A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks by Stewart Gordon

Author:Stewart Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ForeEdge from University Press of New England

Even more interesting than De Coutre’s description of the battle in Manila harbor are four memorials he wrote to the Spanish monarch around 1625. He was all too aware that, following a humiliating defeat and armistice with Holland in 1609, the Spanish crown recognized that it could no longer simultaneously defend both the Americas and the Portuguese monopoly in the East Indies. Spain had suffered one defeat after another, such as the losses of Malacca and Aceh, the important port on the northwest tip of Sumatra. His first memorial begins as follows:

If Your Majesty were to dispatch 40 galleons to India with Castilians and Portuguese, like the armada that Your Majesty sent to Brazil, well equipped with men and artillery and good gunners and munitions and sufficient supplies, and if in the next year 20 galleons were sent in the same way, the aforementioned Estado [the Portuguese colonial monopoly in the East Indies] can be remedied in the following manner, because the rebels are firmly entrenched there and have many ships and very strong fortresses.

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