The Navio de Permiso permitted a single yearly trading ship, the Annual Ship, which could carry 1000 tons of imports to the yearly trade fair in Porto Bello.
He made his first voyage to the Americas in 1720, and in 1721 he was involved in the suppression of smuggling in Cartagena and Portobelo.
In 1742 a cottage was built on what is now the High Street (close to the junction with what is now Brighton Place) by a seaman by the name of George Hamilton, who had served under Admiral Edward Vernon during the 1739 capture of Porto Bello, Panama, meaning literally "beautiful port or harbour", and who named the cottage Portobello Hut in honour of that victory.
From the 16th to the 18th centuries, it was an important silver-exporting port in New Granada on the Spanish Main and one of the ports on the route of the Spanish treasure fleets.
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Across the British Isles, Portobello was used in place and street names in honor of the victory, such as Portobello Road in London, the Portobello area in Edinburgh, and the Portobello Barracks in Dublin.
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Despite the Portobelo campaign, British efforts to gain a foothold in the Spanish Main and disrupt the galleon trade were fruitless.
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Portobelo is a port city in Colón Province, Panama, established during the Spanish colonial period.
In particular, the term is most strongly associated with that stretch of the Caribbean coastline that runs from the ports of Porto Bello on the Isthmus of Darien in Panama, through Cartagena de Indias in New Granada, and Maracaibo to the Orinoco delta.
The silver was usually unloaded in Panama, then put in mule trains and taken first to Nombre de Dios, and then, following the demise of that city in the late sixteenth century, to Portobello.
The capture of Porto Bello was welcomed as an exceptionally popular triumph throughout Britain and America, and the name of Portobello came to be used in commemoration at a variety of locations, such as the Portobello Road in London, the Portobello district of Edinburgh and also in Dublin; as well as Porto Bello in Virginia.
Thus, similar Spanish fortifications of the 17th-18th centuries can be found in Cuba, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Veracruz and Acapulco, Mexico, Portobelo and Panama City, Panamá,and many other Latin American locations which were part of the Spanish Empire during the Age of Exploration.
The English, under Admiral Edward Vernon, had created havoc in the Spanish trade with the Indies, taking Portobelo, Panama in 1739, and laying siege to Cartagena (Colombia), which they did not succeed in taking.