SHIPWRECK (AND HOARD) HISTORIES
Throughout
this catalog we offer coins and artifacts from dozens of different
shipwrecks—“treasure” in the truest sense! While we did not want to
break up the flow of the catalog in the listings, we did want to offer a bit
of history behind each wreck concerned, so we present these histories here
in chronological order. Please feel free to contact us for more information
about any of these wrecks or about shipwrecks or treasure in general. After
each wreck title, follow the galleon icon
back to the top of the page.
Click
the name below to go to that wreck/hoard:
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“Tumbaga
wreck,” sunk ca. 1528 off Grand Bahama Island
Before there were coins, before there were Spanish Treasure Fleets,
and even before there were any kind of colonies in the Spanish Main, the
conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men discovered treasure in the form of
native-American gold and silver artifacts. While it is a shame that these
artifacts no longer exist, at least their one-time presence is confirmed by
what have become known as "tumbaga" bars: a group of over 200
silver and gold ingots discovered in the remains of an unidentified ca.-1528
shipwreck off Grand Bahama Island. The artifacts that composed these bars
were apparently lumped together in two piles—one for gold-colored
artifacts and the other for silver-colored artifacts—with great amounts of
impurities (predominantly copper) in each pile. The piles were then melted
as much as possible (not thoroughly) and poured into crude molds that in
some cases were no more than depressions in the sand. The resulting ingots,
called "tumbaga" bars, were then stamped with four types of
markings:
1. Assayer, many in the form of BV with "~" over the B and
"o" over the V, possibly signifying Bernardino Vasquez, one of
Cortés' fellow conquistadors.
2. Fineness, marked in Roman numerals as a percentage of 2400.
3. Serial number, usually in the form of the letter R followed by Roman
numerals.
4. Tax stamp, part of a circular seal whose legend (pieced together)
reads CAROLVS QVINTVS IMPERATOR for Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire.
In 1995 we had the great
fortune to be offered 133 silver bars from this wreck, which divers had
excavated in 1992. These 133 silver bars represented a corner on the market,
as the rest of the bars found (including all the gold bars) were either sold
at auction or doled out to company officials and contractors well before we
made our large purchase.
Each bar is described in detail in the 1993 book Tumbaga Silver for Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, by Douglas Armstrong, a professional conservator hired by the salvage company to clean and preserve all the silver "tumbaga" bars.
“Golden
Fleece wreck,” sunk ca. 1550 in the northern Caribbean
This wreck was nicknamed for a royal stamping (“Golden Fleece”)
on several of the gold “finger” bars (ingots) it yielded. Except for a
handful of extremely rare Santo Domingo pieces, all the coins from this
wreck were Mexican Carlos-Juana silver coins (all assayers prior to S),
including several rarities, the most important being three specimens of the
Rincón “Early Series” 8 reales of 1538, the very first 8 reales ever
struck in the New World (the best of which achieved a record in 2006 for the
highest amount ever paid at auction for a Spanish colonial coin:
$373,750!). To date the finders of the wreck have not identified the
wreck or disclosed its exact location, but they have gone on record as
stating it was in international waters in the northern Caribbean. Though it
was a relatively small find (a few thousand coins at most), it has been the
primary source for Mexican Carlos-Juana coins on the market since the
mid-1990s.
Perhaps
more impressive than the coins from this wreck are the few dozen gold and
silver ingots in has yielded, all of which have entered the market
exclusively through Daniel Frank Sedwick. The
varying purities of these bars are reminiscent of the "tumbaga"
bars (see above), although the later gold ingots do seem to have been cast
in somewhat standard shapes (“fingers”) and sizes. The silver ingots
from this wreck, popularly known as “splashes,” were simply poured onto
the ground, leaving a round, flat mound of silver that was subsequently
stamped with a tax stamp (in the form of a crowned C for King Charles I)
and/or a fineness in the usual block Roman numerals in parts per 2400, much
like the karat system we use today. The gold ingots also show a
fineness marking (but no tax stamps or other markings) in parts per 24, with
a dot being a quarter karat. Silver or gold, many of the ingots from this
wreck were cut into two or more parts, presumably to divide into separate
accounts. We believe these "Golden Fleece wreck" ingots are the
only known examples made in the colonies between the "tumbaga"
period of the 1520s and the specimens found on the 1554 Fleet at Padre
Island, Texas (note, in fact, that the very few gold bars recovered from the
Texas wrecks were marked with the same punches as some of the gold
bars from this slightly later wreck).
San
Martín, sunk in 1618 off Vero Beach, Florida
Known locally as the
“Green Cabin wreck,” the San Martín, sunk in a storm on its way
to Spain from Havana, was the almiranta of the Honduran Fleet of
1618. As that Fleet was nowhere near the size of the fleets from Mexico and
South America, the San Martín was not carrying a large amount of
coins or other treasure, most of which was salvaged by the Spanish after the
sinking anyway. Modern salvage efforts on the site since the 1960s, as well
as finds on the beach opposite the wreck, have yielded a few Mexican and
Potosi cobs in generally poor condition.
Atocha,
sunk in 1622 west of Key West, Florida
Arguably the most famous of all Spanish galleons salvaged in our
time, the Atocha
was the almiranta of the 1622 Fleet, which left Havana several weeks
late and soon ran into a hurricane. Eight ships of the 28-ship fleet were
lost, wrecked on the reefs between the Dry Tortugas and the Florida Keys or
sunk in deeper water (see Santa Margarita and the “Dry Tortugas
wreck” below). Five people survived the sinking of the Atocha and
were saved by another vessel, but the wreck itself was scattered after
another hurricane hit the site exactly one month later, so the Spanish were
never able to salvage what was one of the richest galleons ever to sail.
The cargo of the Atocha did
not see light again until 1971 when the first coins were found by the
now-famous salvager Mel Fisher and his divers, who recovered the bulk of the
treasure in 1985 and thereby unleashed the largest supply of silver cobs and
ingots the market has ever seen. Well over 100,000 shield-type cobs were
found in all denominations above the half real, the great majority of them
from Potosí, as were also the approximately 1,000 silver ingots (most the
size of bread loaves). A handful of gold cobs (1 and 2 escudos only) were
also recovered, mostly from mainland Spanish mints but also a few from
Colombia—officially the first gold coins ever struck in the New World. The
Atocha was also the source for most (if not all) of the first silver
cobs struck in Colombia, as well as a few early coins from Mexico, Lima and
Spain, and even Panama. Even
more significant were the many gold ingots, jewelry items, emeralds and
other artifacts.
