Trade Last update 4th September 2001
Trade, Cargos and Supplies what towns make, want, will pay, will trade for, will steal, will ignore, how much they'll take
The general mechanics of trading in a port. Trade routes, government bribery, and impacts of piracy on trade are discussed in the campaign section.
The Caribbean was a place of abundant opportunity wrapped in the humid, hostile environment of the tropics. At least it was for some. For others it was a difficult life from which escape was a dream.
Generally, good money was to be made was in shifting cargoes. Merchants took their tithe on the movement and sale of goods, navies on the taxes of the movement and sale of merchants cargoes, and the pirates by stealing the merchants goods and selling them for themselves without government taxes being paid. It was all a money making system, and at the far end were the poor consumers suckered into supporting them all with the fruits of their hard labour.
The best money to be made for everybody at sea was in the shipping of luxury goods: looted indian treasures, furniture, gems, dyes and weapons. However, by far the most common booty was of course the day to day necessities: sugar, tobacco, fish, rum, clothes, foodstuffs, lumber and other simple pleasures.
Of course, shipping goods was pointless if there was no market, as a bunch of Irish smugglers discovered when they sailed for the Bahamas with a shipload of huskies.
One other factor affected the shipping of goods in the Caribbean and east American coast: corruption. Some towns and provinces were prone to corruption of some form: shady governors taking a kickback for favours or even backing ventures, or turning a blind eye to the goings on in the lower end of town; merchants maintaining artifically high prices in their market place, or those fearing competition in the captive markets.
By this period trade can be broken into three styles: