Guarda costa

Spanish armada. Oswald W. Brierly, 19th century.

Guarda costa or guardacosta ("coast guard") was the name used in the Spanish Empire during the 17th and 18th centuries for the privateers based off their overseas territories, tasked with hunting down piracy, contraband and foreign privateering. They rose with the naval reforms of the House of Bourbon, which mixed up private corsairs in harmony with the royal navies. Commanders like Blas de Lezo helped develop this system.

They were mainly active against British, Dutch, French and Danish ships, becoming a mainstay of Spanish naval defense in the Indies and contributing to local economy with booty of their captures. Guarda costas earned international infamy for their perceived brutality and excesses in the course of their work, attacking indiscriminately foreign ships and arresting or executing crews at the slightest suspicion of crime. They were often themselves implied in local contraband and acts of piracy. Despite this, they were a notably effective and profitable force of privateering, even although piracy would remain an endemic problem in the Spanish Main.

History

In 1674, the Spanish crown started writing letters of marque in order to protect Indian coasts after centuries prominently refusing to authorize privateering. The defeat of Armada de Barlovento by Henry Morgan during his raid on Lake Maracaibo in 1669 was a factor behind the decision. The first fleets were composed of royal ships, but the high cost of maintaining them led to their intermixion with private vessels, often gathered locally as auxiliars. Guarda-costas, often coastal militiamen and amnestied pirates, became soon the biggest threat for pirates and buccaneers.

Throughout the 18th century, Spanish guarda costas were the main imperial defensive measure against piracy, especially due to Spanish constant involvement in wars in Europe, which drained their naval resources. Great Britain earned trading rights with the 1715 Treaty of Utrecht, but its watch and enforcement was mainly carried on by the guarda costas, which acted harshly to suppress illegal trade. Tensions rose up, with the British routinely accusing the Spanish of disrupting their legal merchant traffic, and the Spanish accusing the British of disrespecting the treaty. The number of privateers grew since the War of the Quadruple Alliance.

Guarda costa activity was centered around the Cuban ports of Santiago and Trinidad, but after 1720 it spread to St. Augustine in Florida and Puerto Rico, which became a base of privateering important enough to be nicknamed the "Dunkirk of America" due to their depredations, comparable to these of the Dunkirkers of Habsburg Spain. The Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas, founded in 1728, also received permission to arm privateers. The number and aggression of guarda costa increased during the political tensions of 1729 helped by the hand of José Patiño, a promoter of privateering who oversaw similar activities against Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean.

Zenón de Somodevilla, Marquis of La Ensenada became a driving force behind guarda costas after his arrival in the royal council in 1743, preceding Julián de Arriaga y Ribera. Only between 1747 and 1743, the privateers captured almost 200 British merchants in the Caribbean. During the 1770s, increasing centralization of imperial power started dissociating private enterprises from guarda costa activity, which was funded instead with the royal treasure under the Derecho de Armada y Piragua. The authorities furhter attempted to maintain an appearance of law enforcement rather than privateering, including a brief controversy between José de Mazarredo and Francisco Machado over whether captured ships had to labelled as prey or confiscation.

It was only in 1788 that privateers transitioned finally towards a true coast guard under the government of Manuel Godoy, with the Instrucción being issued in 1803.

Notable members

• Augustin Blanco
• John Bear
• George Bond
• Nicholas de Concepcion
• Juan Corso
• Miguel Enríquez
• Philip Fitzgerald
• William Fox

• Vicente Antonio de Icuza
• Jelles de Lecat
• Matthew Luke
• Simon Mascarino
• Francisco Menéndez
• Richard Noland
• Benito Socarrás
• Turn Joe

References

• Corbett, Theodore (2012). St. Augustine Pirates and Privateers. Arcadia. ISBN 9781614236535.
• Gaudi, Robert (2021). The War of Jenkins' Ear: The Forgotten Struggle for North and South America: 1739-1742. Pegasus Books. ISBN 9781643138206.
• Jefferson, Sam (2015). Sea Fever: The True Adventures that Inspired Our Greatest Maritime Authors, from Conrad to Masefield, Melville and Hemingway. Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781472908827.
• Little, Benerson (2010). Pirate Hunting: The Fight Against Pirates, Privateers, and Sea Raiders from Antiquity to the Present. Potomac Books. ISBN 9781597975889.
• Little, Benerson (2014). The Sea Rover's Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730. Potomac Books. ISBN 9781597973250.
• Nicieza Forcelledo, Guillermo (2022). Leones del mar: la Real Armada española en el siglo XVIII. EDAF. ISBN 9788441441552.
• Serrano Álvarez, José Manuel (2004). Fortificaciones y tropas: el gasto militar en tierra firme, 1700-1788. Diputación de Sevilla. ISBN 9788447208227.
• Wilson, David (2021). Suppressing Piracy in the Early Eighteenth Century: Pirates, Merchants and British Imperial Authority in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Boydell Press. ISBN 9781783275953.