Because of Mel Fisher’s
huge publicity, and because much of the treasure was distributed to
investors at high ratios compared to their investment amounts, the coins
from the Atocha have always sold for much more—anywhere from two
times to ten times—than their non-salvage counterparts, even in the
numismatic market. (The “glamour market” in tourist areas, by contrast,
elevates these coins to as much as twenty times their base numismatic
value!) Individually numbered
certificates with photos of each coin are critical to the retention of an Atocha
coin’s higher value. Accompanying barcode-tags with the coins also make it
possible to replace lost certificates through a database system at the
Fisher operations in Key West. Each certificate (with some exceptions) also
specifies the coin’s Grade, from 1 (highest) to 4 (lowest), a highly
subjective evaluation of corrosive damage and overall quality. Most Atocha
silver coins are also recognizable by their shiny brightness, the result of
a controversial cleaning and polishing process catering more to jewelry
demand than to serious numismatists.
Santa
Margarita, sunk in 1622
west of Key West, Florida
From the same hurricane-stricken 1622 Fleet as the Atocha
(above), the Santa Margarita sank on a reef within sight of the Atocha
and was found in 1626 by Spanish salvagers, who recovered only roughly half
its treasure. The other half was found by Mel Fisher and company in 1980. Margarita’s
treasures were similar to those found on the Atocha, yet with fewer
coins in comparatively worse condition overall (yet not as harshly cleaned).
As with Atocha coins, original Fisher certificates are critical to
the premium value for these coins, which is on par with Atocha coins.
Early-1630s
hoard in southern Peru
Earlier
this year (2007) a well-known numismatic supplier from Peru started bringing
hundreds of Potosí cobs (mostly 8R but also some 4R and a smattering of
smaller denominations) that had a tell-tale patina in common with each other
and similar dates, a sure sign of a hoard. The latest date in this hoard was
1632, but most of the coins date to 1626-1629, a very interesting period in
Potosí’s numismatic history, as the 1626’s and 1627’s are rare and in
1629 there was a transition in style. The supplier admits that they all come
from one source in southern Peru, but unfortunately that is all we know.
Like most hoard coins, all of these cobs are in high grade.
Concepción,
sunk in 1641 off the northeast coast of Hispaniola
The Concepción was one of the most significant Spanish wrecks
of all time, serving the Spanish with a loss of over 100 tons of
silver and gold treasure. The almiranta of a 21-ship fleet, the Concepción
was already in poor repair when the Europe-bound fleet encountered a
storm in September, leaving her disabled and navigating under makeshift
sails amid disagreement among its pilots about their location. Weeks later,
she grounded on a reef in an area now named the Silver Shoals, just to the
east of another shoal known as the Abrojos, which the pilots were trying to
avoid. After another storm hit the wrecked ship and the admiral and officers
left in the ship’s only longboat, the remaining crew resorted to building
rafts from the ship’s timbers. Survivors’ accounts pointed to drowning,
starvation and even sharks for the loss of around 300 casualties. In the
fallout that ensued, none of the survivors could report the wreck’s
location with accuracy, so it sat undisturbed until New England’s William
Phipps found it in 1687 and brought home tons of silver and some gold, to
the delight of his English backers.
The Concepción was
found again in 1978 by Burt Webber, Jr., whose divers recovered some 60,000
silver cobs, mostly Mexican 8 and 4 reales but also some Potosí and rare
Colombian cobs (including more from the Cartagena mint than had been found
on any other shipwreck). Unlike the Maravillas of just 15 years
later, however, the Concepción did not give up any gold cobs in our
time, and any significant artifacts found were retained by the government of
the Dominican Republic, who oversaw the salvage. The bulk of the silver cobs
found on the Concepción were heavily promoted, even in department
stores! The site is still being worked from time to time with limited
success.
Capitana
(Jesús María de la Limpia Concepción), sunk in 1654 off Chanduy,
Ecuador
This wreck
was the largest loss ever experienced by the Spanish South Seas (Pacific)
Fleet, of which the
Jesus María de la Limpia Concepción was the capitana
(“captain’s ship,” or lead vessel) in 1654. Official records reported
the loss of 3 million pesos of silver (2,212 ingots, 216 chests of coins,
and 22 boxes of wrought silver), augmented to a total of as much as 10
million pesos when contraband and private consignments were taken into
account. By comparison, the entire annual silver production in Peru
at that time was only about 6-7 million pesos!
Obviously overloaded,
technically the Capitana sank due to pilot error, which drove the
ship onto the reefs south of the peninsula known as Punta Santa Elena, a
geographic feature the pilot thought he had cleared. Twenty people died in
the disaster. For eight years afterward, Spanish salvagers officially
recovered over 3 million pesos of coins and bullion (with probably much more
recovered off the record), leaving only an unreachable lower section for
divers to find in our time. Ironically, the main salvager of the Capitana
in the 1650s and early 1660s was none other than the ship’s
silvermaster, Bernardo de Campos, whose fault it was that the ship was
overloaded with contraband in the first place!
The wreck was rediscovered
in the mid-1990s and salvaged (completely, according to some) in 1997. After
a 50-50 split with the Ecuadorian government in 1998, investors placed most
of their half of the more than 5,000 coins recovered up for sale at auction
in 1999. Almost exclusively Potosí 8 and 4 reales, the coins were a healthy
mix of countermarked issues of 1649-1652, transitional issues of 1652, and
post-transitional pillars-and-waves cobs of 1653-1654, many in excellent
condition and expertly conserved.
As an interesting footnote,
the very coins salvaged from the Capitana by the Spanish in 1654 were
lost again on the Maravillas wreck of 1656 (see next), and some of
those coins salvaged from the Maravillas were lost again in the wreck
of the salvage vessel Madama do Brasil off Gorda Cay (Bahamas) in
1657. Furthering Spain’s woes was the destruction of another treasure
fleet in 1657 by English marauders (fresh off a victory in the Bay of Cádiz)
off Santa Cruz on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands.
