The Spanish treasure fleet, also called silver fleet, plate fleet (from the Spanish plata meaning "silver"), or West Indies Fleet from Spanish Flota de Indias, was a convoy system adopted by the Spanish Empire from 1566 to 1790. The convoys were general purpose cargo fleets used for transporting a wide variety of items, including agricultural goods, lumber, various metal resources, luxuries, silver, gold, gems, pearls, spices, sugar, tobacco, silk, and other exotic goods from the Spanish Empire in the Americas to Spain. Manufactures such as tools and other everyday items as well as Spanish colonisers were transported in the opposite direction.
Read more about Spanish Treasure Fleet: History, The Flow of Spanish Treasure
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“I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)
“A self-denial, no less austere than the saint’s, is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, and forgo all things for that, and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“On the middle of that quiet floor
sits a fleet of small black ships,
square-rigged, sails furled, motionless,
their spars like burned matchsticks.”
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)