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408 Miguel Ángel de Bunes Ibarra

maintained. In the 1530s the office was made permanent and its
headquarters established in the port of Malaga.
The only accounts that survive in Rena’s papers concern the five
galleys commissioned from shipbuilders based in the dockyards of
Barcelona, and those relating to the conversion of the four other galleys
destined to transport the large number of horses that were embarked
in Spain, mostly belonging to the numerous nobles who took part in the
campaign . Clearly, the expenditure contained in Rena’s documents is
32
but a small part of the total. The numerous ships that were embargoed
in the Spanish ports had to be paid for, but we have no surviving
evidence of the cost of this. However, it is possible to give some
indication of the cost of constructing another two galleys built in
Mallorca, although we have only indirect references for these. In the
absence of documentation, it is impossible to say what differences there
were in ship construction in the different Spanish ports, but there must
have been some as monarchs expressed preference for some over
others. Among the active dockyards of the period, for example, it
appears that Charles V preferred those of Barcelona to those of Seville.
True, this could be due to the shortage of wood in the vicinity of the
southern port after so many years of excessive demands for such
primary materials from that region. As for the Neapolitan dockyards,
they had the reputation of producing ships of lesser quality and at a
higher cost than those of the Drassanes Reials (Royal Dockyards) of
Barcelona. Quality and convenience rather than cost may have affected
the emperor’s decision to use Barcelona for this campaign. For example,
we know that the cost of building a galley in Gibraltar, without artillery,
came to between 2143 and 2243 ducats, somewhat cheaper than those
he ordered from the Catalan dockyards. As the ambassador, Figueroa,
confirmed, the cheapest of all shipbuilding bases available to the
emperor were to be found in Genoa, but the emperor did not want to
place an order for galleys or other shipping with them at this juncture,
although they were allies and close collaborators .
33
Returning to the detailed information from Rena’s accounts we get
a glimpse of the complexity of the process of fitting out fleets in the
sixteenth century. The accounts for the different galleys were signed
by Luis del Puerto, mosén Fernando Ranese or Antonio Busto. It is an

32 A. de Ceballos-Escalera Gila, Guerra y Nobleza en la jornada de Túnez: Los
Capitanes del César, in A. Alvar Ezquerra, J.I. Ruiz Rodríguez (eds.), Túnez 1535:
Halcones y halconeros en la diplomacia y la monarquía española, Gremio de Halconeros
del Reino de España, Madrid, 2010, pp. 123-153.
33 R. Quatrefages, La Proveeduria des Armadas cit., pp. 223-224 which relies on the
documents from the Consejo de Guerra (Council of War) to be found in Ags, Guerra
Antigua, 12, n. 107.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XVII - Agosto 2020
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)