During the period of the English Commonwealth, Admiral Stayner pounded to pieces a West Indian treasure fleet of eight sail, and from one of them took two millions in silver, while Blake fought his way into the harbor of Teneriffe and destroyed another splendid argosy under the guns of the forts. It is recorded that thirty-eight wagons were required to carry the gold and jewels thus obtained from Portsmouth to London. The records of the British Admiralty have preserved a memorandum of the prize money distributed to the officers and men of the _Active_ and _Favorite_ from the treasures taken in the _Hermione_ galleon off Cadiz in 1762, and it is a document to make a modern mariner sigh for the days of his forefathers. Here is treasure finding as it used to flourish: The Admiral and the Commander of the Fleet.... $324,815 The Captain of the _Active_................... 332,265 Each of three Commissioned Officers........... 65,000 " " Eight Warrant Officers................ 21,600 " " Twenty Officers....................... 9,030 " " 150 Seamen and Marines................ 2,425 The Captain of the _Favorite_................. 324,360 Each of 2 Commissioned Officers............... 64,870 " " 77 Warrant Officers................... 30,268 " " 15 Petty Officers..................... 9,000 " " 100 Seamen and Marines................ 2,420 In 1702 it happened that no treasure fleet had returned to Spain for three years, and the gold and silver and costly merchandise were piling up at Cartagena and Porto Bello and Vera Cruz waiting for shipment. Spain was torn with strife over the royal succession, and inasmuch as the king claimed as his own one-fifth of all the treasure coming from the New World, the West India Company and the officials of the treasury kept the galleons away until it should be known who had the better right to the cargoes. Moreover, the high seas were perilous for the passage of treasure ships, what with the havoc wrought by the cursed English men-of-war and privateers, not to mention the buccaneers of San Domingo and the Windward Islands who had a trick of storming aboard a galleon from any crazy little craft that would float a handful of them. Timidly the galleons delayed until a fleet of French men-of-war was sent out to convey them home, and at length this richest argosy that ever furrowed blue water, freighted with three years' treasure from the mines, made its leisurely way into mid-ocean by way of the Azores, bound to the home port of Cadiz. There were forty sail in all, seventeen of the plate fleet, under Don Manuel de Velasco, and twenty-three French ships-of-the-line and frigates obeying the Admiral's pennant of the Count of Chateaurenaud.