With the assurance that they would be able to take full advantage of the trade, the factors could go about establishing themselves in Spanish America more firmly.
The original asiento treaty had granted the British the sudden and exciting ability to trade their manufactured goods and the products of their empire directly to the Spanish American market. The annual permission ships of five hundred tons were to travel to the trade fair at Portobello each year, carrying merchandise that would supply the colonies of South and Central America and fill the purses of British merchants. The British almost immediately encountered problems with this arrangement, however; the “annual” trade fair was far from being a yearly event, and often the British vessel had no indication of when or if the fair would happen before departing London. Recognizing this difficulty, the Spanish king agreed that a fair would be held each year in his American domains, and that he would advise the company annually as to when the Spanish galleons, or flota, planned to depart from Cádiz for the relevant port. If the Spanish ships had not left by June, the British would be allowed to sail alone, but would be required to wait in the Spanish American port for up to four months. When the Spanish galleons arrived, or when four months had passed, the British were permitted to sell their goods to the Spanish American traders who flocked from as far away as present-day Peru and Mexico in order to purchase European goods.130
The more frequent trade in slaves conducted by the South Sea Company posed its own problems for the exact fulfillment of the 1713 version of the asiento treaty. This early iteration of the agreement prohibited the British from bringing any trade goods into the Spanish Americas apart from those transported on the annual permission ship. The vicissitudes of the slave trade, subject to supply and demand, made this particularly difficult, according to the company’s merchants. Company or private ships traveled to the coast of Africa, carrying goods to trade in exchange for slaves; however, the rates of exchange were not constant, and the ships could easily leave the African coast with some of the trade goods they had originally expected to need in purchasing enslaved laborers. The company’s supercargoes argued that if they could not bring these goods with them to the Spanish American ports, they would be forced to throw them into the sea at a great loss. Though the Spanish crown insisted that the company not be allowed to sell these excess goods, they were to be allowed to transport this cargo to the Indies and deposit it in the royal storehouses, to be secured by keys held by the royal officials of the port and a representative of the company.131
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