La Tortuga is the second largest Venezuelan island (approximately 24 by 10 kilometers). Covered with shrubs, deprived of fresh water, it remained deserted for a long time (even mammals did not manage to catch on there). Everything was changed by European policy: in 1597, Spain closed the access to the sea salt of Portuguese ports to the Netherlands, which had rebelled against its king, and without it, the trade of salted herring with the Baltic countries, which brought huge profits, stopped. The Dutch decided to send convoys (cargo ships under military escort) to the salt marshes of New Andalusia, but already in 1605 the Portuguese fleet burned and captured all the ships of the northern "intruders".
The Dutch paid attention to the deserted island by chance. In the 17th century, taking away the northeast of Brazil (with sugar plantations) from the Portuguese for several decades, they used salt transporters (zoutvaerders) to transport soldiers and military supplies to the New World. To prevent the ships from returning empty, their captains were ordered to load with salt on the islands of Bonaire and Curacao - and on the same route, the sailors paid attention to the salt flats of Tortuga. Fortunately for them, the Spanish military engineer Juan Bautista Antonelli, who surveyed the island, considered the reserves there to be insignificant - and the Spaniards did not send troops there, as they did on other islands off the Caribbean coast of the continent. This gave the Netherlands a chance to gain a foothold and start mining salt peacefully.
Scientists who have explored the space of La Tortuga describe it as a collection of landscapes (scapes) - a complex unity of everyday practices, objects and natural conditions that make up the historically unique environment of the island. In total, archaeologists have identified three such "scape": the landscape of the bay, salt marsh and battle.
Sun, salt and sand
The meeting of the 17th century Dutchman with La Tortuga began at sea, when a strip of coastline opened to him - lush vegetation, white sandy beaches and turquoise water. However, experienced sailors knew that this was a mirage: only barren mangroves grew on the coast, the habitat of mosquitoes and midges, and the coastal waters were teeming with stingrays, moray eels and stinging corals. The bay of Punta Salinas was extremely inconvenient for ships - there were few places where sailors could safely drop anchor. Currently, ballast (stones, tiles, bricks) testifies to the transport with salt - they were thrown to the bottom to make room for the cargo.
La Tortuga aerial view
The members of the expedition divided their time between ships, the coast and the salt marsh. The skiffs scurried between the flutes and the wooden dock, carrying people, shovels, wheelbarrows and cannons. The tracks of the pier, made of solid wood, fortified with fascines and sand, can still be seen in aerial photographs of the bay. The crews of flutes (with the exception of captains and soldiers) spent all day on salt marshes, under the scorching sun and attacks of insects - and the very ships on which they gathered to dine (with Dutch provisions) and smoke pipes reminded them of home.
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Fort on La Tortuga (reconstruction by archaeologists)
And in the morning the sailors set off inland. Insects pounced on them, white sand blinded the eyes. Soon the smell of rotten mangroves signaled the proximity of the salt marshes. Every spring, towards the end of the dry season, water evaporated from the lagoons, and there crystallized white-pink layers of salt. When they were removed, poured into sacks and loaded onto ships, the lagoon had to be “recharged” by hand: the Dutch carried seawater there for several days in a row. It was possible to work in such conditions only at night, but even then salt mining drove dozens of Europeans into the grave. It took 28,344 salt cars and two and a half months to fill the holds of the seven flutes, according to a Spanish sailor. During the 1630s, despite the periodic raids of the Castilians, the Dutch established a powerful platform of pine boards between the pier and the lagoon,and the buckets were replaced by hand pumps. Finally, they were not too lazy to build a complex system of canals, dams and areas for drying salt, significantly expanding the area of production.
Ambushes and sabotage
But then the engineer Antonelli, who found out about the Dutch fisheries under the very noses of the Spaniards, decided to act smarter. Taking advantage of the absence of the Dutch in the winter, he drove one hundred Kumanagoto Indians and 50 soldiers with shovels. They dug two channels from the salt marsh to the sea, and as a result, the lagoon was filled with rough waters. Antonelli correctly calculated that the forces of ebb and flow would prevent the canals from closing. Even if the Dutch fill the canals, it will take at least several years to pump out water and remove silt from the bottom of the lagoon. Even so, the engineer ordered six pies with 50 Indians and 20 Spaniards to be kept ready - this mobile group could reopen the canals in a couple of days.
The industrious Dutch merchants did not despair and tried to turn the destruction wrought by their enemies to their advantage. They turned the lagoon connected to the sea into a huge reservoir of salt water, which they poured into the previously useless surrounding ponds. However, the last word remained with the Spaniards - it was always easier to destroy than to build. The soldiers of the Governor of New Andalusia dug another canal and flooded all the salt marshes.
The attack by the Spaniards and Indians on the Dutch fort. Drawing by Juan Bautista Antonelli
Although most of the time spent on the island was occupied by routine (watering, digging and transporting salt), most of the traces in the archaeological chronicle of La Tortuga were left by the battles of the Dutch with the Spaniards, who tried to block their enemies from accessing the industries. After the first, unsuccessful skirmish for them in 1630, the Dutch sailors built an earthen bastion on the coast, and placed three cannons there: one looked at the ships, the other at the salt swamp, and the third towards the hill, from where the Spanish landing had earlier attacked. But in 1633, the new governor, Arias Montano, again successfully attacked, beating off one flute from the Dutch.
After several calm seasons (the sailors even managed to eliminate the consequences of the destruction), in 1638, the Spaniards prepared a new landing. 13 pie with Spanish musketeers and Indian archers quietly sailed to the western part of the island. However, then they were seen from the Dutch reconnaissance sloop. Alas, the latter wanted to learn more about the enemies and sent three more sloops towards them. The Spaniards managed to capture one of them and find out data on the number and deployment of the Dutch garrison. At dawn, Montano's troops went on the attack and for four hours stormed the fort under fire from cannons and muskets. By ten in the morning, they managed to cut a hole in the wooden wall with axes and burst inside, killing all the defenders.
Archaeological evidence
It was the fort that became the main harvest of archaeologists. The first exploration pit gave the scientists fragments of pipes and bowls - apparently, they stumbled upon a garbage heap. Further excavations revealed a massive sand embankment surrounded on all sides by a moat. For all the ephemerality of this structure from the point of view of defense, the Dutch were not too lazy to dig trenches. Fragments of 20 vessels collected on the territory of the fort are extremely diverse - these are tableware, and items for storage and cooking, American, Dutch, German, made of porcelain, ceramics, glass and metal.
Apart from the shards, archaeologists have found many bones. Most (about 600) belonged to rabbits - but it is unclear whether they were brought by ship or caught locally on the dunes of La Tortuga. The rest - to pigs and cows (28), birds (43). The lack of shells of local mollusks and fish bones suggests that the Dutch were afraid to eat the local fauna and ate either brought food or animals they were familiar with on the island. No traces of hearths were found on the island: apparently, the sailors and musketeers feared fires in the fort (next to the stocks of gunpowder) and cooked on ships.
Shards
Finally, hundreds of unused musket bullets of various calibers and several cannonballs were found at the site. It is noteworthy that no shells were found off the coast to the east, south and northeast of the fort. The spatial distribution of the finds indicates that musket fire was opened from the south and south-west towards the north and north-west: this line of fire exactly corresponds to the fatal attack of the Spaniards in 1638 (as shown in drawings by contemporaries).
Psychological warfare
However, even these meager finds allowed scientists to penetrate the psyche of the parties who fought for the island. Thus, the moat, embankment and palisade indicate the common sense of the Dutch captains: they reasoned that their enemies get to La Tortuga only on pies, where heavy artillery cannot be placed. This means that a small fort with four light cannons and a couple of dozen musketeers is sufficient for the defense of the fields. In addition to prudence, scientists emphasize the Dutch skill in controlling the natural environment of the island: canals, sluice gates, walkways and pumps - these structures have forever changed the landscape of La Tortuga.
Moreover, the Dutch were confident that their hard work would overpower the chaotic gestures of destructive despair on the part of the Castilian masters of Venezuela: a raid, another raid, but then everything could be fixed anyway. However, as history has shown, the calculating Dutch underestimated the Spaniards' tenacity - and the luck that came with it.
But it cannot be said that one of the parties lost to the other: the Dutch included the same capitalist calculation and estimated that further resistance to raids from the mainland would be too expensive - it would be more profitable to look for salt elsewhere.