Guest Post: de Santillan saves the Spanish Treasure Fleet

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History.

June 8, 1708

The incomparable Spanish Navy admiral José de Santillán was placed in command of a large treasure fleet that comprised fourteen merchant ships, a lightly armed hulk, and three escorting warships.

From onboard the flagship San José, he master-minded his infinitely dangerous assignment to safely transport over two hundred tons of gold, silver, and emeralds extracted from holdings in South America to Europe in order to fund the ongoing effort for the War of the Spanish Succession.

The situation was going very badly for his once-great nation because the Bourbon King Louis XIV had conquered swathes of the Spanish Empire on the continent. Eventually, he succeeded in placing his grandson Philip on the Spanish throne via diplomacy. He sought to reverse the decline of Spanish power as a stepping stone to establishing a united Europe under a single Bourbon monarch.

The Grand Alliance of England, the Netherlands and Austria stood in his way, and they had the great fortune to have John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, as commander of the Army of Europe. It was at this vital juncture that a major hurricane decimated the Royal Navy squadron in the Caribbean led by Charles Wager. His greatly reduced forces were swept aside by the treasure fleet in a desperately one-sided affair in Cartagena, fought off the northern coast of Colombia in the Caribbean coastal region.

The safe arrival of the treasure fleet radically changed both the fortunes of war and the recovery of Spanish prestige. Ever since the overwhelming Anglo-Dutch victory at Blenheim three year earlier, it seemed likely that the reconstituted Grand Alliance would defeat the French and Spanish Bourbons. Instead, the Alliance would be defeated long before the death of Louis XIV in 1715. His son Louis XV survived a smallpox scare to eventually establish the Bourbon super-state that Wager, Churchill, & co. had fought so hard to prevent. One unintended consequence of this success was that the rivalry with French colonies in the Eastern Hemisphere sowed the seeds of another Iberian War.

Author's Note:

In reality, de Santillán decided to sail from Portobelo to Cartagena on 28 May because he could not wait much longer as the hurricane season was approaching. The rest of the fleet, plus their escort under Jean Du Casse, were waiting in Havana and threatened to leave without him. The battle ended in a British victory over the Spanish fleet. Lost at sea the greatest treasure ship starting the hunt for the legendary shipwreck and its $20 billion worth of treasure. Wager, the hero of the hour, later served as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1733 to 174.

Provine's Addendum

With the Dutch suppressed, the British navy depleted, and Spain effectively a puppet of Paris, Portugal was France's main overseas rival for valuable colonies. Bourbon merchant fleets swiftly scooped up the Dutch territories in India and the East Indies, reinvesting the income in building their naval defense. Rivalries broke out in India and Africa, and when the War of the Austrian Succession in 1740 offered a chance for the Bourbons to be militarily distracted, the Portuguese launched a campaign to reestablish dominance of trade in the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately, with the Bourbon's new ally Prussia switching sides from the previous Grand Alliance, the distraction did not last long as Austria, the Netherlands, and Great Britain were dealt another round of serious blows. Portugal, too, this time felt costly invasion. Through the coming decades, the Bourbons redoubled their efforts at dominating the Far East trade at sea while encouraging a Prussian-led German state as a buffer against the growing powers of Sweden and Russia as the Hapsburgs declined. Great Britain, meanwhile, had enough of continental wars and determined focus on its colonies in the Western Hemisphere, ensuring loyalty against potential expansion of New France or New Spain.