Term
Flota
also known as Spanish treasure fleet
Definition
The Spanish annual convoy system, in operation from 1566 to 1790, that carried the bullion of Peru and New Spain across the Atlantic to Seville. The system organised the silver economy into two fleets: the Flota de Nueva España, which sailed from Veracruz, and the Galeones de Tierra Firme, which sailed from Portobelo on the Panamanian Caribbean coast. The fleets converged at Havana and crossed the Atlantic together under heavy escort. The flota was the prize that organised most seventeenth-century Caribbean piracy and the convoy system that made the bullion economy possible in the first place.
