Introduction: The shipbuilding industry in the Spanish Caribbean,1400s–1700s: Construction,maintenance,supply of materials,and financing

The functioning of the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean cannot be understood without considering the naval infrastructure developed in both the insular and continental spaces of this region, aimed at providing various services such as ship construction, repair and maintenance. Through an extensive network of port enclaves functioning as nodes, transatlantic supplies flowed between both sides of the ocean, meeting the demands of both the colonies and the metropolis. These commercial networks were further consolidated with the emergence of the Carrera de Indias and naval squadrons tasked with transportation, establishing the Caribbean as the maritime epicentre of the Spanish Empire. For this reason, during his second voyage, Christopher Columbus faced the foundations of the town of La Isabela towards the sea and designated a specific area for the construction, repair and maintenance of ships at the north-eastern end of the settlement, with a shipyard adjacent to the alhóndiga (royal storehouse) building where the first Iberian vessels on American soil designed for oceanic voyages were conceived, as demonstrated Alfredo Bueno Jiménez in this forum.

Despite the subject’s importance, historiography has overlooked the shipbuilding industry and its supplies in the Spanish Caribbean, hence the need for this forum. It contributes to naval historiography by offering four case studies that discuss shipbuilding activities in shipyards and the supply of materials, especially the main raw material – wood. Perhaps the closest contributions to the topic are studies on the foundation of port cities during the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Among these, the works of Ida Altman, Paul E. Hoffman, Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero and Antonino Vidal Ortega stand out. ¹ Likewise, the military organization and the defence of the Caribbean, involving fortification systems ² and military engineers, ³ such as the Antonelli family, have been the subject of analysis. These military constructions were typically located in bays and river mouths, where port facilities and naval infrastructure were situated. Similarly, the naval defence of the Caribbean has been studied by various researchers, including Bibiano Torres Ramírez, Gaspar Pérez Turrado, Mervyn Francis Long, Marina Alfonso Mola and Carlos Martínez Shaw, Esteban Mira Caballos and Vicente Pajuelo Moreno. ⁴

In terms of the earliest coastal enclaves with naval infrastructure for ship construction, repair and maintenance activities, these were initially established on the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) during the late fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth century. Subsequently, they expanded to the rest of the islands in the Greater Antilles and the continental areas of the Caribbean as the Castilian colonization process advanced, as was the case with Cartagena de Indias. This port, officially designated for the arrival of commercial galleons and protection fleets that were part of the Carrera de Indias, maintained a prominent position in the commercial and defence system of the Spanish Empire, consolidating itself as a naval station throughout the modern era. From 1550 onwards, with the implementation of the annual convoy system of the Carrera de Indias, Cartagena became a frequently used centre for ship repairs for both military and commercial purposes. These vessels were tasked with heading to Portobelo to collect raw materials and manufactured goods from the Viceroyalty of Peru. Therefore, Cartagena de Indias played a crucial role as a link station between the viceroyalties of Peru and New Spain, to the extent that Pierre Chaunu and Antonio García-Baquero González consider it the nexus and head of navigation in the South Atlantic, connecting with Seville and acting as the articulating axis of the regional space of the Caribbean Sea, ⁵ alongside the ports of Havana and Veracruz.

Therefore, there is an importance attributed to Cartagena among the contributions to this forum, with two that are especially significant. First, the collective contribution of Vera Moya Sordo, Laura R. Carrillo Márquez and Sergio José López Martín focuses on the case of the Santiago, an armed urca, commonly referred to as a galleon, which was part of the Armada del Mar Océano. This ship escorted the fleet of Tierra Firme under the command of Juan de Echeverri, Marquis of Villarubia. In 1658, the Santiago travelled in convoy to Cartagena, where it underwent repairs. Shortly after departing from Cartagena, in the company of a frigate bound for Campeche, to join the fleet of New Spain, travel in convoy to Havana and finally return to Spain, the Santiago went off course. A day after passing the coasts of Honduras and Bacalar, the ship suffered a tragic shipwreck in an area surrounded by reefs and sandbanks.

The authors, from a transdisciplinary perspective encompassing historical archaeology, maritime archaeology and disaster history, analyse the infrastructure and resource capabilities of the port of Cartagena. They explore the needs of Caribbean port authorities and the strategies employed by the local community to obtain the necessary supplies and labour. Additionally, they investigate the causes of the calamity, reconstructing the final phase of the ship’s life and suggesting possible internal tensions between the sailors and military personnel. The research sheds light on the conditions of transatlantic travel, which was rife with unforeseen hazards and dangers owing to the rugged maritime geography of the Caribbean, still largely unknown at the time and characterized by small islets, keys, shoals and reefs, along with adverse currents and winds. Furthermore, the study highlights the poor condition and structural deficiencies of some navy vessels, which were unsuitable for fulfilling commercial and defence objectives on transoceanic voyages. Finally, progress is made in the archaeological identification of the shipwreck located on the Chinchorro Bank, a coral reef barrier that is part of the Mexican reef reserve, where the wreckage of 40 Cañones, discovered around 1960 by Manuel Polanco, a fisherman from Chinchorro Bank, has been found. ⁶ This discovery allows for a better understanding of, among other aspects, the role of private suppliers and contractors in the acquisition and mobilization of supplies.

