Spanish Ships Research Articles

Severing the Sinews of the Spanish Empire: British Naval Policy and Operations Regarding the Silver Fleets during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, 1737–1740

ABSTRACT In studies on the War of Jenkins’ Ear, a conflict between the British and Spanish empires, historians tend to focus on colonial expeditions, such as those against Porto Bello and Cartagena. On the other hand, operations against Spanish silver fleets, the mainstay of the Spanish imperial trade system, have attracted far less attention. This article examines these somewhat undervalued operations against the silver fleets as well as those concerning other Spanish shipping during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, giving their political and diplomatic backgrounds. This analysis demonstrates the significance of the issue of the silver fleets in Anglo-Spanish relations at the time. It also indicates the deep involvement of France in this issue and its influence on British naval operations. Finally, this article describes the development and implementation of British naval policy to put economic and financial pressure on the Spanish empire, arguing that the naval operations during this period were one of the earliest attempts at using blockades on both sides of the Atlantic, which Britain further developed in later imperial wars that took place during the long eighteenth century.

Conquering the Pacific: An Unknown Mariner and the Final Great Voyage of the Age of Discovery

Conquering the Pacific: An Unknown Mariner and the Final Great Voyage of the Age of Discovery

Consequences of Colonialism to the History and Lives of the Garifuna People of St. Vincent.

Garifuna people have lived on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent for over 300 years. Enslaved Africans who had survived the sinking of two Spanish ships in the 1600s became the first non-American group to settle on the island. Land ownership struggles, racism and discrimination and attempts at cultural erasure mark their history. This paper analyzes the relations and consequences of colonialism to the current status of the neglect of the Garifuna of St. Vincent. It argues that the arrival of Spanish, French, and British to St. Vincent influenced the genocide of Caribs, the creation of stereotypes associated with their people, and the spread of academic literature based on false narratives of their stories. These consequences led to the current struggles that the Garifuna face on the island and in their fight to rewrite historical memory and knowledge. Finally, it is essential to recognize their progress in rebuilding an identity of self-recognition by restoring historical memory and demanding governmental recognition. They have sought to situate themselves as people who live, fight, and exude their mixed culture of Arawak and black ancestry in a transnational territory. However, their case is complex. They carry indigenous and African identities, which insert them into movements and struggles on transnational networks and narratives of belonging around indigenous and black or Afro descendants' movements.

How Atlantic Mobility Shaped American Naturalization in the Confederation Period

Abstract In April 1787, the New York State Legislature naturalized Spanish ship captain Pablo Vidal under unusual circumstances. Vidal's naturalization was temporary, retroactive, and requested by a third party, New York City merchant Dominick Lynch. The atypical conditions surrounding Vidal's naturalization reveal the existence of an Atlantic-spanning buyer's market for migrants after the American Revolution. With peace came a growing demand for immigrants, causing individual states to compete against one another to offer the most desirable terms to attract opportunistic newcomers. The stories of Pablo Vidal, Dominick Lynch, and many other migrants to Confederation New York detail how the state recognized its position within this broader Atlantic market, how it sought to capitalize on its strengths, and how it attempted to bind these once transient migrants to New York's future. Amid the stories of this scramble for migrants lie the tensions that led to the diminishment of the buyer's market after Congress centralized naturalization standards in 1790.

Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution

In the early republic, a potent mix of commercial aspirations and ideological naivete characterized US diplomatic relations with South America. Tyson Reeder's book explores how North American visions of inevitable republicanism and free trade across the Western Hemisphere came to naught in Brazil. Surveying the give-and-take of state and merchant power emanating from North America, Brazil, Portugal, and Britain between 1760 and 1830, Reeder argues that experiences with international trade in the early republic disproved US revolutionary assumptions about the incompatibility of monarchy and commercial freedom.The monograph is divided into four parts. Part 1 establishes the context of trading and state relationships between the British and Portuguese empires in the eighteenth century's latter half. Portugal, Madeira, and Brazil bought North American grain, North Americans consumed Madeira wine, and Brazilian gold powered credit relationships with the British Atlantic and the slave trade from Angola. Unlike the British, who enforced illicit trading prohibitions in the North American colonies (a flash point for eventual revolutionary turmoil), the Portuguese never took a hard line on smuggling and mercantilism within their empire. Portuguese subjects in Brazil rarely perceived unlicensed trade as incompatible with fealty to the monarchy.Part 2 examines how the shifting political terrain of British imperial crisis and the American War of Independence altered trading priorities and commercial relationships. Independence from Britain meant that North Americans no longer enjoyed the trading privileges resulting from long-term British naval protection of the Portuguese. Portuguese bans on direct trade with the nascent United States deepened North American convictions that empires and monarchies could not be trusted trading partners.In part 3, Reeder explores how the hopes of US free traders for open trade with an independent Brazil aligned with neither that colony's late eighteenth-century fate nor US lawmakers' early nineteenth-century commercial policies. Early republic luminaries like Thomas Jefferson thought revolution, independence, and free trade inevitable for Brazil. Meanwhile, the Portuguese feared the US republican example in Brazilian uprisings like the 1789–90 Minas conspiracy. Nevertheless, the Portuguese court's movement to Brazil further liberalized Brazilian trade. As Reeder argues, the United States, not trade liberalization, was the problem for Portugal. Compounding the challenges for US merchants, the 1807 Embargo Act forbade the export of US products until foreign powers ceased interfering with US neutral trade. To North American merchants, this disastrous act “seemed to betray liberal ideologies to garner respect from European powers—a betrayal magnified as the Portuguese monarchy liberalized imperial commerce” (p. 134).Reeder examines the deeper dimensions of this disenchantment in part 4's discussion of the nineteenth century's first decades. Initially, North American observers prefigured rebels against Portuguese control in 1817 Pernambuco as latter-day versions of the 1776 patriots in Boston. North American seafarers accepted privateering commissions from José Gervasio Artigas, caudillo of the disputed Banda Oriental of present-day Uruguay and Brazil, to raid Portuguese and Spanish shipping in the pursuit of the region's independence. To maintain future trading opportunities and good standing in the community of nations, US politicians passed the 1817 Neutrality Act, which denied privateers safe harbor in US ports. Ultimately, Brazil's 1822 transition to an imperial monarchy engendered US prejudices about how Brazil's suspect racial composition made republicanism impossible and new conceptualizations of Brazil as a slaveholding paradise.Reeder offers a compelling investigation of trade mentalities and ideological projection. As Brazil delayed independence and then formed into an independent monarchy that liberalized trade, this unique course of decolonization “exposed the fragility of North Americans' commitment to hemispheric republicanism and its tepid attachment to free trade” (p. 237). Reeder's comparative commercial psychoanalysis illuminates deep connections between Brazil and the early United States that scholars have often overlooked. His research is deeply grounded in archival material from Brazil, Portugal, the United States, and Britain. At times, the book can be a bit repetitive and reductionist in its restatement of the paradoxical relationship between imperialism and free trade. Its single-minded focus on the Luso-Atlantic world also left me wondering about where else US beliefs in republican commercial liberalism were being put to the test. This lack of wider context notwithstanding, the book adds a wonderful case study to works such as Caitlin Fitz's Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions (2016), on the ideological aspirations of US political thought toward Spanish American independence movements, and Eliga Gould's Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (2012), on the US struggle for legitimacy in the nineteenth-century community of nations. It will be an important book for historians of Atlantic commerce and early US–Latin American relations.

The Spanish Ship Affair: Wreck, Salvage, and Contested Legal Authority in Colonial Connecticut

In 1752, a wounded Spanish ship—laden with gold, silver, indigo, and other valuable goods—wrecked along the Connecticut coast. This episode initially appeared to be a tale of Samaritans rescuing the crew and safekeeping their payload. Such hospitality yielded to avarice as the loosely guarded cargo was plundered. This article looks closely at the county court in New London, Connecticut, to examine how judges, jurors, and local legal officials shouldered the burdens of securing some sense of justice for Spanish officials and British colonists ensnared in what became known as “The Spanish Ship Affair.” It highlights the importance of local colonial courts in maintaining peace, not only in their respective communities, but also in greater imperial contexts. This was especially important in the wake of ineffective responses from the governor, colonial assembly, and vice-admiralty court—institutions purportedly designed to handle inter-imperial conflicts. Emphasis on this county court reveals a flexible judiciary creatively punishing unredeemable criminals, merciful jurors willing to forgive repentant neighbors, and the resultant long-term changes in Connecticut’s political landscape and its legal approaches to shipwrecks.

Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire by Alan Gallay

Reviewed by: Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire by Alan Gallay Cecelia Moore Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire. By Alan Gallay (New York: Basic Books, 2019. Pp. xiv, 560. $40.00, ISBN 978-1-5416-4579-0.) Alan Gallay's new book, Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire, challenges the myths and representations of Sir Walter Raleigh to offer a fresh analysis of the iconic Elizabethan courtier. Ralegh (his own preferred spelling) has been the subject of numerous biographies and historical works and is familiar to many from popular depictions in novels, movies, plays, and more. Gallay has returned to the primary sources to explore the cultural influences that informed Ralegh's role in colonization and conquest in Ireland and the Americas. The author's aim is to present "an origin story of empire far different from what we have imagined," and thus to provide "new context for understanding its legacies" (p. 5). Gallay has used his broad knowledge of primary sources and scholarly works in this biography, which also draws from his studies of the Indian slave trade. Walter Ralegh has an interwoven narrative that revisits the same period as it moves between locales and documents to connect the various aspects of Ralegh's career. Gallay relies on the reader to have some knowledge of the story; however, a timeline would have been helpful for quick reference. The United States has memorialized Ralegh as a founder from the beginning of the nation, nowhere more so than in North Carolina. Revolutionary-era state leaders named their new capital city for him. Nineteenth-century elites embraced the account of his so-called lost colony on Roanoke as an origin story of a white, English, Christian nation. In this mythology Ralegh became the representative for an imagined heritage of Anglo-white supremacy that served to justify the continued oppression of African Americans. In Walter Ralegh, Gallay argues that this depiction has covered over the cultural forces that shaped Ralegh's worldview and erased his elemental role in the development of England's sixteenth-century plans for empire. Colonization was just one strategy the English Crown used to challenge Spain's dominance of the Atlantic world. The English also used piracy and outright war. Ralegh was involved in all of it from 1578, when he joined his half-brother Humphrey Gilbert in a naval expedition, to his execution in 1618. The narrative connects Ralegh's court activities, military exploits, and colonization efforts in the Americas and Ireland. Ralegh was the architect who crafted the moral and legal justifications for English conquest. Gallay argues that Ralegh's view of empire did not have the racial features that came later. Instead, Ralegh believed that England would be improved by exposure to other cultures, that "empire would be an act of co-creation," where each partner benefited the other (p. 12). Gallay shows how Hermeticism, a movement that linked knowledge of the physical world to a greater understanding of the mystical realm, informed this theory. Ralegh sought to chronicle the languages and society of the Native peoples of the Americas because this work added to a [End Page 321] greater knowledge of the world. His vision was an English empire that included both Indians and English. The beauty of Ralegh's own writing and his utopian vision can mask the brutality of England's actions. Even as Gallay strips away the fictions about Ralegh's life for a fresh examination of his ideas, the author reminds readers that much of what Ralegh and his compatriots wrote was itself public relations to advance their cause. They positioned themselves for European audiences as the antithesis of the Spanish, and they wooed Native peoples as allies when their forces were not powerful enough to subdue opposition. By the time of Ralegh's death in 1618, English ships had looted more than a thousand Spanish ships and ports, launched unprovoked attacks on Indigenous societies, traded in enslaved Africans and Native Americans, and brutally put down multiple uprisings in Ireland. Ralegh might have argued that English colonization could be a humane force, as Gallay notes, yet the trajectory of English conquest remained exploitative and murderous. Less than a year after Ralegh's death...

