The Santisima Trinidad y Nuestra Señora del Buen Fin, a 2,200-ton 60-gun Manila galleon, has made a bad journey from Manila to Acapulco. Having 435 persons aboard initially, she has lost 74 ones of typhus during her 221-day long journey. Three hundreds and ten or twenty more are lying, unable to move, near death. ¤ A standard journey takes five or six months. A seven-month one is long but not surprising. What is surprising is that a few men achieved to handle this quite bi

Pierre Arnoul A distinguished naval administrator, Pierre Arnoul, aged 28, is held responsible for a shipwreck so ousted from his...

A new ordinance by Jean-Baptiste Colbert creates the Caisse des Invalides meant to rescuing the wounded mariners. Simultaneously, a small sum is spared from mariners’ wages – one 40th – to run two dedicated hospitals, one at Rochefort, the other in Toulon. This act completes Colbert’s welfare work to the seafarers. Trinity House On its own, England has been taking care of her mariners for long. The Guild which became in 1514, through a charter by King Henry VIII, the Maste

Jean-Baptiste Colbert The late steep rise of the French navy requires hands aboard the warships in unheard-of quantities. The French...