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History's Hinge - 'Ain Jalut

[Bart]

Very good Lubby, another success for you! And thank you for your kind words.

Bart

[Jesus of Lubeck]

Looks like this worked: I would also like to note that B-Wrecker's coin possesses some very slight differences in the area around the mint stamp and the form of the Habsbug eagle's tail.  Might narrow things down a bit more.

Very Best Regards,

Lubby

[Jesus of Lubeck]

Dear B-Wrecker,

I am absolutely speechless. This piece of numismatic history is extremely rare.  Here is what I can tell you about it:

The provenance of this unusual square gold coin is Brazil.  Maurice of Nassau gained possession of a stretch of Brazilian coastline for the Dutch West India Company in 1641 and this area became known as the Recif de Pernambuco.  The Portuguese launched a major effort to dislodge the Dutch and forced them to quit the area some nine years later (Cornelius can correct me here perhaps).

There existed a severe shortage of specie in the Dutch-held region during these years and the Dutch West India Company authorized the striking of three values of square gold coinage under the appointed Mint Master of the fortress of Purnambuco, Pieter Janssen Bas.  These three denominations were 12, 6, and 3 guilders.  There only appear to be two years during which these coins were struck, 1645 and 1646.  Some sources indicate that the die cutter was one Jan Bruynsvelt.  The loss of  the Utrecht and the context of the Portuguese-Dutch conflict in this region strongly suggest the Utrecht was associated with the Dutch presence in the Purnambuco area and had contact with the Dutch fortress there.

I believe that this is an unusually rare find and as it is a 12 guilder piece, all the more so.  The GWC is the monogram of the Dutch West India Company and the Roman numeral 12 is visible above it. The reverse should read Brasil with the strike year - as seen in this jpeg below..

Here is a photo of a 3 guilder piece from the same Pernambuco fortress mint.  Very wonderful experience to see something like this shared with the world.  Thank you B-Wrecker.  Congratulations on this delightful find � although it seems you found it some years ago.  Although I somehow get the feeling you know all this already.

Best Regards,

Lubby

[Cornelius]

Clicking on the page   http://www.colonialvoyage.com/brazil.html  will give you the whole story . No doubt most of us are familiar with this document but I thought it would be nice to give people that are interested and do not know about this site an opportunity to read for themselves about this part of history .  Cornelius

[bahamawrecker]

Thanks Cornelius, Bart and Luby for the great follow up.
The report above does not mention Piet Heyn's attack on Salvador in 1627, when he lost his flag ship the "Amsterdam" as well as the "Orangeboom" that tried to come to his rescue when the "Amsterdam" sank.
I found the "Orangeboom", the "Amsterdam has yet to be found. She sank in shallow water very near the "Orangeboom"
The report also does not mention the battle that took place between Witte de Widt's fleet of  7 galleons, With 3 Portuguese galleons off the coast of the island of Itaparica, outside the bay of Salvador.
During this battle the Portuguese galleon "Nuestra Senhora do Rosario" exploded when the galleon "Utrecht" and "Huys Nassau" were boarding her from both sides. The "Rosario" and the "Utrecht" sank immediately, the "Huys Nassau" drifted some distance before sinking and has not been found yet.
I am traveling now, but when I get home, I will dig out my documentation, translate it and then tell you the whole story, or at least all I know about it.
There are however, many more aspects of these happenings that I am still missing that could be dug up in the archives in Holland.
I would greatly appreciate any help from members of this forum in finding the missing information.
Bahamawrecker

[Jesus of Lubeck]

B-Wrecker,

Thanks for posting this material to the HH site.  It is like reaching out and dipping into the actual events described.  Looking at your sketch of the Utrecht wreck site, the vessel seems to have settled to the bottom almost trim.  Is this impression correct?  The ballast pile therefore represents something like the actual configuration it held when the vessel was afloat. I ask this because I would like to make a strange request, if possible, are you able to furnish any information on the lithologies of the primary and secondary ballast?  I am exploring the idea of generating a database on ballastology.  It would likely be a gargantuan and thankless task; however, if any divers, archaeologists, or historical salvage professionals come across any ballast information, particularly from a vessel of known nationality and name, I might get an idea on the feasibility of the project.  All information can be submitted anonymously (this is actually and invitation to anyone with  ballast-related data that is not part of a sensitive project to send in material).

