Spain’s American Trade, 1729–1733

On 9 August 1729 the first flota to New Spain for four years set sail from Cadiz under the command of the Marqués de Marí. It was composed of four warships and 16 merchantmen carrying between them the largest volume of goods to be sent to the Indies since the beginning of the century, 4882.23 tons.1 Despite this high tonnage there can be no doubt that this was the most successful of the American fleets of the period. A number of circumstances combined to bring about for the first and only time the near fulfilment of Patiño’s carefully laid plans and the royal orders intended to implement them. The guardacosta ships which had first gone out to the Caribbean in 1725 as a properly constituted force under the Conde de Clavijo had been doing a fairly good job of discouraging foreign interlopers, and the sporadic hostilities between Spain and the European nations had in any case tended to diminish this illegal trafficking.2 Moreover, the South Sea Company with its ‘Annual Ship’, the Prince Frederick, impounded by the authorities in the port of Veracruz since 1725, had been anxious not to provoke the Spaniards by further controversial activities. The viceroy of New Spain, the Marqués de Casafuerte, had also been campaigning with determination over these years to prohibit the entry of illicit goods into the country, and all these factors eventually had the effect of producing a considerable dearth of European goods in New Spain by the time the next fleet was due to arrive from Cadiz, in the autumn of 1729.3