Who Were the Phoenicians? Part VIII – Importance and Value of Trade

When someone begins talking about the Phoenicians bringing Mulek and his friends to the Land of Promise, it should be recognized that unlike fiction where people do things for the fun of it and with no consideration for costs and profit, the real world functions around such mundane needs.

Ships were costly. Manning them was costly. In order to recoup the building and operating costs, any endeavor in which the ship was to be used had to bring a profit to the owners, backers, and supporters of the venture. An example of this commerce is found in the voyage of Magellan, who set out from Spain with five ships provided by King Charles V.

The expedition was funded largely by the Spanish Crown, which provided the five ships carrying supplies for two years of travel. Cartographers were hired to develop and make the maps to be used in the travel. They obtained the participation of merchant Christopher de Haro, who provided a quarter of the funds needed for the enterprise as well as the goods to barter in trade.

Magellan’s flag ship, the Trinidad, was a caravel, and the other four were carracks (naus). They set sail on September 20, 1519, under Magellan’s command, who had been raised to the rank of Commander of the Order of Santiago, with a total crew of 237 men. Magellan stopped in the Canary Islands, then sailed on to Cape Verde where he set a course for Cape St. Augustine in Brazil. On November 27, the expedition crossed the equator and on December 6 sighted South America, eventually anchoring near present-day Rio de Janeiro.

After losing one ship and another deserting and returning to Spain, Magellan reached the Pacific Ocean after passing through the straits that now bear his name. On March 16, 1521, Magellan reached the Philippines with only 150 men remaining. Magellan and much of his crew were killed in a native uprising in the Philippines and the remaining crew were to few to man three ships, so one was abandoned and burned. In order to navigate through the shallows and shoals of Indonesia to the Spice Islands, today called the Maluku Islands and the Banda Islands. In order to navigate the shallows in their deep sea ships, they hired Moro natives to act as pilots and guide them through the dangerous waters.

After successfully trading their goods for the spices, the two heavily-laden ships set out to return home. The smaller Victoria headed west into the Indian Ocean, but the larger Trinidad headed east, back across the Pacific but could not make headway and was eventually captured by the Portuguese. After traveling 37,560 miles, the Victoria with 26 tons of spices of cloves and cinnamon, arrived home on September 6, 1522, three years after departing, with only 18 of the original 237 aboard. 219 men had died during the expedition.

The spices of the Victoria were sold by the Spanish government for so large a sum of money that the king was remunerated for the whole cost of the expedition, and even made a very large profit from a transaction which had cost a great deal in its outfit. Thus we see how the merchants of ancient times viewed the value of trade and commerce. In the time shortly after Magellan’s voyage, Spain and Portugal fought wars in the distant waters over who controlled the routes to the Philippines and the Moluccas (Spice Islands).

With this in mind, it is easy to see that the Phoenicians, who were merchants and traders and not a militant naval force, invested heavily in their ships and crews to carry goods far and wide for the purpose of profit. As stated in an earlier post, the Phoenicians traded for tin in England, and sailed around Africa for the purpose of setting up trading ports and arranging trade partners.

To think that such ships and seamen involved in extremely profitable trade would use one of their ships to take a group of Jews across the Atlantic, which no ship had done up to that time (and none did until the 15th century) is foolhardy and a total misunderstanding of what drove the use of ships and mariners from the earliest times.

The Phoenicians were traders and merchants—they were never explorers and settlers. To use them for the purpose of getting the Mulekites to Mesoamerica is totally out of character for these people and such an event never would have taken place.