Enemies or Allies? Spanish-British Relations during the Siege of Toulon in 1793

The author analyzes the relationship between the two allies, the British and the Spanish, during their common defense of Toulon in 1793. According the convention of Aranjuez, concluded on May 25, 1793, the English and Spanish ships were supposed to help each other in hostilities and protect their merchant ships. But when the allies began to act together, it turned out that finding a common language was not so easy. Based on English and Spanish sources, the author of the article concluded that these two nations were forced to cooperate with each other, but they were not able to understand each other. Each side pursued its own goals in this campaign, and that led to numerous disagreements. Because of feuding for decades, neither the Spaniards nor the British could accept the superiority of their opponent. Moreover, the more failures there were in war, the more enmity grew to each other. The author demonstrates some contradictions that plagued the Allied army from the inside. Disputes over who should command the combined forces, who contributes most to the defense, and in the end, who is to blame for the surrender of the city — undermined the already fragile alliance between the two countries. Throughout the siege and the following years, both the Spanish and the English tried to find the culprits for their failed defense of the city against the Republicans, primarily shifting the blame to others, looking for traitors who had contacted the enemy almost from the very beginning of the campaign.

Tree-ring chronologies, stable strontium isotopes and biochemical compounds: Towards reference datasets to provenance Iberian shipwreck timbers

Studies on the provenance of wood for shipbuilding contribute widely to the fields of archaeology, anthropology, environmental history, cultural geography, and palaeoclimatology. The development of reference datasets to determine the date and provenance of shipwreck timbers is therefore a paramount undertaking. Here we compile and present recent advances in the development of tree-ring chronologies, stable strontium isotope ratios and chemical biomarkers aimed to determine the date and provenance of Iberian shipwreck timbers. A set of oak and pine tree-ring chronologies have been developed from living trees covering the past 500 and 800 years, respectively, and have served to confirm the provenance of the wood used in an 18th-century Spanish ship of the Royal Navy. Stable strontium isotopic signatures have been obtained from soil and living trees at 26 sites throughout the Iberian Peninsula, providing a climate-independent geochemical network to source the origin of historic timbers. However, retrieving the original isotopic signature from waterlogged samples remains unsuccessful, stressing the need to develop effective protocols to separate the seawater signal from the original strontium isotope ratios in the wood. Analyses of organic compounds in wood of living trees have proven suitable to discriminate species and provenances, but results on shipwreck timbers are inconclusive and should be further explored. Our regional approach has the potential to be expanded to other areas and archaeological timbers from different periods throughout the Anthropocene. We highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the techniques presented when applied to waterlogged wood, propose GIS tools to interpret and visualize combined results, and stress the need to expand these type of reference datasets to allow for multiproxy dendroprovenancing approaches.

Sea, sickness and cautionary tales: a multi-isotope study from a post-mediaeval hospital at the city-port of Gibraltar (AD 1462\u20131704)

During the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, Spanish ships sailed around the globe connecting Spain to its colonies. While documentary records offer rich details concerning life on board ship, archaeological information is essential to generating a full picture of the past. The cemetery at Old St Bernard’s Hospital, Gibraltar, provides an opportunity to study the skeletal remains of sailors. Following previous osteological research, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and strontium isotope analyses were undertaken on thirty-three of these individuals. The results show that the, largely male, individuals had various different diets during life and came from several different places. Diets were largely based on C3 food chains; some individuals consumed C3 foods with low δ13C values; others consumed some marine foods, and a few individuals had a high trophic level diet, through the consumption of either freshwater resources or a high proportion of animal protein. The individuals spent their childhoods in several different places, although these homelands do not correlate simply with dietary variation. This variety in diets and homelands is consistent with our expectations for this hospital site given its location in a post-mediaeval entrepôt. The interpretation of these results are greatly helped by the available historical information and this has broader implications for the interpretation of isotope data elsewhere where the historical context of the site and the mobility patterns of the individuals are less well known.

