PIRATES AND TREASURE FLEETS
“Gold,” said Columbus, “constitutes treasure, and he who possesses it
has all he needs in this world, as also the means of rescuing souls
from purgatory and restoring them to the enjoyment of paradise.”
Raleigh remarked that: “Where there is store of gold, it is needless to
remember other commodities for trade.”
Gold--the evil spell overshadowing Peru, pouring out her immeasurable
riches to impoverish Spain. Gold--the most incorruptible of all metals,
itself the cause of most corruption!
Peru has always been cursed by wealth. The gold of the Incas was the
cause of their destruction, the wealth of the Spanish conquerors,
theirs; it brought about wars among themselves and ravages of foreign
pirates upon the sea. When the era of precious metals seemed to wane,
islands of guano were discovered, apparently an endless source of
wealth. But it was greedily exhausted by foreigners. Then came the
discovery of nitrate fields, where fortunes are merely scraped off the
top of the ground. But that particular territory has been annexed by a
prosperous neighbor.
One wonders what undiscovered wealth may still be threatening this
lavish country.
The days when fleets of treasure sailed from the distant cordilleras of
the Spanish Main had begun. The tall, enchanted galleons of Lima spread
sail, with their
“Escutcheoned pavisades, emblazoned poops,
Banners and painted shields and close-fights hung
With scarlet broideries. Every polished gun
Grinned through the jaws of some heraldic beast,
Gilded and carven and gleaming with all hues.”
At first the argosies bore off the ransom of Atahualpa, the golden
ornaments belonging to the Sun.
Albrecht Dürer, in his Tagebuch, wrote of having seen a boatload of
such booty from the Indies. “And, moreover, have I seen the things
which were brought from the new golden land to the king--an entire
sun of gold, a full fathom wide, likewise a silver moon of the
same size, also two rooms full of armor, all manner of weapons,
harness, war-trappings, and strange accoutrements, curious raiment,
bed-draperies and many kinds of wondrous things for divers uses, fairer
to behold than marvels. They are all so precious that they are held to
be worth a hundred thousand gulden.
“Nor have I in all the days of my life seen aught that did so fill me
with delight. For I saw there fine-wrought things of cunning design,
and marveled at the subtle skill of men in far countries. Nor know I
how to tell of all the things which I saw there.”
Loot of golden treasure gave way to mountains of silver, which poured
forth their wealth in such profusion that it staggers even oriental
imagination. Loading at Arica, ships brought silver direct from the
mines of Potosí. Then there was plunder of Peruvian churches, jeweled
chalices, and gold shrines. There were emeralds from the north--a land
where they were sacred, small emeralds being sacrificed to larger ones.
These glittering cargoes were carried home to Seville, the “Queen of
the Ocean.” Its wonderful Casa de Contratación dealt with the wealth of
the Indies and, to quote Alonzo Morgado, “the riches which flowed into
its offices would have been sufficient to pave the streets of Seville
with gold and silver slabs.”
Like most stories of Peru, the gold and silver it exported seem mere
extravaganza. Contemporary accounts, mostly in cipher, may be quoted.
In 1538, G. Loveday wrote to Lord Lisle: “Spanish ships have returned
from Peru so laden that the emperor’s part amounts to two million
ducats.... The emperor has borrowed the whole from the owners.” Being
“occasionally pinched for money,” he found it most convenient to seize
the ships laden with private treasure from his “Indyac of Perrow.”
In July, 1555, the Venetian ambassador in England wrote to the Doge and
Senate of a fleet of caravels, “all very richly freighted according
to the usual parlance of these Spaniards, who invariably reckon by
millions.”
Federico Badoer Venetian ambassador with the emperor, wrote (1556) that
the king would obtain so considerable a sum of money that he would
be able to defend himself not only against the Pope but also against
France and any other power, if necessary. By this time Peru was raining
gold and silver.
Father Acosta returned to Spain with the fleet of 1587. In his boat
were twelve chests of gold, each weighing a hundred pounds; eleven
million pieces of silver, and two chests of emeralds, each weighing
one hundred pounds. “The reason why there is so great an abundance of
metals at the Indies,” he wrote, “is the will of the Creator, who hath
imparted His gifts as it pleased Him.”
Von Tschudi says that in the first twenty-five years the Spaniards
got four hundred millions of ducats of gold and silver, which was,
however, only a small part of the vast amount buried or thrown into the
mountain lakes whose deep waters concealed it in underground caves.
“The Indians, taking a handful of grain from a whole measure, said:
‘Thus much the Christians have gained and the remainder is lodged where
neither we nor any one else is able to assign.’”
Humboldt says that from the discovery of Peru until 1800, the Old World
received £516,471,344 worth of treasure from the New World. No wonder
Europe felt that gold lay about in this land of gold, and that it was
only necessary to go and pick it up. No wonder Europe still has an idea
of America little changed through four hundred years. And yet only one
fifth of the treasure of mines and grave-mounds was supposed to be sent
to Spain, whose galleons came to the far-away West Indies to receive it.
It was not long before pirates descended upon Peru. Brittany was
the first to fit out fleets for the Indies “on pretense of carrying
merchandise thither,” in fact, to molest vessels coming from Peru.
Next, English buccaneers intercepted the Spanish vessels, slow-sailing
under weight of gold.
“With the fruit of Aladdin’s garden clustering thick in her hold,
With rubies a-wash in her scuppers, and her bilge a-blaze with gold,
A world in arms behind her to sever her heart from home,
The _Golden Hynde_ drove onward, over the glittering foam.”
Sir Francis Drake, with sixty armed ships, looted the Pacific in the
_Golden Hynde_. His ballast was silver, his cargo gold and emeralds. He
dined alone with music.
In 1578 he took from the Spanish galleon _Cacafuego_ “twenty tons of
silver bullion, thirteen chests of silver coins, a hundred-weight of
gold, gold nuggets in indefinite quantity, a great store of pearls,
emeralds, and diamonds, ... and many, many other things.” Only Queen
Elizabeth and Drake knew the exact amount that was taken.
For three centuries pirates and freebooters harried the treasure-fleets
of Spain. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the English
Calendar of State Papers compassionately remarks that foreign gluttony
“keeps the poor Spaniards in arms all along the coast of Peru and puts
them into strange apprehension, all mankind seeming to conspire the
murdering and destroying them as common enemies, not because they do
worse, but have more than ordinary.”
Much of the twice-looted treasure never reached Europe, for, following
the example of
[Illustration: A VIEW OF PAITA FROM THE _MIROIR OOST & WEST INDICAL_,
1621.]
the Indians, the sea-rovers buried large amounts of gorgeous plunder
in the mysterious islands of the Pacific. Even to this day, syndicates
with steam-dredges and suction-pumps are following up the faded charts
on which are indicated the spots where piles of doubloons and ducats
and pieces-of-eight are stowed away.