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The First Shipping Constructed in New Spain1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

C. Harvey Gardiner
C. Harvey Gardiner*
Affiliation:
Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
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Extract

Amid the mixed emotions with which Cortés prepared A% to enter the Mexican capital in early November, 1519, was the gnawing fear that his military position therein would be an untenable one. Even the most courageous and least professional military man among the invaders must have realized that a Spanish force of fewer than five hundred men, far within the interior of a hostile and strange land, literally had entered a lion’s den as it marched into the populous island-city of Tenochtitlán via the narrow and ever so vulnerable causeway that stretched some seven miles between it and the mainland. So it was that even as his courage and curiosity took him into Tenochtitlán, his military mind and his sense of responsibility for the welfare of his men led Cortés to seek a means whereby the Spaniards could dominate the waters of Lake Texcoco and the lacustrine communities, including Tenochtitlán itself. Only after the Spaniards had become masters of the adjacent countryside—in this instance the waters and shores of a lake—could they know that inner satisfaction and quiet confidence that comes from a sincere sense of physical security. Only when the Spaniards had established their mastery over the lake area could it be said that the initiative so important to continuance of the conquest rested in their hands. With his infantry, his cavalry and his artillery momentarily stalled in the insular setting in which they found themselves, Cortés needed to create a new military force which, when thrown into the balance, would tip the scales once again in favor of the Spaniards.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , April 1954 , pp. 409 - 419
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1954

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Footnotes

1

This article, related to a larger study of naval power in the conquest of Mexico, has been prepared with the aid of a grant from the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society.

References

2 MacNutt, Francis Augustus (trans, and ed.), Fernando Cortes. His Five Letters of Relation to the Emperor Charles V (2 vols., New York and London, 1908), I, 275 Google Scholar. The uneasiness the lacustrine setting inspired in Cortés is indicated in Terreros, Manuel Romero de (ed.), Relación del conquistador Bernardino Vázquez de Tapia (Mexico, 1939), pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

3 Relación sobre la conquista de México, in Icazbalceta, Joaquín García (ed.), Colección de documentos para la historia de México (2 vols., Mexico, 1858–1866), II, 554–594.Google Scholar

4 Nobiliario de Martín López de Ossorio, 1622, Interrogatory of Martín López and testimony of Bernardino Vázquez de Tapia, Antonio Bravo and Andrés de Tapia (1540), item 2 Conway Typescript. For this particular document no further archival classification is given in either the facsimiles or typescript copies of the late G. R. G. Conway.

The shipwright Martín López, one of the most significant little-known figures in the conquest of Mexico, is the subject of continuing research by the present writer under terms of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

5 AGI, Patronato Real, 1-2-4/24 (57), Interrogatory of Martín López and testimony of Juan Griego Girón, Juan de Zamudio, Alvar López and Hernando de Castañeda (1534), item 17, Conway Typescript. None of these three workmen survived the final conquest of Tenochtitlán.

6 AGI, Patronato Real, 1-2-4/24 (57), Testimony of Hernán Martín, Antón de Rodas and Juan Gómez de Herrera (1528), item 7 and testimony of Pedro Hernández (1528), item 8, Conway Typescript.

7 AGI, Patronato Real, 1-2-4/24 (57), Testimony of Juan Gómez de Herrera (1534), item 2, Conway Typescript.

8 AGN, Mêx., Hospital de Jesús, 146/29, Interrogatory of Diego Hernández and testimony of Sebastián Rodríguez (1530), item 3, Conway Typescript. Documents connected with Diego Hernández’ suit serve to clarify a confusion of names resulting from Martín López’ action of 1528 against Cortés. In the 1528 documents two men bearing the name Pero (Pedro) Hernández appear as witnesses, the one a carpenter, the other a blacksmith. The legal action by carpenter Diego Hernández serves to indicate that in the written record of 1528 his name was stated incorrectly. In all instances, accordingly, the writer refers to the carpenter as Diego Hernández.

The forementioned material cannot be found at present among the manuscripts of the Hospital de Jesús, now incorporated in the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City. This lamentable loss must have transpired during the past two decades because it was available in 1931; see Francisco Fernández del Castillo, “Algunos documentos del Archivo del Marqués del Valle (Hospital de Jesús),” Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística, XLIII (1931), 23–24. In consequence, the present writer has used a Conway typescript instead of the original.

9 Maudslay, Alfred Percival (trans, and ed.), Castillo’s, Bernal Diaz del The True History of the Conquest of New Spain (5 vols., London, 1908–1916), II, 109 Google Scholar. At times he is referred to by the name Alonso Núnez.

10 Ibid., 104 and 109. The comparative fullness of Bernal Díaz’ reference to the first brigantines has led later writers to lean heavily upon him, e. g., Prescott, William H., History of the Conquest of Mexico (3 vols., London, 1843), IL, 166 and 171 Google Scholar; Berra, Manuel Orozco y, Historia antigua y de la Conquista de México (4 vols, in 2, Mexico, 1880), IV, 328 Google Scholar; and Argensola, Bartolomé Juan Leonardo de, Frimera Parte de los Anales de Aragón que prosigue los del Secretario Gerónimo Curita desde el año MDXVI, del Nacimiento de N°. Redentor, in Cabanas, Joaquín Ramírez (ed.), Conquista de México (Mexico, 1940), p. 191 Google Scholar. All mistakenly state that only two brigantines were built.

