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Decline in Favour of Cadiz As the XVII century moved
on, the tonnage of the galleons increased because of the naval confrontation between
the Catholic Monarchy and the Dutch. The former needed to protect the merchant
convoys and the only way to do so was to mobilise Navy ships which boasted a noticeably
greater tonnage than those involved in the Race to the Indies.
The result
was that ship draughts were bigger and the risks of grazing the riverbed multiplied.
Late in the XVI century, while a vessel used in the Race was little more than
100 tons, the ideal size of a vessel during the first thirty years of the XVII
century was between 450 and 600 tons although in 1626 there were already a few
of over 700 tons. The ships built in the seventies easily reached 1.000 tons.
From the decade of the thirties onwards, the arrival in Cadiz of a war
squadron protecting a trade convoy became a general and bad custom for the Port
of Seville. This was due to the excess tonnage and draught of its ships which
prevented them from crossing the sand bar. The smaller merchant ships continued
the voyage up to Seville. If, on any occasion, the Contracting House obliged the
war ships to go up river to the Golden Tower, regrettable things seemed to happen
like the storm in 1664 when Nicolás Fernández of Cordoba had to wait in order
to leave the course of the River Guadalquivir, an incident which happened again
in 1666 involving the Count of Villalcázar.
In 1625, the English squadron
of Charles I was held off in its attack on Cadiz, an event which marked the start
of a blind faith, on the part of American trade, in the walls and bastions of
the city of Hercules. Cadiz was no longer that defenceless one-horse town of the
end of the previous century. It now offered impunity to the smuggling of goods
and precious metals. It was a safe place against the confiscation of American
silver by the King who was plagued by financial troubles
During that
same decade, at the mercy of successive accidents, two galleons belonging to the
fleet of the Marquis Cadereyta disappeared at the mouth of the River Guadalquivir,
the vessel Capitana de Nueva España was lost, six merchant ships suffered serious
damages while another was shipwrecked. In 1629, a vessel belonging to the fleet
of Tomás de Larraspuru sank and, in 1641, the vessel "Almirante de Nueva España"
went to pieces on the sand bar causing great concern. The Port of Seville started
to be the synonym for "unsafe" which greatly favoured Cadiz.
The concerns
and sleepless nights of admirals and generals of vessels coming from the american
colonies came to an end when, in 1680, consignments were finally transferred to
the Bay of Cadiz giving rise to a period of decline for the Port of Seville which
would never again be what it was. | |
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