Note (return) — Chapter I

If the Flota sailed from Spain in July it generally arrived at Vera Cruz in the first fifteen days of September, and the ships were at once laid up until March, when the crews reassembled to careen and refit them. If the fleet was to return in the same year, however, the exports of New Spain and adjacent provinces, the goods from China and the Philippines carried across Mexico from the Pacific port of Acapulco, and the ten or twelve millions of treasure for the king, were at once put on board and the ships departed to join the galleons at Havana. Otherwise the fleet sailed from Vera Cruz in April, and as it lay dead to the leeward of Cuba, used the northerly winds to about 25°, then steered south-east and reached Havana in eighteen or twenty days. By the beginning of June it was ready to sail for Spain, where it arrived at the end of July, by the same course as that followed by the galleons.27