Throughout history there is one thing that you could count on the human race doing. Do you know what that was? No dying is not what I am talking about and it is not paying taxes either. I am talking about moving things. There has always been a need to move things from one place to another. Maybe it was to bring in building materials so that an appropriate shelter could be constructed or bring in even bigger things like huge stones to construct great temples, cities and forts. Sometimes we moved soldiers so that they could fight great battles or we moved our livestock so that they had better grazing areas. There were even times when we moved ourselves in the hope of finding better living conditions in a new land. As we spread out, many cultures felt the need to move treasures from one place to another. When the new world was discovered, regular shipments of gold and silver took place with the treasures being scheduled to be brought back to countries like Spain, Portugal and England, among a few. Moving things is in our blood, even as individuals all of us have moved things, even if it was only from one room to another.

The Spanish had a whole fleet that was used to move things and those things were bars of gold and silver that were to be taken from the Americas and brought back to mother Spain. The fleet began to sail in the 16^th century. They did not only transport gold and silver however. They also moved such things has gems, spices, tobacco and other valuable cargo back to the homeland. Even when the stuff was not going directly to the government because some of the ships were privately owned, the government took a 20% tax from the value of the cargo. This tax was known as the quinto real. Actually the Spanish had two treasure convoys. One was the Spanish Caribbean fleet and this was known as the Flota de Indias, which would visit the ports of Havana, Veracruz, Cartagena and Portobelo before returning to Spain and the Manila Galleons, which were known as Galeon de Manila and they visited the Philippines and Acapulco Mexico. These ships would travel from the Philippines to Acapulco where the goods were moved to Veracruz for the Caribbean treasure fleet, for shipment to Spain.

The reason that the Spanish decided to form a treasure fleet and convoys was the same reason that convoys were formed during the World Wars. It was simply for protection. The Spanish had been sending treasure back to Spain since the time of Columbus, but as this got to be known, all sorts of attacks were made on them by pirates and privateers. There was a schedule that was used and that schedule called for the treasure fleet to sail two times a year for Spain. Spain passed a law that stated that the colonies in the New World could only trade with one port in Spain. There was much cheating going on and forging of documents to avoid the payment of the high government tax. More likely than not, the cargo in private ships was much more valuable than listed. This great treasure fleet sailed for over 200 years, making Spain a very rich country.

The size of the Spanish treasure fleet changed as the years went by. In 1550 it was composed of 17 small ships, but by 1600 the treasure fleet had over 50 ships and they were all much larger. Hey you needed big ships to truly drain the wealth of the Americas. As the next century bore down, the fleet dwindled to about half, but worse for the Spanish was the fact that the size of the fleet continued to shrink. As all this shrinking was going on, many of the world's seafaring nations were getting stronger. The Spanish had fought many wars and at one time or another fought with almost everyone in Europe except the Vatican. There were not a lack of nations that were eager to get in on some of the riches that Spain was transporting. I think that we have all heard of the Spanish Main. That was the coast of the mainland that comprised the Spanish empire. It ran from the north coast of South America, along Central America, Mexico, and Florida.

The Spanish control kept up until finally in 1790 Spain decided that it would allow free trade by the colonies. This was caused partly by the fact that the Spanish Main was crumbling and the British occupied Havana and Manila and the Spanish fleet had to change its route of operations. The hand writing was on the wall and the best thing for the Spanish was getting their colonies to want to trade with Spain, not trying to force them to do so. This way even if Spain lost military control of a colony the trade still had a chance of continuing. I know that a lot of us have seen movies where pirates captured rich Spanish galleons loaded with gold, silver and gems, but this was not true. The truth is that very few of these treasure ships were ever captured, although some were lost to storms at sea. Treasure galleons were captured a few times though and this happened in 1628, 1656, 1657 and 1702. The 1702 attack occurred after the treasure ship was already unloaded so that didn't do the attackers any good.

Quite a few modern treasure hunters have been looking for sunken Spanish treasure ships. Some have actually been recovered revealing their rich treasure of gold coins, bars, silver, jewelry and gems. In 1715 a Spanish treasure fleet was returning from the Americas to Spain. The fleet was composed of 11 ships. As they traveled on their way, an unfortunate event occurred. A hurricane that was very severe crossed their path and sunk all 11 ships. The ships went down near Cuba and not far from Florida. The fleet is known historically as the 1715 plata treasure fleet. Plata meant that the fleet was carrying silver, because that is what plata means in English. A few of the sailors managed to survive, it was a miraculous survival. Can you imagine being in a tiny lifeboat in a storm that was sinking all your big ships?

Today it is easy to see the Spanish heritage all around the Americas. One has only to look at South America which speaks Spanish except for Brazil, Central America, Mexico, Cuba and so on. We also have to remember that even parts of the United States were once part of Mexico and the people their also spoke Spanish. Spain has left their indelible mark on this part of the world.