Maravillas,
sunk in 1656 off Grand Bahama Island
As the almiranta (“admiral’s ship,” or rear guard) of
the homebound Spanish fleet in January of 1656, the Nuestra Señora de
las Maravillas was officially filled with over five million pesos of
treasure (and probably much more in contraband, as was usually the case).
That treasure included much of the silver salvaged from the South Seas
Fleet’s Capitana of 1654 that wrecked on Chanduy Reef off Ecuador
(see above). The ill-fated treasure sank once again when the Maravillas
unexpectedly ran into shallow water and was subsequently rammed by one of
the other ships of its fleet, forcing the captain to try to ground the Maravillas
on a nearby reef on Little Bahama Bank off Grand Bahama Island. In the
ensuing chaos, exacerbated by strong winds, most of the 650 people on board
the ship died in the night, and the wreckage scattered. Spanish salvagers
soon recovered almost half a million pesos of treasure quickly, followed by
more recoveries over the next several decades, yet with over half of the
official cargo still unfound.
The first re-discovery of
the Maravillas in the 20th century was by Robert Marx and
his company Seafinders in 1972, whose finds were featured in an auction by
Schulman in New York in 1974. Included among the coins in this sale were
some previously unknown Cartagena silver cobs of 1655 and countermarked
Potosí coinage of 1649-1651 and 1652 Transitionals, in addition to many
Mexican silver cobs and a few Bogotá cob 2 escudos. The second big salvage
effort on the Maravillas was by Herbert Humphreys and his company
Marex in the late 1980s and early 1990s, resulting in two big sales by
Christie’s (London) in 1992 and 1993, featuring many Bogotá cob 2
escudos, in addition to more Mexico and Potosí silver cobs and several
important artifacts. The most recent sale of Maravillas finds,
presumably from one of the many salvage efforts from the 1970s and 1980s,
took place in California in 2005,
again with a good quantity of Bogotá cob 2 escudos. The wreck area
is still being searched today, but officially the Bahamian government has
not granted any leases on the site since the early 1990s. It is possible the
bulk of the treasure is still to be found!
Vergulde
Draeck (“Gilt
Dragon”), sunk in 1656 off Western Australia
Much has been written
about the loss and salvage of this Dutch East India Company trading vessel
(known as an East Indiaman), which some consider to be Australia’s
counterpart to Florida’s 1715 Fleet in terms of availability of reasonably
priced cobs for collectors. In contrast to the Spanish treasure wrecks,
however, the Vergulde Draeck carried only a modest amount of just
silver cobs (eight chests totaling 45,950 coins), mostly Mexican but also
some cobs from Potosí and Spain as well as some Colombian rarities. The
ship was on its way from the Netherlands to Batavia (modern-day Jakarta,
Indonesia) when suddenly it found itself wrecked on a reef some three miles
from land in the early morning hours of April 28, 1656. Only 75 of the 193
people on board were able to reach the shore, and seven of them soon left in
the ship’s pinnace to seek help in Batavia. When authorities there learned
of the wreck, several attempts were made to rescue the other survivors and,
more importantly, the eight chests of treasure, but no sign of the wreck or
survivors was ever found. The wreck remained undiscovered until 1963, when
spear-fishermen stumbled upon it and began to recover coins and artifacts.
Salvage efforts to date, mostly under the supervision of the Western
Australian Museum, whose certificates often accompany the coins (and carry a
small premium), have yielded only about half of the total coins officially
recorded to be on board this ship.
San
Miguel el Arcángel (“Jupiter wreck”), sunk in 1659 off Jupiter,
Florida
As well known as this wreck has
become among the Florida treasure community and shipwreck collectors around
the world, surprisingly little has been written about it, and not one major
auction has been dedicated to its finds.
The San Miguel was
not a big treasure galleon in a huge convoy; rather, she was a lone aviso,
a smaller ship for carrying letters and other communications quickly back to
Spain. But unlike most avisos, the San Miguel did end
up carrying some important treasure, as it was in the right time and place
to take on samples of the unauthorized “Star of Lima” coinage of 1659
for the King to see. In October, off the southeast coast of Florida, the San
Miguel encountered a hurricane, grounded on a sandbar, and broke apart
rapidly, leaving only 34 survivors among the 121 people originally on board.
Those survivors were all quickly captured by natives (Ais) and therefore had
no opportunity to salvage the scattered wreck.
Today only parts of
the wreck of the San Miguel have been found, discovered by lifeguard
Peter Leo in 1987, in about 10 to 20 feet of water and under as much as 20
feet of sand. Salvage is ongoing. Besides a couple of gold ingots and one
large silver ingot, the yield to date has been modest, mostly low-end silver
cobs of Mexico and Potosi, plus a good amount of the rare 1659 “Star of
Lima” coinage, but also a couple Bogotá gold cobs and some rare Cartagena
silver cobs, all sold through various dealers and private transactions. If
the hull of the ship is ever found, as the salvagers think it will be, the
market may finally see some of the gold cobs of the “Star of
Lima” issue of 1659.
Unidentified
ca.-1671 wreck in Seville harbor, Spain
The city of Seville is situated on the Guadalquivir River, about 50
miles inland from the ocean port of Cádiz, where treasure from the New
World arrived on sea-going galleons. From there the treasure went on to
Seville, up the river by boat. Sometime in 1671 it is believed one of these
boats outside Seville sank, or at least its treasure was lost there somehow
in the river, for in the mid-1990s a large hoard of obviously salvaged
silver cob 8 and 4 reales of Potosi, none dated later than 1671, and mostly
in decent condition, began to emerge from markets in Spain without
provenance but reportedly found in Seville Harbor during the installation of
a fiber-optic cable across the river.
It should be noted that the
same type of coins (with characteristics identical to those from the Seville
wreck) have been sold in recent years as having come from the “Señorita
de Santa Cristina” of 1672 off Cádiz, but we can find no record of
this ship or its salvage.
Consolación
(“Isla de Muerto shipwreck”), sunk in 1681 off Santa Clara Island,
Ecuador
When salvage first began on this wreck in 1997, it was initially
believed to be the Santa Cruz and
later called El Salvador y San José,
sunk in August of 1680; but research by Robert Marx after the main find in
subsequent years confirmed its proper name and illuminated its fascinating
history.
