Portobelo, Panama

Where is Portobelo and why did it matter?

Christopher Columbus named the bay Puerto Bello, “beautiful harbour”, in 1502. Spain founded the town of San Felipe de Portobelo on 20 March 1597 to replace Nombre de Dios, an older port further along the coast that was exposed to attack and plagued by fever.

Portobelo mattered because of where it sat. Silver from the mines of Peru came north by sea to Panama City, on the Pacific side of the isthmus, the narrow neck of land joining the two Americas. From there long trains of mules carried it overland to Portobelo on the Caribbean. That short crossing linked Spain’s Pacific empire to the Atlantic, and Portobelo was its Caribbean door.

How did the Portobelo fair work?

Spain sent its trade to South America in an armed convoy called the galleons of Tierra Firme. The galleons left Spain in August and stopped first at Cartagena, then sailed on to Portobelo. Merchants from Lima, who had brought the king’s silver and their own across the isthmus, met them there.

For a few weeks the little town became one of the busiest markets in the Americas. Peruvian silver bought European goods: cloth, wine, olive oil, iron and much more. Prices and rents were famously high, and the streets were packed. When the fair ended, the galleons sailed for Havana to join the fleet from Mexico for the voyage home to Spain.

How often were the fairs held around 1715?

Far less often than Spain intended. From the 1630s fairs came only every five or six years on average, and by the game’s era the system was failing. Historian Geoffrey Walker found that in the nearly twenty-five years after the fair of 1696, Lima’s merchants met the galleons only once, at the fair of 1708. After 1708 there was no fair until 1722.

Fairs followed in June 1726 and early in 1731, but each one disappointed Spanish traders, who lost sales to smuggled goods and to officials who took bribes. In 1722 more than nine Dutch ships waited at the nearby Bastimentos islands, and by one estimate they took about half the Peruvian silver. A fair was organised in 1737 but collapsed, so the fair of 1731 was the last. Spain formally abolished the galleons in 1754.

What was the South Sea Company’s annual ship?

Smuggling was nothing new. In 1708 twenty-odd British trading sloops gathered at Portobelo under the guard of a 60-gun warship. But after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Britain gained a legal opening. Its South Sea Company held the asiento, the contract to supply enslaved Africans to Spain’s American colonies, and with it the right to send one licensed ship of 500 tons to each fair.

The company stretched that right as far as it could. Its Royal George came to the 1722 fair and sold more than 1,000 tons of goods, about 30 per cent cheaper than the galleons, which hurt the Spanish merchants badly. The Prince Frederick was held at Veracruz from 1725, and the Prince William made large profits at Portobelo in 1731.

The asiento’s main business was the trade in people. Portobelo was one of the ports where enslaved Africans were brought in under it, though exact numbers for the town have not been established.

Why was Portobelo called unhealthy?

Portobelo was notorious for fever. Fairs were kept to between 15 and 40 days, because yellow fever killed visitors who stayed too long, especially newcomers from Europe.

Between fairs the town almost emptied. Disease, poor food and the hot, wet climate drove away nearly everyone except the soldiers of the garrison and people long used to the place. Wealthy families lived in Panama City instead. Panamanian historian Alfredo Castillero Calvo describes a town that came alive only at fair time.

What happened when Henry Morgan and Admiral Vernon attacked?

Two famous attacks fall either side of the game’s era. In July 1668, nearly fifty years before it, the buccaneer Henry Morgan landed about 500 men from canoes, marched overland, and took Portobelo’s forts within hours. He demanded a ransom of 100,000 pesos, and his total haul came to about 250,000 pesos. Buccaneers were raiders who attacked Spanish towns, often with a licence from English or French governors.

In November 1739, after the game’s era, the British admiral Edward Vernon captured Portobelo from the Spanish commander Francisco Javier de la Vega. Britain celebrated wildly. The Survey of London records that Portobello Farm, west of London, was “so named in honour of the capture of Puerto Bello by Admiral Vernon in 1739”. The lane to the farm became today’s Portobello Road. Mount Vernon in Virginia was named after the admiral himself.

What can you see at Portobelo today?

Portobelo is now a small town, and its stone ruins are among the best-known sights on Panama’s Caribbean coast. The forts of Santiago, San Jerónimo and San Fernando look old enough to have faced Morgan, but most of what stands today comes from a rebuilding of 1753 to 1760, after Vernon’s attack.

In 1980 UNESCO made the fortifications of Portobelo and San Lorenzo, both on Panama’s Caribbean side, a World Heritage Site. On 27 June 2012 it placed them on its List of World Heritage in Danger, pointing to environmental damage, lack of maintenance, unplanned building nearby and a shortage of money.

The area also keeps a living culture. The Congo tradition of Panama’s Caribbean coast, which includes Portobelo, is celebrated by descendants of enslaved Black people who rebelled. From 20 January to Ash Wednesday, a queen and her court, the congos, and the diablos, or devils, perform dances and plays, ending when the devils are “baptised”. It is passed down by word of mouth, and UNESCO recognised it in 2018. Every October, pilgrims also travel to Portobelo for the festival of its Black Christ statue.