Hlaoroo wrote:Most likely British currency, I'd think. Pounds, shillings, pence and all that. Actually they'd use Spanish dollars (pieces of eight) too.
This was a Spanish sea at the time, so they'd be using Reals and Spanish Dollars. I did a post about that a while back. I don't recall if there was a smaller denomination Spanish coin than a Real, there were a lot of pennies or equivalent, and they varied in size by country.
Edit: per 1632 document below, the "Maravedi" was 1/34th of a Real but by this time inflation had made it effectively worthless.
A Dollar was a silver coin that weighed an ounce and worth 8 Reals, so it was also known as the Peso (peso de ocho reales). Historically it wasn't often called "Pieces of Eight" in English, though it was sometimes cut into quarters (2 Reals) using the cross on one side as a guide, and it's traditional to use the "Pieces of Eight" expression in pirate fiction. It was a popular international currency, used widely throughout Europe (along with the original German and Dutch "Thalers"), and was the basis of the American Dollar.
I just checked, it wasn't until the 1800s that England really started pushing British currency into their Caribbean colonies.
You'd get a lot of other countries "thalers" or "dollars", but since they're all nominally an ounce of silver it's unlikely anyone would comment on them.
If you do have British currency, it'll be Pennies (1/240 of a pound of silver), maybe a few gold Sovereigns (nominally worth a pound of silver, but in this part of the world the exchange rate fluctuated wildly because it's where most of the gold and silver came from at this time) and Shillings (1/20th of a pound, so worth 0.8 Dollars or a little over three quarters). It's complex, I'd just stick to Reals and Dollars. A Real would be worth maybe two British pennies.
Edit: more than you ever wanted to know about 17th century currency:
http://1632.org/1632Slush/1632money.rtf --- This one says a Real is worth six British pence, which doesn't match my calculations based on the nominal weight of silver. So I'd toss it all and go with Spanish currency.
Gold currency would be the "Dubloon" which was nominally worth 16 Dollars and equivalent to a British Sovereign.
(this all probably contradicts some of my earlier post in details, like I said it's complex)