Intended to be part of the
Spanish “South Seas Fleet” of 1681, which left Lima’s port of Callao
in April, the Consolación apparently was delayed and ended up
traveling alone. At the Gulf of Guayaquil, off modern-day Ecuador, the Consolación
encountered English pirates, led by Bartholomew Sharpe, who forced the
Spanish galleon to sink on a reef off Santa Clara Island (later nicknamed
“Isla de Muerto,” or Dead Man’s Island). Before the pirates could get
to the ship, the crew set fire to her and tried to escape to the nearby
island without success. Angered by the inability to seize the valuable cargo
of the Consolación, Sharpe’s men killed the Spaniards and tried in
vain to recover the treasure through the efforts of local fishermen. Spanish
attempts after that were also fruitless, so the treasure of the Consolación
sat
undisturbed until our time.
When vast amounts of silver
coins were found in the area starting in the 1990s, eventually under
agreement between local entrepreneurs Roberto Aguirre and Carlos Saavedra
and the government of Ecuador in 1997, the exact name and history of the
wreck were unknown, and about 8,000 of the coins (all Potosí silver cobs)
were subsequently sold at auction by Spink New York in December, 2001, as
simply “Treasures from the ‘Isla de Muerto’”. Most of the coins
offered were of low
quality and poorly preserved but came with individually numbered
photo-certificates. Later, after the provenance had been properly
researched, and utilizing better conservation methods, a Florida syndicate
arranged to have ongoing finds from this wreck permanently encapsulated in
hard-plastic holders by the authentication and grading firm ANACS, with the
wreck provenance clearly stated inside the “slab”; more recent offerings
have bypassed this encapsulation. Ongoing
salvage efforts have good reason to be hopeful, as the manifest of the Consolación
stated the value of her registered cargo as 146,000 pesos in silver coins in
addition to silver and gold ingots, plus an even higher sum in contraband,
according to custom.
“Porto Bello
wreck,”
sunk in 1681 or 1682 off Porto Bello, Panama
According
to Robert Marx, a storm in 1681 sank three ships of the Spanish Caribbean
Fleet: Chaperón (sunk in the mouth of the Chagres River), Boticaria
(sunk off Isla de Naranjas), and an unidentified galleon (sunk off Punta
de Brujas). More recent articles, however, give the date of the
disaster as 1682. There is also confusion about which wrecksite belongs to
which ship of the Fleet; for example, the sword blades in this current
auction supposedly came from Chaperon, but our records indicate that
the source was probably the Boticaria. Most often the artifacts are
attributed to simply the 1681 Fleet or the “Porto Bello wreck.”
Joanna,
sunk in 1682 off South Africa
An English East Indiaman on her way to Surat on the west coast of
India, the Joanna separated from her convoy and sank in rough seas on
a reef off the southernmost tip of South Africa on June 8, 1682, sending 10
people to their death. Eventually, 104 survivors reached the Dutch colony of
Cape Town, from which a salvage party was soon dispatched. The Joanna’s
cargo consisted of 70 chests of silver coins, of which the salvage party
reported having recovered only about 28,000 guilders’ worth. In 1982 the
wreck was re-discovered by a group of South African divers led by Gavin
Clackworthy, who brought up silver ingots (discs) and over 23,000 silver
cobs, most of them Mexican 4 and 8 reales of Charles II in generally low
grade, but a few showing bold, formerly very rare dates 1679-1681. Over the
past two decades these cobs have entered the market from both private
dealers and auctions, but always in relatively small quantities at a time.
Almost all the coins are in very worn condition, usually thin and nearly
featureless, but without the heavy encrustation and pitting that
characterize Caribbean finds.
Association,
sunk in 1707 off the Scilly Isles, southwest of England
The sinking of this ship and four others in a fleet of 21 returning
from the Mediterranean was one of the worst British naval disasters of all
time. The Association sank on October 22 under stormy conditions
after what can only be described as guesswork navigation that led the ships
straight onto the rocks of the Scilly Isles, where as many as 2,000 sailors
lost their lives as a result. The admiral of the fleet, Sir Cloudisley
Shovell, whose ten chests of personal wealth (in addition to several others)
were rumored to be aboard the Association, was one of the
casualties of the sinking, although legend has it he reached shore alive,
only to be murdered there by a local woman for a ring on his finger.
The wrecksite was located in
1967 by British Navy divers, touching off a frenzy of activity on the site
for years to come. Cannons and a few coins were raised in the 1960s, but it
was not till 1973 that a significant amount of coins were found (8,000 in
that year alone). These coins, mostly British silver and gold but also many
Spanish and Spanish-American silver cobs, were sold at auction beginning in
1969 and into the early 1970s. The cobs presented an eclectic mix, mostly 8
reales from the 1650s forward (even a “Royal” presentation issue from
1676!), but from nearly all mints (especially Lima and Potosí), some even
left in as-found conglomerate form combined with British coins. It is
interesting to note that parts of this wreck, like others in the area, were
flattened hard to the muddy sea floor by huge boulders that still roll
around with the currents, making for dangerous and difficult salvage!
1715
Fleet, east coast of Florida
The Spanish 1715-Fleet disaster was probably the greatest to befall
any of the Spanish treasure fleets in terms of casualties and money, with
reports of a loss of 14 million pesos (plus an equal or greater amount in
contraband) and as many as 1,000 or more lives. The modern salvage of this
fleet, begun in the early 1960s and ongoing today, has been the largest
single source of gold cobs ever in the numismatic market, turning former
rarities and unknown issues into collectible and popular (albeit still
expensive) commodities.
In typical fashion, the 1715
Fleet was a case of overloaded Spanish galleons foundering in a hurricane
after delayed departure, but on a larger scale than anything before. The
principal elements of the fleet, known as the Nueva España (New Spain, i.e., Mexico) Fleet, had gone to Veracruz
in Mexico to deliver mercury (an essential substance in the refining of
silver cobs), sell merchandise, and pick up quantities of Mexican-minted
bars and cobs. An unfortunate series of complications kept the fleet in
Veracruz for two whole years before it could rendezvous in Havana with the
vessels of the Tierra Firme
(Mainland) Fleet, bearing the Peruvian and Colombian treasure brought from
Panama and Cartagena. After still more delays in Havana, what was ultimately
a twelve- or thirteen-ship convoy (depending on which account you prefer)
did not manage to depart for Spain until July 24, 1715, well into hurricane
season.
