Guarda Costa

''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.Moya Sordo, V. (2021). ''Los corsarios guardacostas del Golfo-Caribe hispanoamericano a lo largo del siglo XVIII''. Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar. Volume 10, nº 20, 2021, pp. 125-147 ISSN: 2254-6111

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, 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 endemic in the Spanish Main.

Origin and function

Guarda costa were eminently recruited from local populations. They supplied their own ships and were conferred authority to capture and bring to port every ship suspicious of piracy or contraband they came upon, receiving in exchange part of the prize. Although the captured ship's owners had the right to reclaim the ships and their goods, those were usually sold quickly and their owners were typically redirected to buy them or to travel to Madrid to complain. The arrested crews were often subjected to torture and sentenced to prison, death or penal labour.

The nature of their job conceded them much autonomy in the interpretation of the laws and frontiers, meaning that in practice ''guarda-costa'' took what they wanted with little to no evidence of crime. Solely finding cargo produced in the Hispanic Indies, like cocoa, salt, hide, snuff and logwood, or even a single '' real de a ocho'', sufficed to declare the ship captured by piracy or smuggling. ''Guarda costas'' routinely killed entire crews, and in their greatest extralimitations, they came to the extent of assaulting settlements in English, Dutch and Danish colonies.

They used half-galleys of two masts and up to 120 men named ''periagua'', which were hidden in land with vegetation by day and deployed in night attacks against unaware vessels. Over time they adopted many kind of ships, big and small, like the quick ''balandra'' or sloops of up to 25 men, well armed and gathered in small numbers to board enemy ships. Although very inferior to the foreign ships of the line sent in to hunt them down, they were extremely difficult to find and catch. ''Guarda costa'' often teamed up with small royal fleets called ''armadillas'' (''armadillo'' was also used for a single, well-armed ship).

Their crews were as ethnically diverse as the Spanish Main itself, being composed by ''Peninsulares'', black, Indian, mestizo and mulatto members. They also included renegades of all nations who had pledged loyalty to Spain. The success of the ''guarda-costa'' drove pirates and buccaneers to change sides and join them, sometimes in exchange for amnesty. The imperial administration accepted them with remarkable liberality, although favoring the Catholics or those willing to convert. Crewmen hailing from Biscay were the most prestigious.

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, 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 further 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 Brown
* 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
* Christopher Winter

References

Bibliography

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* {{cite book, last=Wilson, first=David, title=Suppressing Piracy in the Early Eighteenth Century: Pirates, Merchants and British Imperial Authority in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, date=2021, publisher=Boydell Press, isbn=9781783275953

Privateering
Pirate hunters
Spanish privateers
Spanish Armada
Coast guards