With respect to this area of Portuguese-Dutch history, no doubt both you and Cornelius will be able to add substantially to the knowledge base we moderns have of the period.

I do have some general information of the Dutch and their interactions with the Guajiro tribes further north in what is now modern Venezuela, if this is of any interest.

Best Regards,

Lubby

[bahamawrecker]

Lubby,
thanks for the reply.
Yes, I would very much like information about the Dutch involvement in Venezuela, because I am often there and in close contact with aboriginal tribes.
About the ballast on the "Utrecht". I have not been back to the wreck site in 25 years, so it is hard to remember details. I do hope to return in the near future and try to make a small documentary movie about this shipwreck and its history. At that time it would be possible to collect data on the ballast as well as other specific areas. I would suggest that you prepare a questionnaire of all the information you would like.
If it is very much information, I suggest that you send somebody to participate with the expedition to help collecting data.
At present I am trying to collect as much as possible historic data about the ship, its crew, etc. to build a complete story.
You are right about the shipwreck settling on the bottom in 70 ft dept in the upright position. It is interesting that no contemporary salvage was done, since the upper deck of the ship must have been only a few feet below the surface.
At the time I worked on the wreck site, others had already removed all the bronze cannon, years before. I only made some test excavations, not more than 5% of the site. In the Navy museum in Rio de Janeiro are many of the artifacts I recovered. Very little has been done to the wreck site since then.
Bahamawrecker

[Jesus of Lubeck]

Hello B-Wrecker,

Thank you for the response; I will put a simple questionare together for the ballast survey that does not impose too much.  Of course I will provide what small assistance as I am able to forward your project, as will, I am sure, the greater lights of the HH membership.  Give me a day or two on the Guajiro post - again it is general and may touch upon material you are already familiar with.  On to the Viceroyalty of New Granada then.

Best Regards,

Lubby

[Jesus of Lubeck]

Hello Bahama and Cornelius,

I originally wrote most of this in response to an historical point resulting from a numismatic find.  Last year an 8 Real piece with gubernacia de Quito or presidencia de Guayaquil counterstamps was recovered in the Florida Keys.  At issue were the possible routes by which such a coin could have made its way to the threshold of the Gulf Stream.
One part of the discussion treated a trans-Isthmus route across Panama, the other possibility is the route investigated below.  Because of your expertise in the region and your experience with the indigenous groups in the area I thought you might comment on this post. Because it originated from a numismatic question, I am posting it here in the Coin ID area of the HH Forum, however, my intent is to develop a discussion on the Guajiro or Cumanogoto, their history, and their interaction with European culture.  If the thread develops a life of its own, perhaps the moderator will see fit to move it elsewhere.

Native America and its interactions with Europeans in the Caribbean rarely focuses on the region that now comprises the modern nation of Venezuela.  Here is a digression triggered by the Ecuadorian (gubernacia de Quito or presidencia de Guayaquil?) 8 real piece and its historical milieu.

It is worth remembering that the trans-isthmus silver route across Panama between the Pacific and the Caribbean was not the only regular avenue of trade that would allow Spanish silver with Pacific counterstamps to find its way into Caribbean circulation. 
While Imperial Spain spent significant resources maintaining and protecting the trans-isthmus silver route, and indeed utilized this preferred route for the official transfer of silver between the Pacific and Caribbean, a very important unofficial trade route existed between the two oceans, so to speak, which accounted for a substantial amount of quasi-legal and outright illegal traffic (from the Royal Spanish viewpoint).  This route, moving from Peru, through Ecuador, and terminating in the Riohachan cities of Cartagena de Indias and Santa Marta, followed the course of the Magdalena River from its namesake lake source in the Andes (now known as the Tumbes-Choc�-Magdalena ecoregion). 

Outside of specialist circles the fact that Spanish control of the Panamanian isthmus and the Riohachan coast to the south was far from solid is not often discussed.  In these areas, two very strong and adaptive indigenous cultures, the Tule in Darien and the Guajiro in the Riohacha, exerted an often controlling and decisive influence on events in their respective regions.  For the Spanish, the successful transit of goods and specie along these two inland routes, the trans-isthmian and Magdalenian, depended to a great degree on cooperation with these very powerful indigenous tribal groups.