The trip back to Spain was
to be the routine one: up the coast of Florida on the Gulf Stream, which
gradually turns outward into and across the Atlantic at about the location
where the fleet was lost. On the 30th of July, the fleet
encountered a hurricane, driving the ships shoreward. Some of the ships sank
in deep water, some broke up in shallower water, and others ran aground
close to the beach, while a lone vessel, the tag-along French ship Grifón,
sailed onward without incident. Hundreds of the crews and passengers lost
their lives while other hundreds of survivors improvised a camp on shore to
await aid from the Spanish fort at St. Augustine, to which a party was sent.
Ultimately news of the disaster reached Havana, whence salvage ships were
dispatched to the scene.
The Spaniards undertook
salvage operations for several years, with the help of Indians, and they
recovered nearly half of the vast treasure (at least the registered part),
from the holds of ships whose remains rested in water sufficiently shallow
for breath-holding divers. Gradually the salvagers enlarged their encampment
and built a storehouse on the spit of dune land just behind the beach that
bordered a jungle. In 1716 a flotilla of British freebooters under Henry
Jennings appeared on the scene, raided the storehouse, and carried off some
350,000 pesos of the treasure to Jamaica. The Spaniards, however, resumed
operations until they could salvage no more and quit in 1719. The rest of
the treasure remained on the ocean floor until our time.
Modern salvage on the 1715
Fleet began in the late 1950s, when local resident Kip Wagner found a piece
of eight on the beach after a hurricane and decided to pursue the source.
With the help of a 1774 chart and an army-surplus metal detector, he located
the original Spanish salvage camp and unearthed coins and artifacts. Then
using a rented airplane to spot the underwater wrecksite from the air and
check the location again by boat, Kip found the source of the coins and soon
formed
a team of divers and associates backed by a salvage permit from the State of
Florida. All of this took place over a period of years before it evolved
into the Real Eight Company, the origin of whose name is obvious.
To salvage the wreck, the Real Eight divers originally used a dredge
and suction apparatus; only later did they adopt the use of a
propwash-blower (known as a “mailbox”) developed by their subcontractor
Mel Fisher. Eventually they found gold jewels, Chinese porcelain,
silverware, gold and silver ingots, and as many as 10,000 gold cobs of the
Mexico, Peru, and Colombia mints; and, mostly in encrusted clusters, well
over 100,000 silver cobs of all denominations.
The salvaged coins were all
cobs, both gold (Mexico, Bogotá, Lima, and Cuzco) and silver (mostly Mexico
but also some Lima and Potosi), minted primarily between 1711 and 1715,
although numerous earlier dates were represented too, some of the dates
extending well back into the 1600s. Many of the dates and types of the
1700-1715 period had been either rare or unknown prior to the salvage of the
1715 Fleet. The gold coins, as can be expected, have been generally
pristine, as have been some of the silver coins, but most silver cobs from
the 1715 Fleet are at least somewhat corroded, some no more than thin,
featureless slivers. Every denomination of cob made in silver and gold, with
the exception of the quarter real (which was not minted past the very early
1600s), has been found on the 1715 Fleet, as well as several different
denominations of round “Royal” presentation issues. Promotions of the
coins by Real Eight and others have spanned the decades, in addition to
auctions by Henry Christensen (1964); Parke-Bernet Galleries (1967) and
Sotheby Parke Bernet (1973); the Schulman Coin and Mint (1972 and 1974);
Bowers and Ruddy Galleries (1977); and even the U.S. Customs Service (2003).
The demand for these coins over the years has steadily risen while the
supply of new finds has dwindled.
As the salvage operation on
the 1715 Fleet reached diminishing returns, some of the associates like Mel
Fisher headed for Key West and other areas to search for new wrecks. Do not
believe, however, that the 1715-Fleet search is over. As many as five or six
of the twelve or thirteen galleons remain undiscovered, search areas are
still leased from the state, and even the old wreck sites continue to
relinquish a few coins to an insatiable numismatic market. Even the beaches
themselves yield fabulous finds (one gold “Royal” 8 escudos—a
six-figure bonanza in our day—was found on the beach by a metal
detectorist in 1989), especially after direct-hit hurricanes like Frances
and Jeanne, which devastated the treasure beaches in rapid succession in the
summer of 2004. Much of the finds stays in the hands of locals throughout
the State of Florida—divers, beachcombers, and old-time collectors who
love their cobs and sell only when they must. The one collector that never
sells is also the one with the largest collection of them all—the museum
of the State of Florida. Spain lost it all to America, whence it came.
Despite a wealth of
publications pertaining to the 1715 Fleet with names of the ships and the
known locations of some of the wrecks, there is no universal agreement as to
the identity of the vessel at each wrecksite. In many cases, in fact, it is
possible that separate wrecksites represent different parts of the same
ship. As a result, salvagers over the decades have resorted to nicknames for
the sites based on landmarks, local individuals, and even features from the
wrecks themselves, such as (from north to south):
“Pines” (Sebastian), “Cabin” (Wabasso), “Cannon”
(Wabasso), “Corrigan’s” (Vero Beach), “Rio Mar” (Vero Beach),
“Sandy Point” (Vero Beach), “Wedge” (Fort Pierce), and “Colored
Beach” (Fort Pierce). (Case in point: In this very catalog you will see
items alternately certified as from the “Corrigans site” and the “Regla
site,” which are one and the same.) Traditionally the range of sites
extends from south of Fort Pierce up to just south of Melbourne in the
north, but rumors of 1715-Fleet finds as far north as Cape Canaveral, New
Smyrna Beach and even Fernandina Beach (near Jacksonville) may have merit.
Regardless of the exact site of origin, a great majority of the coins are
sold simply as “1715 Fleet.”
