The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century | Page 8

Flota steered north-west, passing
Santa Cruz and Porto Rico on the north, and sighting the little isles of
Mona and Saona, as far as the Bay of Neyba in Hispaniola, where the
ships took on fresh wood and water.[26] Putting to sea again, and
circling round Beata and Alta Vela, the fleet sighted in turn Cape
Tiburon, Cape de Cruz, the Isle of Pines, and Capes Corrientes and San
Antonio at the west end of Cuba. Meanwhile merchant ships had
dropped away one by one, sailing to San Juan de Porto Rico, San
Domingo, St. Jago de Cuba and even to Truxillo and Cavallos in

Honduras, to carry orders from Spain to the governors, receive cargoes
of leather, cocoa, etc., and rejoin the Flota at Havana. From Cape San
Antonio to Vera Cruz there was an outside or winter route and an inside
or summer route. The former lay north-west between the Alacranes and
the Negrillos to the Mexican coast about sixteen leagues north of Vera
Cruz, and then down before the wind into the desired haven. The
summer track was much closer to the shore of Campeache, the fleet
threading its way among the cays and shoals, and approaching Vera
Cruz by a channel on the south-east.
If the Flota sailed from Spain in July it generally arrived at Vera Cruz
in the first fifteen days of September, and the ships were at once laid up
until March, when the crews reassembled to careen and refit them. If
the fleet was to return in the same year, however, the exports of New
Spain and adjacent provinces, the goods from China and the
Philippines carried across Mexico from the Pacific port of Acapulco,
and the ten or twelve millions of treasure for the king, were at once put
on board and the ships departed to join the galleons at Havana.
Otherwise the fleet sailed from Vera Cruz in April, and as it lay dead to
the leeward of Cuba, used the northerly winds to about 25°, then
steered south-east and reached Havana in eighteen or twenty days. By
the beginning of June it was ready to sail for Spain, where it arrived at
the end of July, by the same course as that followed by the
galleons.[27]
We are accustomed to think of Spanish commerce with the Indies as
being made solely by great fleets which sailed yearly from Seville or
Cadiz to Mexico and the Isthmus of Darien. There were, however,
always exceptions to this rule. When, as sometimes happened, the Flota
did not sail, two ships of 600 or 700 tons were sent by the King of
Spain to Vera Cruz to carry the quicksilver necessary for the mines.
The metal was divided between New Spain and Peru by the viceroy at
Mexico, who sent via Gautemala the portion intended for the south.
These ships, called "azogues," carried from 2000 to 2500 quintals[28]
of silver, and sometimes convoyed six or seven merchant vessels. From
time to time an isolated ship was also allowed to sail from Spain to
Caracas with licence from the Council of the Indies and the

Contratacion, paying the king a duty of five ducats on the ton. It was
called the "register of Caracas," took the same route as the galleons,
and returned with one of the fleets from Havana. Similar vessels traded
at Maracaibo, in Porto Rico and at San Domingo, at Havana and
Matanzas in Cuba and at Truxillo and Campeache.[29] There was
always, moreover, a special traffic with Buenos Ayres. This port was
opened to a limited trade in negroes in 1595. In 1602 permission was
given to the inhabitants of La Plata to export for six years the products
of their lands to other Spanish possessions, in exchange for goods of
which they had need; and when in 1616 the colonists demanded an
indefinite renewal of this privilege, the sop thrown to them was the
bare right of trade to the amount of 100 tons every three years. Later in
the century the Council of the Indies extended the period to five years,
so as not to prejudice the trade of the galleons.[30]
It was this commerce, which we have noticed at such length, that the
buccaneers of the West Indies in the seventeenth century came to
regard as their legitimate prey. These "corsarios Luteranos," as the
Spaniards sometimes called them, scouring the coast of the Main from
Venezuela to Cartagena, hovering about the broad channel between
Cuba and Yucatan, or prowling in the Florida Straits, became the
nightmare of Spanish seamen. Like a pack of terriers they hung upon
the skirts of the great unwieldy fleets, ready to snap up any unfortunate
vessel which a tempest or other accident had separated from its fellows.
When Thomas Gage was sailing in the