Of the two routes, the trans-isthmus route and its European-Indigenous interactions are the best documented (Tule tribes of Darien).  Accordingly, because of the limitations of the blog format, the role of one of the indigenous tribes occupying what are now the Caribbean coasts of Colombia and Venezuela, the above-mentioned Guajiro, will serve as the focus some brief comments.  The Guajiro, in particular, provide a dramatic example of the complex and mostly unofficial interplay between the Guajiro, the Spanish, and their European enemies as the 17th century drew to a close.

The Guajiro, by co-opting certain European skills, particularly livestock husbandry and smuggling, made Cartagena de Indias one of the richest, albeit unofficially, market nodes in the Caribbean of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.  Although, this superficial treatment does not really do the subject complete justice, it nevertheless, illustrates that the Pacific and Caribbean local economies of the period, linked through the northern Andean watershed, were more integrated in some respects than is generally acknowledged and that this integration depended on forces and factors sometimes outside the direct control of Europeans.

Historians analyzing the early Bourbon period have demonstrated that Cartagena and Santa Marta, the two principal cities of the Riohacha district, were very important illicit regional redistribution points for non-viceregal Spanish trade in this sector of the Caribbean.  The point is of interest because it indicates that, for at least some of the population of the Spanish Empire, the passing of Jamaica to British control as well, as the close proximity of Dutch occupied Aruba to these two Riohachan cities, had some positive benefits.  The presence of the Anglo-Dutch in this area of the Caribbean, and the strong trade-links that were developed between the Guajiro and the enemies of Spain, served to prevent Spanish consolidation of this portion of Latin America as well as allowed the region�s economy to serve as an unofficial outlet for Peruvian silver.

Much of this trade hinged on the very real need of the Spanish in the Riohacha for efficient supplies of flour.  Balancing this Spanish need was the equally strong motivation on the part of the Dutch, English, and French to procure convenient supplies of beef and other animal products. In the 17th century, Jamaica became a port of re-export for North American and English flour as well as other manufactured goods into the Spanish Main.  Neither the Vice Royalty of Peru, nor the Vice Royalty of New Spain, was able to efficiently provide a steady supply of flour and competitively priced goods to the settlements around Cartagena de Indias and Santa Marta, few though they were.    Moreover, while regular contracts for the provision of audiencia de Quito grain and flour existed, because of the very tenuous Imperial Spanish control of the area due to the strong and virtually independent indigenous Guajiro nation, grain shipments from the highlands of the Magdalena river valley downstream toward the Caribbean were frequently interrupted. As a consequence, merchants from as far away as the Andean cities of Quito and Popayan were forced to cultivate and indeed encourage relations with the Guajiro, if for no other reason than to guarantee the success of commercial treks from the headwaters of the Magdalena to the downstream markets of Cartagena and Santa Marta.

Cultivating good relations with the Guajiro necessarily meant toleration of the Guajiro well-developed penchant for illicit trade with the enemies of Spain.   Not surprisingly, within the viceroyalty of Peru during the Habsburg dynasty, collusion at all levels, from the governors of Cartagena to the merchants of Lima and Quito, and between the Guajiro and Anglo-Dutch contrabandists, was an absolute economic necessity if the Spanish population of Cartagena and Santa Marta hoped to feed and clothe itself.   Such were the controlling factors that a Spanish merchant had to weigh when utilizing the Magdalena river route in order to purchase flour and manufactured goods from the Anglo-Dutch.

It is very often stated that the early buccaneers were French and multi-ethnic groups that originally provided jerked beef, pork, and perhaps jerked anything else, to vessels passing though the eastern waters of the Caribbean.  This origin story is at the root of several explanations that attribute the growth of certain pirate haunts in the Caribbean, Hispanola and later Tortuga, most particularly, as the outgrowth of this early provisioning activity.  It is equally often stated that under the encouragement of Spain�s enemies, these original boucanier bands became buccaneers and pirates during the course of the last half of the 17th century. 