“Ca
Mau wreck,” sunk ca. 1723-35 off Ca Mau Island, Vietnam
This
unidentified Chinese wreck in the South China Sea yielded thousands of
Ch’ing Dynasty export porcelain manufactured under the Emperor K’ang
Hsi. The finds were first offered at auction by Christie’s in 1998, but
anonymously; more recently the government of Vietnam has auctioned off a
major portion of the porcelains. These porcelains are quite popular among
collectors of Spanish Fleet items because they are identical to the K’ang
Hsi material from the Florida wrecks of 1715 and 1733.
1733
Fleet, Florida Keys
Much like the 1715-Fleet disaster above, the 1733 Fleet was another
entire Spanish convoy (except for one ship) lost in a hurricane off Florida.
The lesser severity of the 1733 hurricane (which struck the fleet on July
15) and the shallowness of the wrecksites in the Keys, however, made for
many survivors and even left four ships in good enough condition to be
re-floated and sent back to Havana. A very successful salvage effort by the
Spanish soon commenced, bringing up even more than the 12 million
pesos of precious cargo on the Fleet’s manifest (thanks to the usual
contraband).
The wrecks themselves are
spread across 80 miles, from north of Key Largo down to south of Duck Key,
and include the following galleons (but note there is not universal
agreement as to which wrecksite pertains to each galleon, and also note that
each name is a contemporaneous abbreviation or nickname): El Pópulo, El Infante, San José, El
Rubí (the capitana, or lead vessel of the fleet), Chávez,
Herrera, Tres Puentes, San Pedro, El Terri
(also spelled Lerri or Herri), San Francisco, El
Gallo Indiano (the almiranta, or rear guard of the fleet), Las
Angustias, El Sueco de Arizón, San Fernando, and San
Ignacio. This last ship, San Ignacio, is believed to be the
source of many silver coins (and even some gold coins) found in a reef area
off Deer Key known as “Coffins Patch,” the southwesternmost of all the
1733-Fleet wrecksites. In addition, many other related sites are known,
mostly the
wrecks of tag-along ships that accompanied the fleet proper.
The first and arguably most
famous of the wrecks of the 1733 Fleet to be located in modern times was the
Capitana El Rubí, which was discovered in 1948 and salvaged
principally in the 1950s by Art McKee, whose Sunken Treasure Museum on
Plantation Key housed his finds for all to see. Throughout the next several
decades, however, the wrecksites in the Keys became a virtual free-for-all,
with many disputes and confrontations, until the government created the
Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in 1990. The removal of artifacts
from any of the sites is prohibited today.
In contrast to the 1715
Fleet, and because of the extensive Spanish salvage in the 1730s, the finds
by modern divers have been modest, especially in gold coins, of which there
are far more fakes on the market than genuine specimens! Nevertheless, the
1733 Fleet has been a significant source for some of the rare Mexican milled
“pillar dollars” of 1732-1733 as well as the transitional
“klippe”-type coins of 1733.
Vliegenthart,
sunk in 1735 off Zeeland, the Netherlands
The East Indiaman Vliegenthart (“Flying Hart” in Dutch)
had just departed Rammekens for the East Indies when the deadly combination
of a northeast gale, a spring tide and pilot error sent her into a sand bank
behind her sister-ship Anna Catharina. The latter ship broke apart in
the storm while the Vliegenthart, damaged and firing her cannons in
distress, slipped off the bank and sank in 10 fathoms of water. All hands on
both ships were lost.
Contemporaneous salvage
under contract with the Dutch East India Company was unsuccessful, but it
did provide a piece of evidence—a secret map—that did not emerge from
obscurity until 1977. Stemming from that, divers under the former London
attorney Rex Cowan discovered the wreck in 1981, and in 1983 they found
their first coins, one of three chests of Mexican silver and Dutch gold
coins (totaling 67,000 guilders or dollar-sized units) for the East India
trade aboard the Vliegenthart. The second chest was smashed on the
seabed and its contents partially salvaged, while the third chest, intact
like the first, came up in 1992. The divers also recovered several smaller
boxes of large Dutch silver coins known as “ducatoons,” illegally
exported and therefore contraband. Among the silver coins found were
thousands of Mexican cobs, predominantly 8 reales, many with clear dates in
the early 1730s and in excellent condition.
Rooswijk,
sunk in 1739 off southeast England
Off the southeastern tip of England, just north of the Straits of
Dover, the sea hides a most unusual feature known as the Goodwin Sands,
where sandbanks appear and disappear unpredictably and move with the tides.
Many ships over the centuries have sunk here and silted over, and
occasionally one of the wrecks will surface and be discovered. Such is the
case with the Rooswijk, a Dutch East Indiaman that foundered on the Goodwin Sands
in a storm on December 19, 1739, with all hands and 30 chests of treasure,
virtually gone without a trace.
By chance in December, 2004,
the sands that had swallowed the wreck of the Rooswijk parted and
allowed diver Ken Welling to retrieve two complete chests and hundreds of
silver bars. Operating in secrecy, salvage continued in 2005 under the
direction of Rex Cowan and in agreement with the Dutch and British
governments and is ongoing today. So far, several hundred Mexican silver
cobs of the 1720s and early 1730s and transitional “klippes” of
1733-1734, as well as many more hundreds of “pillar dollars” and a
smattering of cobs from other mints, have hit the market from this wreck,
mostly through auction.
Nuestra
Señora de los Milagros, sunk in 1741 off the Yucatán peninsula of
Mexico
This
merchant nao, whose nickname was El Matancero (due to the fact
that she was built at Matanzas, Cuba), hit rocks and was smashed to pieces
in minutes on February 22, 1741, near Acumal, Quintana Roo. The Milagros was
not treasure wreck but did yield some 200,000 small artifacts to divers with
CEDAM (Mexican Underwater Exploration Society) and Robert Marx in the late
1950s.
Princess
Louisa, sunk in 1743 off the Cape Verde Islands,
west of Africa
Laden with 20 chests (69,760
ounces) of Spanish silver, the East Indiaman Princess Louisa fell
victim to surprise currents and inaccurate charts and struck a reef and sank
off Isla de Maio in the early morning hours of April 18. 42 of the 116
people aboard floated to safety on the nearby island, but nothing on the
ship could be saved. Contemporaneous salvage never came to fruition.
In 1998 and 1999 the
wrecksite was located and salvaged by the Arqueonautas firm, whose finds
from this wreck have been largely marketed by a Houston coin and jewelry
dealer ever since, but some coins were also sold at auction in 2000-2001.