Spain and the American Revolution: New Approaches and Perspectives

The siege of Pensacola in the spring of 1781 was Francisco de Miranda's baptism of fire as a participant in Atlantic revolutions. The victory of the Spanish army, in which he served as an officer, ended British control of West Florida and reversed one of the losses that Spain had sustained in the Seven Years' War. This siege was more than yet another Anglo-Spanish military encounter. It was also a chapter in the American Revolution, as historians have only recently begun to stress. This collection of predominantly interesting essays explores Spain's role in that revolution.While some of the chapters are too short (not counting notes, two are of nine pages, one of eight pages) to make more than a tangential contribution, the ensemble of remaining essays offers a mosaic that adds several new insights. The editors, Gabriel Paquette and Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia, start off the collection with a very useful historical and historiographical introduction, in which they stress that the Revolutionary War was part of a global war that pitted Britain against France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic. Nor were Spanish hostilities confined to the Americas. The Mediterranean was another important theater, in which Spain employed one-third of its peninsular army in an ill-fated campaign to dislodge the British from Gibraltar.Spain entered the war not only to recover Gibraltar but also to retake Minorca, invade Great Britain, and remove the British from Florida. Besides, Minister José de Gálvez feared that the American Revolution would induce Britain to increase its military presence in the Americas, as María Bárbara Zepeda Cortés tells us in her chapter. And, as Emily Berquist Soule shows in her surprising contribution, even the Atlantic slave trade shaped Spain's resolve to take up arms against Britain. Desirous to shed its dependence on British supplies of enslaved Africans, Spain entered the slave trade by way of two small islands in the Bight of Biafra (recently ceded by Portugal), close to where British slavers bought many Africans each year. Consequently, Africa became yet another theater in the war as British traders responded to Spain's entry into the war by targeting Spanish ships that sailed to the Bight of Biafra.Initially, Spain maintained its neutrality during the Revolutionary War, while at the same time supporting the rebels with cash and supplies. Even when France allied with the United States in 1778, the Spanish government chose to remain on the sidelines. Gálvez opposed Spain's involvement in the war not only because of the insurgents' weak military position, but also because, Larrie D. Ferreiro notes in his chapter, a Spanish treasure fleet was still at sea carrying the equivalent of $50 billion in today's money. Once the silver had safely arrived, Spain signed the Treaty of Defense and Offensive Alliance against England with France and thus entered the war against Britain.Spanish forces in North America immediately sprang into action, attacking British settlements along the Mississippi River and capturing territory that the crown regarded as crucial for the protection of New Spain. Paquette and Quintero Saravia contend that Spanish operations dispersed British forces, relieved British pressure on Georgia and South Carolina, and prevented the British armies fighting in the North and South from linking up. Another notable campaign was the invasion of the Bahamas in 1782 by a joint Spanish-US force, the subject of Ross Michael Nedervelt's chapter. The campaign targeted the Loyalist privateers who had chosen the archipelago as their base of operations for attacking US ships. Spain expected no immediate rewards but hoped that the removal of the privateers would help expel Britain from Florida altogether. Although the invasion was successful, Loyalists from South Carolina would reconquer the Bahamas within a year.By then, the costly war was over. How costly it was for Spain is discussed by Paquette and Quintero Saravia, who arrive at the estimate of 431 million reales de vellón, “a significant sum,” they add, “since it is equivalent to the total annual revenue of the Spanish Royal Treasury during this period” (p. 13). A more accurate way, perhaps, of conveying the Spanish war costs would be to say—based on a calculation using the editors' own table 1.1—that in the years 1780–83 surplus defense spending (compared to peace years) amounted on average to a quarter of the treasury's annual revenue. These expenditures helped Spain move on from its embarrassing performance in the Seven Years' War. The 1780s seemed to herald a new era. They constituted, as Paquette and Quintero Saravia put it, the zenith of Spain's empire, “a revival and efflorescence often obscured by its vertiginous fall, sparked by war in Europe, in the early nineteenth century” (p. 30).

Spanish sailors and the illegal slave trade to Cuba, 1845-1867

ABSTRACT The signing of treaties between Spain and Great Britain (in 1817 and 1835) and the subsequent passing in 1845 of the Criminal Act did not serve to end slave trade, as intended. Instead the only consequence of the treaties was to make it illegal and to maintain it with the participation of a wide range of actors and a large contingent of sailors of diverse origins and nationalities, many of whom were Spanish. In this article we analyze the living circumstances of the crews of Spanish slave-trade ships between 1845 and 1867, its greatest boom period and one of the most remarkable chapters of the social history of Spanish merchant marine. This article draws on documentary sources unpublished until today.