This brings the discussion to a question that is both fundamental as it is mundane (and not often posed):  during the last half of the 17th century, if the buccaneers and pirates were no longer boucaniers  (supplying jerked meat and provisions to passing and presumably non-Spanish vessels), what group in the Caribbean stepped in to fill this need?  If anything, the number of non-Spanish vessels operating in the Caribbean was growing progressively larger than ever by the end of the 17th century.  While a certain amount of provisions were to be had from Anglo-American sources, the only certain supply of beef and other staples necessary to sustain voyagers in vessels at war with Spain, or outside the law, or perhaps both falling into both categories, were the Guajiro tribal groups of what is now the Caribbean coast of Colombia and Venezuela (17th & 18th century Riohacha).

So coming full-circle, the semi-Iberianized Guajiro, inimical to Royal Spanish interests, amicable to Anglo-Dutch contrabandists, control a singularly important trade route along the Magdalena river into the Caribbean. A route necessary for the supply of two Spanish outposts and which also holds the economic key for supplying any enemies of Spain that should, during the course of events, present themselves in force in Riohachan waters.  By the late 17th century, the Guajiro evolved into an indigenous force with whom all European operations, be they trade, military, political, or religious, had to reckon with if their operations took them into the western Caribbean for a sustained period of time.

By way of example, in 1697, during the final throws of what is termed in the United States �King William�s War� (1688-1697), the French, who are lined up against the unlikely and alliance of Spain and England, organize an attack against Cartagena de Indias.  This operation comprised of both Royal French forces and Flibustiers from Port-au-France (now Haiti) under the command of French Admiral Sieur De Pointis and Jeamn-Baptiste Ducasse, spread canvas and shaped a course for the Riohacha.  Though Eurocentric sources are largely silent on the role of the Guajiro during the French attack, the duration of the assault against Cartagena, lasting as it did over a fortnight, suggests that the Guajiro, no friends of Spain, would have found the French force a lucrative outlet for necessary supplies.  Needless to say, the Franco-Flibustier assault on Cartagena resulted in a successful sack of the town and resulted in a massive infusion of Spanish bullion into Caribbean circulation.  The success of this particular French raid in 1697 underscores just how lucrative the Riohacha was, although from official Spanish treasury reports nothing approaching a percentage based on the estimated amount of the French plunder ever accrued to the Spanish crown.   

Starting in the 17th century and accelerating during the opening years of the Bourbon dynasty, the Vice Royalty of Nueva Granada, the political unit into which the area came to be organized as of 1718), was a magnet for contrabandists of every nation plying Caribbean waters, particularly the Dutch and British.  There was no doubt a certain amount of Ecuadorian counterstamped silver in circulation within the orbit of the Kingston-Wilhemstad-Cartagena economy.

Source:

John R. Fisher,et al.
Reform and Insurrection in Bourbon New Granada and Peru. Baton Rouge:Louisiana State University Press. 1990

Very Best Regards,

Lubby

[bahamawrecker]

Hi Lubby,
Thanks for the interesting information about the role played by the Guajiras in the contraband trade in colonial Venezuela.
I believe that we could glean a lot of information from the past of the region by searching in the unofficial history.
The contraband trade is a good example. According to the official Spanish sources it did exist, but was not important. However, if we look closer we get the feeling that the contraband trade was actually more important than the official trade.
But where can we find solid historic sources for something that �did not exist�? This is one of the reasons we call our quest for historic shipwrecks:
 �To uncover the history that lies hidden beneath the waves�
It is indeed one of the places to look for information about the widespread illicit trade of the colonial past.
But there are also written resources where we can find information. The �Dutch West India Company� was very active in the region during many years. They were also a well organized business that kept accurate, one could even say meticulous accounts. A lot could be learned from these. But where are they? It appears that the greater part has disappeared. Cornelius, could you possibly help there?
What other sources?
The pirate history as you mentioned.
The pirates were not great writers, but a few of them left written accounts. Probably the most famous one is:
 �The History of the Buccaneers of America� by Esquemeling. 
If we read these first hand accounts from the pirates and buccaneers, we can find a wealth of information.
Even much more information could be found and confirmed if we were to carefully excavate a shipwreck that we know to have belonged to a pirate.

To finalize, my usual obnoxious questions to the members of the forum:
How many books were written by pirates?
Who were the writers?
What are the titles and subjects of the books?

And, more of a clue than a question: What about �The Wreckers History�?

Bahamawrecker