it will be necessary for Governor Don Alonso Fajardo
to devise immediate means for building galleons and to repair the six
at Manila. I regard the present building of ships in that country
as impossible. For with the former ships and fleets, and with the
depredations and deaths caused by the enemy in those districts the
natives are quite exhausted; for, as I said above, in the former
year of six hundred and seventeen the Mindanao enemy captured four
hundred native carpenters and killed more than two hundred others. The
year before that, six hundred and sixteen, in the expedition made by
Don Juan de Silva to the strait of Cincapura, where he died, it was
found from lists that more than seven hundred Indians, of those taken
as common seamen (of whom more than two hundred were carpenters),
died on that expedition. Before that, in the year six hundred and
fourteen, the said Mindanao enemy captured in the islands of Pintados
nine hundred odd Indians, of whom but few have been ransomed. In the
shipbuilding and in the hauling of wood many have died. Consequently,
on account of all combined, there is a lack of natives for the above
works. Therefore your Majesty must order the said Don Alonso Fajardo,
governor and captain-general of the said islands, that in case galleons
are to be built, it should not be in the islands--on the one hand,
on account of the short time that those woods last, and on the other
because of the lack in that land of natives (occurring through the
above-mentioned causes, and because those natives in the islands are
serving in the fleets as common seamen and carpenters).

In order that, those islands might have and keep ships that last thirty
years and cost the same as in Manila, or less, your Majesty must
order the governor to order them built in Yndia in Cochim; for they
can be built there very strong, and at less cost if the said governor
sends men for it from Manila--both masters and other persons, who know
the art of having them built. When built, they can bring a cargo of
military supplies, lumber, and slaves from Cochin to Manila for the
galleys of Manila, for the said slaves are valued at very little in
Cochin. As common seamen the men used in navigating in those regions
will serve, namely, the Lascars; and a ship of six hundred toneladas
does not carry sixteen Spanish sailors, but negroes and Lascars (who
are a Mahometan race), with whom navigation is performed throughout
those islands and kingdo