Spanish planners responded to English, French, and Dutch raiding by concentrating trade fleets at Havana and sending them across the Atlantic under naval escort. Convoys protected merchant shipping by combining it with naval force, the same logic used by later wartime convoy systems. The regular system also revealed where valuable traffic would assemble, roughly when it would sail, and how strong its escort might be. An attacker who captured the convoy could take its wealth without assuming the cost of administering the colonies that produced it.
Chapter · 6:50-9:16
Havana as Spain's convoy hub
Havana's protected harbour gathered Spanish trade and naval escorts into a single, wealthy but predictable Atlantic convoy system.