas empire. Drake fulfilled his commission, capturing Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands and taking and plundering the cities of Cartagena in Colombia, St. Augustine in Florida, and San Domingo (Santo Domingo, Hispaniola). The effect of his triumph in the West Indies was cataclysmic. Spanish credit, both moral and material, almost foundered under the losses. The Bank of Spain was broke and the great German bank of Augsburg refused to extend the Spanish monarch any further credit.

The town of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola was once the capital of Spanish America, but in 1586 when Drake arrived it had deteriorated in stature. Because it was still the largestsettlement in the West Indies, Drake chose it as his first target. He landed 10 miles west of the town and, with an army of800 men, attacked the weakly-defended town from the rear where it was almost without fortifications. The map shows the English fleet at anchor having disembarked its infantry, marching on the town. The English quickly took over control of the town and ransomed it for 25,000 ducats.

The Boazio maps, first published in 1589, were the first printed view of each locality and are of extreme historical importance. De Bry (1528-1598) copied the original engraving for volume eight of his Great Voyages.

James I, 1566-1625
A proclamation for the search and apprehension of certain pirates... Richard Gifford, Captain of a ship or fluboat called Fortune, & Richard Lux, Master of a ship called the Hopewell...have committed fowle outrages, murders, spoyles and Depredations....
London, 1606.

Treasure-laden Spanish galleons proceeding from Mexico into the Caribbean were a natural target during the English wars with Spain in the late 16th century, and the line between privateering and piracy became difficult to draw. English privateers such as Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake were encouraged or restrained, according to prevailing political conditions.

Only three or four of the many proclamations issued by James I refer to pirates.

Statham, Edward Phillip, d. 1921
Privateers and privateering.
New York: James Pott & Company, 1910.

Privateers were privately owned armed vessels commissioned by a belligerent state to attack enemy ships. Crews were not paid by the commissioning government but were entitled to cruise for their own profit, with crew members receiving portions of the value of any cargo of shipping that they could wrest from the original owners. Frequently, it was impossible to restrain the activities of privateers within the legitimate bounds laid down in their commissions. It often became difficult to distinguish between privateers, pirates, corsairs, or buccaneers, many of whom sailed without genuine commissions.

Throughout the 17th century, English buccaneers, Dutch Sea Beggars and French Huguenot privateers were active in the West Indies.