Most of the coins were New World silver cobs from all the mints that were
operating in the early 1700s (including rare Bogotá cobs), predominantly
minors (smaller than 8 reales), in average condition, with quite a few
preserved in as-found multiple-coin clusters.
Hollandia,
sunk in 1743 off the Scilly Isles, southwest of England
Blown off course on her way to the East Indies, the Hollandia
struck Gunner Rock and sank in about 110 feet of water about 1½ miles east
of it on July 13, 1743. There were no survivors.
The first sign of the wreck
came in 1971, when divers under Rex Cowan located the wrecksite and within a
couple years salvaged over 35,000 silver coins among the nearly 130,000
guilders (dollar-sized units) recorded to be on board the Hollandia. A great majority of the coins were Mexican
“pillar dollars,” but there were also some silver cobs, including the
scarce Mexican transitional “klippes” of 1733-1734 and a few Guatemala
cobs, in mixed condition.
“Ronson
wreck,” sunk(?) ca. 1750 off Manhattan (New York City)
This
unidentified ship was discovered at 197 Water Street (two blocks from the
East River) in lower Manhattan (New York City) and named for the owner of
the site, Howard Ronson (also known as the “Water Street wreck”). Its
excavation for the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1982
showed that the ship was a mid-18th-century British frigate—in
fact, the only known British trading vessel from that era ever to be
salvaged in North America. With three masts, about 100 feet long and 25 feet
wide and at least 200 tons, this ship was probably built in Virginia or the
Carolinas between 1710 and 1720 and used in the tobacco trade between the
Chesapeake and England in the early 1700s before being buried in Manhattan
for reasons unknown around 1750. Only the bow of the ship was preserved and
can now be seen at the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia. For
more information, we recommend this website: http://ina.tamu.edu/waterstreet/waterstreet.htm
Geldermalsen
(“Nanking Cargo”), sunk in 1752 in the South China Sea
The
Geldermalsen was a Dutch East India Company ship returning to
Amsterdam with a cargo of over 160,000 porcelains and 145 gold ingots (in
addition to tea and textiles) when she hit a reef and sank on January 3,
1752. In 1985 the wreck was found by Michael Hatcher, and the salvaged
material was sold at auction by Christie’s Amsterdam in 1986 as the famous
“Nanking Cargo.”
Nuestra
Señora del Rosario, sunk in 1753 off Montevideo,
Uruguay
The Rosario
was reportedly carrying over 800,000 pesos of treasure on her way to Buenos
Aires when she sank close to shore at the mouth of the Río de la Plata on
June 30, 1753. All hands were saved, but the fate of the cargo is unknown.
Recent finds of utilitarian items like spoons and buckles have trickled onto
the market, but no high-value treasure so far.
Dodington,
sunk in 1755 off Port Elizabeth, South Africa
This shipwreck presents an amazing tale of survival and buried
treasure, with a modern twist! Following the customary East India route, the
Dodington outpaced her
consorts and therefore was alone when her pilot followed an erroneous chart
too closely and in the middle of the night she suddenly struck rocks and
sank off present-day Bird Island off the east coast of South Africa. Of 270
people on board, 23 made it to the island, where they subsisted mostly on
seagull eggs for over seven months while the ship’s carpenter crafted a
rescue vessel. Meanwhile, at least a couple of the 10 chests of silver coins
and the one chest of wrought silver on board the ship were recovered and
buried, and the fate of each of those chests is not thoroughly known. There
was also a chest of gold coins on behalf of the English military hero Lord
Clive—more about that later. The survivors set off for Delagoa
(Mozambique) and left behind an island that later became known for
treasure-hunters and ghost stories.
In the summer of 1977 the
wreck of the Dodington
was discovered by South African divers, who proceeded to bring up cannon and
coins…but no gold. In the early to mid-1990s the wreck was revisited by
another set of divers and yielded more silver coins and a smattering of
gold, but nowhere near the 653+ oz. recorded to be in the chest when it was
loaded onto the Dodington in 1755. What is believed
to be the actual Clive’s gold (by composition and total weight) was
supposedly recovered a few years later in a different area entirely,
reportedly in the wreckage of a pirate ship somewhat further along the East
India route. Nobody knows why Clive’s chest of gold was not on the Dodington site—either it was found by the survivors
and buried on Bird Island to be picked up or absconded with later, or it was
salvaged and taken away later in the 18th century. Because the
link could not be proven entirely, and due to a protracted legal battle with
the government of South Africa, this last group of gold coins was sold at
auction in 2000 as simply the “Clive of India Treasure.”
The composition of the
silver-coin finds from the Dodington
was mostly Mexican “pillar dollars” but with a good amount of Potosí
and Lima cobs (predominantly smaller denominations) as well, mostly sea-worn
and at least moderately corroded, sold through dealers and smaller auctions
in the U.S. and Australia. The gold was all Portuguese/Brazilian.
Tilbury,
sunk in 1757 off Nova Scotia, Canada
In
an expedition against the French fortress at Louisbourg, the Tilbury
was one of four ships (in a fleet of twenty) that were carrying a total of
34 chests of silver coins when the fleet encountered a hurricane off the
southeast coast of Cape Breton. The Tilbury and one of the
non-coin-bearing ships, the smaller sloop Ferret, sank in the middle
of the night on September 25, 1757. Two hundred eighty of the 400 men on
board the Tilbury survived to become French prisoners; the other ship
and its crew were lost without a trace.
Famous diver and author Alex
Storm (with Adrian Richards) located the bow section of the Tilbury
in 1969 on a stretch of coastline known, appropriately enough, as “Tilbury
Rocks,” where until the 1980s there was even a cannon from the wreck lying
on shore for all to see. In 1986 divers Pierre LeClerc and Gilles Brisebois
found what is believed to be the midsection of the ship farther offshore,
and these divers recovered several hundred coins, many of which were
auctioned in 1989. Most of the coins were silver pillar dollars, but there
were also several silver cobs and even at least one gold cob among the
finds. The missing stern section of the ship, where the bulk of the treasure
was stored, is still to be found.
Tounant,
sunk in 1779 off Haiti
Not
much is known about this French ship except that she had fought for the
United States in the Revolutionary War. She was not carrying treasure; most
of the finds by wildcat divers over the years have been utilitarian items.
