The slave trade was therefore the means Cuba was forced to adopt to supply the lack of white laborers and artisans. It was subject to the same restrictions as all maritime commerce, with the important difference that it could not be carried on without a special permission from the king, which usually fixed the number of years in which a certain number of slaves should be granted certain individuals, companies or corporations. These permissions were called licenses, later assientos, and finally contracts and privileges, until in the year 1789 they entirely ceased to exist. A British concern, called the South Sea Company, had been the first to receive such a privilege, when in 1713 it was allowed to introduce into the colonies of Latin America, with absolute exclusion of Spaniards and foreigners, four thousand eight hundred negroes in the course of thirty years. Next came the permiso obtained by the Compania Mercantil of Havana in the year 1740, of which use was made until 1766. Then came the contract concluded with the Marquis de Casa Enrile, which lasted from 1773 to 1779; and finally the permission granted in the year 1780 on account of the war with England, that most Spaniards in America could have recourse to the French colonies for their supply of slaves. The manner in which this trade in human flesh was carried on reflects sadly upon those engaged in this traffic. Loaded into vessels that were hardly considered fit for carrying freight, thousands were known to have perished in shipwrecks. Crowded into the dark, unventilated holds of these rotten hulks, more thousands succumbed to disease and were thrown overboard. Of the trades associated with cruel exploitation and inhuman abuses, that of the slavetrader ranked first, for the sufferings to which the poor victims were subjected in the transit from their native home to the foreign land defied description. There were captains of slave ships who loathed their task. One is quoted in a book by the Jesuit Sandeval as confessing his misgivings about the business; he had just suffered a shipwreck in which only thirty out of nine hundred on board escaped!