11 B. Diaz (Maudslay), op. cit., II, 100–104. The smallness of Lake Texcoco precluded the prospect of any navigational problems that would dictate the need of a compass. However, out of his own ignorance of nautical matters, out of his burning desire to get everything that might be useful at his fingertips, and out of his early ignorance of the real extent of these inland waters, Cortés may well be excused for including the compass in the list of desired supplies. Then, too, as several years later when a compass was quite frequently employed during the overland trip to Honduras (H. Cortés [MacNutt], op. cit., II, 249 and 263), Cortés might have intended to use the instrument in connection with land operations.

12 Quite possibly these were the above-mentioned Hernán Martín and Pedro Hernández.

13 Villamil, Ignacio Antonio Mora y, “Elementos para la marina,” Boletín de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística, IX (1862), 301 Google Scholar; and Pomar, Juan Bautista, Relación de Tezcoco, in Icazbalceta, Joaquín García (ed.), Nueva colección de documentos para la historia de México (5 vols., Mexico, 1886–1892), III, 60.Google Scholar

14 These frequently mentioned vessels of 1520–1521 climaxed Cortés’ interest in ships during the military operations of the conquest of Mexico. Conceived, built and employed as a major factor in the strategy for seizing Tenochtitlán, the thirteen vessels were termed “la llave de toda la guerra.” Cortés, Bernal Díaz and numerous other conquistadors agreed in that superlative evaluation of the role of the thirteen-ship navy in the most climactic single campaign of the entire conquest of Mexico. See AGI, Patronato Real, 1-2-4/24 (57), Testimony of Lázaro Guerrero, Diego Ramirez, Juan Gómez de Herrera, Pablo del Retamal, Antón Cordero, Juan Griego Girón, Andrés López, Juan de Zamudio, Alvar López, and Hernando de Castañeda (1534), item 35; Nobiliario de Martín López Ossorio, 1622, Testimony of Bernardino Vázquez de Tapia, Gerónimo Ruiz de la Mota, Antonio Bravo, Andrés de Tapia and Andrés de Trujillo (1540), item 28, Conway Typescripts; H. Cortés (MacNutt), op. cit., I, 320 and II, 9, 35, 42, 54 and 58; B. Diaz (Maudslay), op. cit., II, 300 and IV, 3, 24, 56–57 and 58; Gonzalo de Illescas, Historia Pontifical, in Joaquín Ramírez Cabanas (ed.), op. cit., p. 324; and Motolinia, (Toribio de Benavente) (Foster, Elizabeth Andros, trans, and ed.), Motolinía’s History of the Indians of New Spain (Berkeley, 1950), p. 216 Google Scholar, and Steck, Francis Borgia O.F.M. (trans, and ed.), Motolinia’s History of the Indians of New Spain (Washington, 1951), p. 273.Google Scholar

15 AGI, Patronato Real, 1-2-4/24 (57), Interrogatory of Martín López and testimony of Juan Ramos de Lares (1528), item 7; and interrogatory of Martín López and testimony of Melchor de Alabes, Andrés Martínez and Diego Ramírez (1528), item 8, Conway Typescript.

16 AGI, Patronato Real, 1-2-4/24 (57), Interrogatory of Martin López and testimony of Juan Gómez de Herrera (1528), item 8, Conway Typescript. Incidentally the phrasing of the document does not make clear whether this measurement is for the keel or the over-all length.

17 Morison, Samuel Eliot, Admiral of the Ocean Sea. A Life of Christopher Columbus (2 vols., Boston, 1942), I, xliv, note 8 and 151–152 Google Scholar. Morison’s techniques, as he tries to reconstruct the tonnage of Columbian craft, would be even less admissible in reference to these brigantines which were designed to operate under unusual rather than normal circumstances.

18 B. Diaz (Maudslay), op. cit., II, 112–113.

19 AGI, Patronato Real, 1-2-4/24 (57), Interrogatory of Martín López and testimony of Alvar López, Melchor de Alabes and Juan Ramos de Lares (1528), item 7, Conway Typescript.

20 B. Diaz (Maudslay), op. cit., II, 112. Francisco Flores, who prior to coming to New Spain had successively engaged in the conquests of Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba, asserted that he was in charge of the first two brigantines that were built. Oddly enough Flores knew no subsequent connection with brigantines, either in construction or operation, for he served in the Pedro de Alvarado division based at Tacuba during the final siege of the island-city. See Archivo Indias Simancas, sin papeles, 58-6-9, in the Francisco del Paso y Troncoso Transcripts, Leg. 94, Archivo del Museo Nacional, Mexico.

H. H. Bancroft, referring to the “tiers of oars,” conjures up, without historical support, a vessel reminiscent of either the naval units of Greece and Rome or the galleys of sixteenth-century Europe; see History of Mexico (6 vols., San Francisco, 1883–1888), I, 326.Google Scholar

21 B. Diaz (Maudslay), op. cit., II, 109–110 and 112–113.

22 H. Cortés (MacNutt), op. cit., I, 285.

23 Thought to be approximately June 24, 1520, see Maudslay, A. P., “Itinerary,” in Diaz, B., op. cit., II, 323 Google Scholar (Appendix C).

24 AGI, Patronato Real, 1-2-4/24 (57), Testimony of Francisco Rodríguez (1528), item 7, Conway Typescript.

25 And so serve to answer, in part, H. R. Wagner’s question, “What were Cortes’ idle soldiers doing in Mexico City for nearly six months?” See The Rise of Fernando Cortés (Los Angeles, 1944), p. 249.Google Scholar