Armamento y hombres de armas en la navegación comercial del Cantábrico oriental (1480-1550)

Abstract

This work aims to analyze how the merchant ships and their crew were put together, who traded between the eastern Cantabric and northern Europe at the end of the 15th century and the first half of the 16th century. To this end, the data provided by the charter agreements conserved for the period have been extracted, and have been contrasted with what happened in other commercial routes, such as the American one, or in other regions, such as the Netherlands. To reach the conclusion that the largest number of guns and armed persons, which by customary law should carry the Castilian commercial vessels for protection, and the navigation in small joint fleets, not only served to suffer few assaults, they were the example to be followed by other countries.