mander of the Fleet.... $324,815
The Captain of the _Active_................... 332,265
Each of three Commissioned Officers........... 65,000
" " Eight Warrant Officers................ 21,600
" " Twenty Officers....................... 9,030
" " 150 Seamen and Marines................ 2,425
The Captain of the _Favorite_................. 324,360
Each of 2 Commissioned Officers............... 64,870
" " 77 Warrant Officers................... 30,268
" " 15 Petty Officers..................... 9,000
" " 100 Seamen and Marines................ 2,420

In 1702 it happened that no treasure fleet had returned to Spain for
three years, and the gold and silver and costly merchandise were piling
up at Cartagena and Porto Bello and Vera Cruz waiting for shipment.
Spain was torn with strife over the royal succession, and inasmuch as
the king claimed as his own one-fifth of all the treasure coming from
the New World, the West India Company and the officials of the treasury
kept the galleons away until it should be known who had the better
right to the cargoes. Moreover, the high seas were perilous for the
passage of treasure ships, what with the havoc wrought by the cursed
English men-of-war and privateers, not to mention the buccaneers of San
Domingo and the Windward Islands who had a trick of storming aboard a
galleon from any crazy little craft that would float a handful of them.

Timidly the galleons delayed until a fleet of French men-of-war was
sent out to convey them home, and at length this richest argosy that
ever furrowed blue water, freighted with three years' treasure from the
mines, made its leisurely way into mid-ocean by way of the Azores,
bound to the home port of Cadiz. There were forty sail in all,
seventeen of the plate fleet, under Don Manuel de Velasco, and
twenty-three French ships-of-the-line and frigates obeying the
Admiral's pennant of the Count of Chateaurenaud.

The news came to Queen Anne that this fleet had departed from the
Spanish Main, and a squadron of twenty-seven British war vessels,
commanded by the famous Sir Cloudesley Shovel, was fitted out to
intercept and attack it. The manoeuvres of the hunted galleons and
their convoy wear an aspect grimly humorous as pictured in the letters
and narratives of that time. One of these explains that "the fleet was
performing its voyage always with the fear that the enemy was lying in
wait fo