For his part, José Manuel Serrano Álvarez highlights the significant budgetary tensions that Cartagena de Indias continuously faced during the transition from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century – an aspect he has addressed in previous studies. ⁷ To cover the expenses of Cartagena's military system, which included fortifications, garrisons and the maintenance of the naval base – encompassing the naval protection system with a coastguard (guardacostas) – monopolies, such as in tobacco, were implemented during the second half of the eighteenth century. Moreover, customs revenues and remittances from trade with Seville, as well as from the cities of Santa Fe, Quito, Popayán and Havana, were obtained. Furthermore, the city's merchant class and local residents had to make contributions to cover the expenses. In this context, although Cartagena technically had an independent treasury to finance naval expenses, it was unable to cover them fully and relied directly on imports, due to the scarcity of wood, supplies of all kinds and personnel dedicated to maritime tasks.

Thus, the realm of shipbuilding and repair cannot be understood without its primary input – wood. This resource promoted not only local but also national and global economies. Over the last two decades, significant advances have been made in this field, with various publications shedding light on this resource, albeit mainly focusing on the eighteenth century, when the Spanish naval industry was at its peak. Niches of timber extraction, characterized by extensive tropical forest areas and nearby population centres, have been identified in Cuban and Mexican forests near bays, beaches and ports, facilitating the mobilization of labour and livestock for land transportation. Additionally, they had favourable topography and good conditions for maritime transport to Havana. The works of Gaspar de Aranda y Antón, Rafal B. Reichert and Germán Andrade Muñoz are prominent examples in this area. ⁸ Due to the large quantities of wood required for the naval industry, environmental historiography has been concerned with the deforestation processes that affected the island of Cuba from the early days of its colonization at the beginning of the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century. In this regard, the studies by Miguel Jordán Reyes and Reinaldo Funes Monzote stand out. ⁹ Similarly, the forest management policies of the Spanish monarchy and the control of timber resources for naval construction have been analysed by John T. Wing. ¹⁰ Unfortunately, the rest of the Caribbean islands and continental spaces have not received the same attention, with a significant historiographical gap regarding the naval industry and supply policies. This may be due to the fact that the shipyard in Havana somewhat monopolized the Caribbean naval industry, as reflected in the works of Allan Kuethe and José Manuel Serrano Álvarez. ¹¹

The timber resources, including those from Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo (albeit to a lesser extent), were primarily transported to the shipyard in Havana. However, as demonstrated by Ana Rita Trindade in this forum and a previous publication, ¹² a small quantity of these timber goods was redirected to the Cadiz shipyard of La Carraca, as occurred during the first Bourbon administration, a period that has been the topic of fewer studies than the second administration. This period spans the reigns of Philip V (1701–1746) and Ferdinand VI (1746–1754), and it was marked by various international conflicts that influenced the volume of supplies due to the development of the naval construction programme driven by the ministry of the Marqués de Ensenada. This programme represented the modernization of the Spanish naval industry, a topic that has been studied by María Baudot Monroy, Iván Valdez-Bubnov, José Patricio Merino Navarro, Allan J. Kuethe and Kenneth J. Andrien. ¹³ The programme led to increased shipments and the mobilization of forest resources to the Iberian Peninsula and the shipyard in Havana, with the aim of forming significant squadrons for the Italian campaigns in the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1738) and the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–1748). Concerns about the depletion of forest resources in the Cantabrian, Asturian, Basque and Andalusian regions, which provided abundant quercus wood (oak, cork oak, holm oak and evergreen oak) and pine that were used for structural and reinforcement pieces for ship hulls, resulted in the implementation of protectionist measures, such as the Forest Ordinance of 1748. This situation led to a decrease in timber resources in the metropolis and the need to import from other niches, as occurred with the South Baltic region, ¹⁴ which became integrated into the Spanish economy during wartime thanks to its tall and straight Nordic pines. ¹⁵ Similarly, Spanish possessions in America were involved, with their abundant pine forests and tropical woods, such as cedar, mahogany, lignum vitae, sabicu and yaba, especially in New Spain and the provinces of Cuba. Other raw materials were also obtained, such as henequen and sisal for making rigging; hemp, whose industry has been extensively studied by Manuel Díaz Ordoñez; ¹⁶ and tar and pitch, necessary resources for caulking.

These supplies are documented in chronicles, reports and records of the time, some of which are housed in Spanish and American archives, stemming from the complex Spanish bureaucracy in which, at times, the king and the viceroy participated. This was to ensure that the material could be paid for with the colonial revenues deposited in the treasury boxes of New Spain. Within this extensive bureaucratic network, secretaries, lieutenants, captains general of Cuba, commissioners and royal officials of the navy in Havana and Veracruz participated, as well as local private agents and contractors responsible for supplying raw materials and naval equipment to the Havana industry. The consultation and analysis of these documents broadens the horizons of naval historiography, providing new records of shipments that often contain detailed lists of supplies. These lists provide information on the species and types of wood used to build ships, including the origin of the felled species and their subsequent destination, whether for making structural or reinforcement pieces for ship’s hulls, fittings, masts, mechanical equipment, fastenings or planking, as well as a wide variety of generic pieces such as pulleys and blocks, not to mention accessories for the boats. Furthermore, some of the reports written by royal officials highlight the strategic value of certain forest areas for the naval industry and provide data on the prices of wood, helping us to visualize their evolution over time and the quantities supplied to the Spanish navy. They also include the number of ships involved in transportation, their names, and the measurements used to describe the structural parts of the ship. However, it is important to clarify that this information is generally presented partially, which sometimes makes it difficult to grasp the entire operational process. In this regard, high-quality tropical hardwoods from the Hispanic Caribbean were destined for the production of structural and mechanical elements due to their resistance to wear, degradation and rot, the latter caused by xylophagous organisms such as Teredo navalis.