HMS Bounty,
scuttled by mutineers in 1790 off Pitcairn Island
Perhaps
no greater tale of mutiny at sea is more famous than that of the HMS
Bounty in 1789. With a crew of 45 men she set sail in 1787, under
Captain William Bligh, bound for Tahiti to collect breadfruit plants for
planting in the West Indies as inexpensive sustenance for slaves. On the way
back home in 1789, mutineers led by Fletcher Christian seized the Bounty
and turned the ship back to the paradise they had just left in Tahiti
(where, in fact, Christian had already been married to a native named
Maimiti). Captain Bligh and 18 crewmembers were set adrift in an open boat
but miraculously made it to civilization on Timor, a distance of over 3600
miles. After reaching Tahiti, the mutineers absconded with 18 natives (6 men
and 12 women) and took the ship to the isolated Pitcairn Island, where their
descendants still live today. On January 23, 1790, the Bounty was
stripped, burned and sunk there in 3 meters of water in what became known as
Bounty Bay. The remains of the Bounty were found and salvaged in 1957
by Luis Marden, who later counseled Marlon Brando for his role as Fletcher
Christian in the 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty. (Marden was also
known to have worn cufflinks made from brass nails—just like the one in
this auction!—that he had recovered from the Bounty.) The Bounty
was also salvaged by an Australian group in 1998.
Piedmont
(“Lyme Bay wreck”), sunk in 1795 in Lyme Bay, south of England
One of a huge fleet of
300 ships on their way to the West Indies to suppress a French uprising, the
Piedmont was forced into Lyme Bay during a hurricane on November 18,
1795, that scattered and sank the ships of the fleet all along the Dorset
coast. The Piedmont and five other ships (Aeolus, Catherine,
Golden Grove, Thomas and Venus) broke apart on Chesil
Beach and came to be known collectively as the “Lyme Bay wrecks.” About
1,000 men lost their lives in the disaster, including well over a hundred
from the Piedmont alone.
In the early 1980s
the wrecks were salvaged by divers Selwyn Williams and Les and Julia C.
Kent, who discovered many silver cobs of the late 1600s on the wrecksite of
the Piedmont. It is presumed that the coins had been captured or
recovered from a 17th-century wreck and stored in the vaults of
the Bank of England for about a century before being transported and
subsequently lost again. These coins are usually recognizable by their
uniformly dark-gray coloration, a bit sea-worn but not overly corroded. A
significant group of extremely rare Colombian silver cobs from the Piedmont
(but not identified as such) was offered at auction in 1995.
HMS
Lutine, sunk
in 1799 off Terschelling Island, the Netherlands
Sunk
in a heavy gale on October 9, 1799, the British Royal Navy frigate Lutine
was taking a cargo of some £1,200,000 in gold and silver ingots to the
continent to provide German banks with funds to prevent a stock market
crash, which indeed occurred due to the loss. Only one person survived the
wreck. Immediate salvage attempts (up to 1804) were thwarted by silt, which
covered the wreck right away. Lloyd’s of London, which insured the cargo,
authorized salvage attempts throughout the 1800s, with limited success. The
most famous item to be recovered (in 1858) was the ship’s bell, which was
mounted in the Lloyd’s offices and traditionally rung once (up till 1979)
when a ship went missing and twice (up till 1989) when the missing ship had
arrived. (The ringing of the bell ensured that all the brokers and
underwriters were notified at the same time.) Most of the cargo remains on
the wreck to this day.
Leocadia,
sunk in 1800 off Punta Santa Elena, Ecuador
This
wreck, salvaged periodically in the late 20th century, typically
yielded portrait (bust) 8 reales from Lima, Peru, but more recent work in
2001 brought up a handful of small silver cobs of the mid- to late 1700s
mostly from the Potosí mint. These were probably from a small, private
purse and not part of the more than 2 million pesos of registered silver and
gold cargo aboard the Leocadia when she departed Paita, Peru, bound
for Panama in a convoy of merchant vessels. On November 16, 1800, the Leocadia
struck a shoal and broke apart 100 yards from the beach at Punta Santa
Elena, with a loss of over 140 lives in the disaster. Within the next year
the Spanish salvaged about 90% of the registered treasure, leaving more than
200,000 pesos (not to mention the expected contraband) behind to tempt
divers in our time. Judging from the paucity of coins from this ship on the
open market, it is reasonable to assume that many more are still to be
found.
S.S.
Central America,
sunk in 1857 in deep water off North Carolina
Sunk in a hurricane on
September 12, 1857, the mail steamer Central America took with her
over 400 lives and over three tons of gold. The wreck lay undisturbed until
1986, when Tommy Thompson and his Columbus-America Discovery Group located
the ship in 8500 feet of water. After ten years of legal struggles, the
salvagers were awarded about 92% of the treasure, with most of the rest
going to insurance companies who had paid the claim when the ship sank.
Widely touted as the greatest treasure ever found, the gold from the Central
America has been very heavily promoted and cleverly marketed.
Egypt,
sunk in 1922 off Ushant, France
In May of 1922, the Egypt
encountered thick fog off the northwest coast of France and was
accidentally rammed by another ship, the French cargo steamer Seine,
sinking the British ship within twenty minutes. The Egypt was
carrying some 15 tons of silver and gold bullion in addition to British gold
sovereigns totaling £1,054,000 (1922 values). Nothing was salvaged until
the early 1930s, when an Italian company recovered an estimated 95% of the
treasure from the ship’s depth of 420 feet, an amazing success for its
time.
“Manila
Bay treasure,” dumped in Manila Bay in 1942
Under siege from the
Japanese, the U.S.-run government of the Philippines retreated to the fort
of Corregidor in 1942 with the entire treasury of some $3 million in U.S.
currency, $28 million in Philippine currency and over five tons of gold. All
of the gold and some of the silver was loaded as ballast onto the submarine U.S.S.
Trout and eventually made it to the U.S., but some 350 tons of silver
pesos had to be dumped into the Bay, the exact location recorded and sent by
radio to the U.S. The advancing Japanese did manage to recover about 2
million pesos, but the rest was recovered by the U.S. 7th Fleet
Ship Salvage Group.
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