Hit and sunk: provenance and alterations of ceramics from seventeenth century Angra D shipwreck

A set of 34 archaeological ceramics, including olive jars, transparent green lead glazed, tin-lead glazed and unglazed ceramics, from seventeenth century Angra D shipwreck found at Terceira Island (Azores Archipelago, Portugal) was archaeometrically characterized by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Ceramic provenance has been established by statistical exploration of the ICP-MS chemical data, suggesting as being mainly from Seville origin (southern Spain) and, at a lesser extent, from the north of Portugal, piling up evidences to suggest a Spanish ship. Alteration and contamination effects of underwater environment in calcareous ceramics are assessed by XRD and SEM-EDS analyses, like the crystallization of zeolites, as well as pyrite.

The emergence of Montevideo as an Atlantic port: the political economy of a trans-imperial hub

AbstractIn the late eighteenth century, Montevideo evolved from a small colonial town dependent on Buenos Aires into the main Atlantic port in the region. Networks connecting Montevideo to Luso-Brazilian merchants turned Montevideo into a hub for trans-imperial trade. Between 1778 and 1810, thousands of Spanish and foreign ships entered the port of Montevideo. As a result, although economically dependent on Buenos Aires’ commercial community, Montevideo merchants and authorities managed to use their privileged port, newly created institutions and trans-imperial networks to advance the city's commercial and political role within the estuary. The emergence of Montevideo as an Atlantic port city with global connections was not an isolated event, but a part of a broader process of growing global trade and political transformation.

Ocean, wind and loneliness. Anaesthesia and reanimation on board the Spanish Navy Training Ship Juan Sebastián de Elcano, our experience

Ocean, wind and loneliness. Anaesthesia and reanimation on board the Spanish Navy Training Ship Juan Sebastián de Elcano, our experience

The dark faces among the slave trade. Mariners of African origin in Spanish ships (1817-1845)

ABSTRACTThere is an extensive bibliography that demonstrates the complicity that Africans and Europeans maintained in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Especially, in regard to the role played by numerous African kingdoms in the capture, sale and shipment of slaves from the coasts of Africa, to the american colonies throughout the 18th & 19th centuries. Less known is the participation of Africans and their descendants in the middle passage as crews of Spanish ships destined for Cuba; specifically during the period between 1817, with the signing of the first Anglo-Spanish treaty to abolish the Slave Trade and 1845, when the Spanish Penal Code included sanctions for the crime of trading slaves. It is also very interesting the presence of sailors of African origin who were born in the American colonies, and who ended up finding a place in illegal trafficking. A presence that, although not numerous, was undoubtedly part of the dynamics that generated slavery and the dreadful commerce of human beings across the Atlantic.

Sunken Spanish Ships before American Courts

Abstract Decisions by American courts on sunken Spanish ships have followed different approaches. Some have applied the so-called admiralty law and granted ownership rights to the finder. Others have assimilated wrecks to natural resources of the continental shelf, thereby falling under the sovereign rights of the coastal State. Others have found that Spain retains title over Spanish galleons that are to be considered as State-owned ships. Others have declined jurisdiction because of the immunity of Spain before American courts. What all decisions have in common is that they show how inappropriate it would be to apply admiralty law (salvage law and law of finds) to sunken wrecks and their cargo. It would correspond to the triumph of the first-come-first-served principle (or the freedom-of-fishing principle) for the benefit of commercial gain, without any care for the preservation of the heritage and the position of States which have a special link with it.

Why did the Chicken cross the Ocean: an Analysis of Faunal Remains from the Emanuel Point Shipwrecks [University of West Florida, Pensacola

The purpose of this research project is to determine, through analysis, what species of animals were being utilized onboard the Spanish ships during the Tristán de Luna expedition of 1559. In order to accomplish this goal, I will be analyzing faunal remains recovered from the three Emanuel Point Shipwrecks: EPI, EPII, and EPIII. This research is important because the analysis will allow us to better understand and interpret the lives of the Spaniards onboard the ships during the Luna expedition through their diet. In 1559, Luna attempted to create the first permanent settlement in Florida, the purpose of which was to construct a chain of missions along the gulf coast (Hudson 1989). These Missions would serve as a crucial component for both converting Native Americans and supporting previously shipwrecked Spaniards (Hudson 1989). The establishment of a permanent settlement in the gulf also had political implications; a colony would mark the Spaniards claim to La Florida and serve to prevent other countries from establishing their own colonies (Arnade 1959, Hudson 1989). Under the command of Luna were a total of eleven ships, carrying close to fifteen hundred individuals and enough supplies to last a year (Worth 2009). Food, or the lack thereof, was one aspect which served detrimental to the success of the expeditions which came before Luna (Worth 2009). Because of this, the Luna expedition was planned to include enough food to last the Spaniards until crops could be sown and harvested (Worth 2009). Not long after the Spanish arrived, however, Pensacola was struck by a powerful hurricane, sinking seven of Luna’s ships (Arnade 1959, Milanich 1995, Worth 2009). Most, if not all, of the supplies were still onboard the ships when they went down during the hurricane because a permanent storehouse had not yet been constructed (Arnade 1959, Milanich 1995, Worth 2009). Since the time of their sinking, 459 years ago, three of the seven ships that were lost have been discovered. The first Emanuel Point shipwreck was discovered in 1992 by a group of archaeologists from Florida’s Division of Historical Resources. The University of West Florida’s archaeology program joined the project in 1996. In total, 8,848 individual organic fragments have been recovered from Emanuel Point I alone; these include the remains of fish, shark, reptile, bird and mammal bones. All of these materials are kept in the maritime conservation lab, where they are processed and then conserved. Afterwards, they are moved to the Collection Management Building on campus for storage and future study by both faculty and students. In order for the remains to be analyzed, they must first be preserved through a process called desalination. This process, conducted in the laboratory incorporates the use of tap water and eventually deionized water to remove most, if not all, salts from the bones. After the bones are desalinated, they go through a process called consolidation. Consolidation allows the bones to be safely exposed to the atmosphere without deteriorating, warping, or excessively cracking; this is accomplished by soaking the bones in a solution of Elmer’s glue and water, usually a 50/50 solution, after which they can be left to air dry. Once the bones are desalinated, consolidated and dried, they are stable and can then be analyzed. I will be analyzing the faunal material for specific taphonomy characteristics linking them to consumption by humans. These taphonomic characteristics can include cut marks, breaks, bone splitting, and the presence of teeth marks; all of these can directly correlate the remains with butchering or consumption. To conduct species specific identification, I will be working with the Division of Anthropology and Archaeology’s faunal specialist, Mrs. Cathy Parker, and her comparative type collections. Through this analysis, I will be able to determine the specific species of animals that were being utilized as food by the Spanish and were onboard the ships during their sinking. This study will allow a new glimpse into the life of the Spanish sailors during Tristán de Luna’s fateful 1559 expedition to establish the first permanent settlement along Florida’s Gulf Coast.

LAS OBLIGACIONES DEL PORTEADOR EN EL CONTRATO DE FLETAMENTO EN LA LEY 14/2014, DE 24 DE JULIO, DE NAVEGACIÓN MARÍTIMA: FUNDAMENTOS HISTÓRICOS COMO MARCO COMÚN EUROPEO

The obligations of the carrier under the charter agreement are analysed accord- ing to the current Spanish Shipping Act 14/2014, of July 24. The aim is to demonstrate that this recent Act has clear historical bases that would lead to a common European framework in maritime agreements, if national policies were developed in this sense. We examine the most relevant historical texts to support this hypothesis.

Glass Beads and Spanish Shipwrecks: A New Look at Sixteenth-Century European Contact on the Florida Gulf Coast

Despite the considerable amount of research devoted to the study of 16th-century contact between Native Americans and Spaniards in Florida, little attention has been given to the impact of Spanish shipwrecks on the lives and material culture of the Florida Indians. Spanish land-based expeditions are traditionally presented as the principal means of European contact with Native Americans in Florida and as the primary source for European objects, such as glass beads. This has created a misleading picture of what was really happening in Florida during the 16th century. Examination of Spanish sailing routes, the types of artifacts recovered archaeologically from the wreck sites of homebound Spanish ships, and salvage activities of the Florida Indians reveals that Spanish shipwrecks were probably responsible for most of the historical artifacts found on Florida archaeological sites with 16th-century European components. This suggests that the interactions between Spaniards and Florida Indians had a far greater intensity and complexity than has generally been supposed.