SHIPWRECK 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. At the
end of these listings are more detailed information on wrecks salvaged by Arqueonautas.
After
each wreck title, follow the galleon icon
back to the top of the page.
| Alphabetical links (click the name below to go to that wreck): |
Unidentified wrecks off the Philippines (“Ying Lung
collection” of Chinese porcelains)
This auction features the “Ying Lung Collection” of Chinese porcelains from shipwrecks off the Philippines. The recoveries were all from unidentified shipwrecks (which is typical for Chinese porcelain wrecks, of which there are many in Philippine waters) that were excavated without any government supervision. All we know are the general areas where the recoveries were made, and an approximate time period (as early as the 11th century and as late as the 17th century) based on the salvaged material itself. The recovery areas were off three small islands: Balabac Island (south of Palawan Island in the southwest part of the Philippines, just north of Borneo); Coron Island (north of Palawan Island); and Luuk Island (in the Sulu archipelago in the southernmost part of the Philippines).
The “Ying Lung collection” (Ying Lung being a mythical dragon who guards the treasures of the oceans) was carefully assembled by an anonymous salvage consultant for the Philippine National Museum between 1996 and 2003. The consignment in this sale is the first of what we hope to be several large offerings of some of the best shipwreck porcelains available.
Flor do Mar,
sunk in 1511 off Sumatra, Indonesia
In 1511 the Portuguese Viceroy Afonso de Albuquerque was sent to the strategic town of Malacca (in modern-day Malaysia) to claim it for Portugal, which he did; but on the return voyage to India, his ship Flor do Mar was wrecked in a storm, sending spoils from the victory (including a reported 60 tons of gold) to the seabed. Modern searches for the wreck (which sank to a depth of over 100 feet) have been unsuccessful, although Robert Marx claimed to have found some jade artifacts from it, including the lot in this sale.
“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).
Espadarte,
sunk in 1558 off Mozambique
(See the Arqueonautas section following this.)
“Cidade Velha wrecks,” sunk in the 1500s off the Cape Verde
Islands, west of Africa
(See the Arqueonautas section following this.)
“Rill Cove wreck,” sunk ca. 1618 off Cornwall, England
The name and nationality of the ship are unknown and even the date of sinking is not certain—all we know is that records of its local salvage began in 1618. After re-discovery of the wreck by Ken Simpson and Mike Hall in 1975, eventually some 3,000 coins were recovered and sold, all silver cobs, mostly Mexican, but also from Potosí and Spain. Most of the coins are thin from corrosion but with dark toning on fields to enhance details.
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.
“Dry Tortugas wreck,” sunk ca. 1622 off the Dry Tortugas,
west of Key West, Florida
Presumably a sister-ship to the Atocha and Santa Margarita of the 1622 Fleet (above), discovered in 1989 and reworked in 1991 by Seahawk Deep Ocean Technology, among whose finds were numerous gold bars (but no silver bars) and about 1,200 heavily eroded silver cobs (similar in composition to the Atocha finds), all picked from the ocean floor by a robot. Cannons and other artifacts expected on a typical galleon, however, were suspiciously absent. The bulk of the treasure was eventually sold to a store/museum in Key West that later went bankrupt. Years later, by order of a bankruptcy court, it all turned up at auction, where nearly all of the treasure was re-purchased by some of the former principals of Seahawk for a new museum.
“Lucayan Beach wreck,” sunk ca. 1628 off Grand Bahama Island
Since the accidental discovery in 1964 of around 10,000 silver cobs (dated up to and including 1628) in 10 feet of water just 1,300 yards from the Lucayan Beach Hotel, the mystery of identifying the lost vessel has never been solved. Because of the date, popular opinion associates the wreck with the taking of the Spanish 1628 Fleet in Matanzas Bay, Cuba, by the Dutch pirate and national hero Piet Heyn, who reported losing two of the vessels on the way back to Europe. Three names proposed for the ship(s) by various sellers over the years were the Van Lynden, the Santa Gertrude (or Gertrudis) and the Romario, with scant evidence to support any of the attributions. Spanish archival research uncovered a new name—Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, sunk in that general area in 1624, but a quick check of auction catalogs confirms that some of the recovered coins were clearly dated later than that. A more recent (1990s) recovery off the Lucayan Beach turned up similar material—but no further clues as to the ship’s (or ships’) identity. Practically all of the coins have been Mexican 8 and 4 reales of the assayer-D period, some in quite nice condition and a few with clear dates, which of course are rare. Expect to pay a modest premium for specimens in white clamshell boxes produced by Spink & Son (London) in the 1960s for a promotion that capped off years of disagreements between the salvagers, their backers and the Bahamian government.
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.
“São Francisco wreck,” sunk ca. 1650 off the Cape Verde
Islands, west of Africa
The identity of this wreck is unknown, its nickname simply corresponding to the nearest land-area to the wreck (São Francisco) on the island of Santiago. The salvage firm Arqueonautas worked the wrecksite in the mid- to late 1990s but was not able to identify the vessel any further than a “Spanish ship with a Portuguese Captain with money to buy slaves.” The first finds from the “San Francisco wreck,” including an extremely rare silver-plated astrolabe dated 1645, were sold by Sotheby’s (London) in December 2000, buried in a clocks and watches auction that got little publicity in the shipwreck-collecting field. The relatively few coins from this wreck, all silver cobs from Mexico and Potosí in the mid- to late 1640s, are generally rare and appear to date just before the massive recall and melting in 1649 at Potosí that so significantly altered worldwide usage of Spanish colonial cobs.
(Also see the Arqueonautas section following this.)
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.
Sacramento,
sunk in 1668 off Brazil
Nuestra Señora Santa María de Quintanpalla,
sunk ca. 1680 off Seville
Harbor?, Spain
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.
Merestein,
sunk in 1702 off South Africa
This Dutch East Indiaman was outbound when she tried to put into Saldanha Bay to alleviate rampant scurvy on board the ship. On April 3, 1702, she hit reefs on the southwest point of Jutten Island and within hours was smashed to pieces. Only 99 of the 200 people aboard the Merestein survived.
On board the Merestein were several chests of silver coins for trade in the East Indies, for which immediate salvage plans were undertaken. But Jutten Island is no easy dive, and all attempts were abandoned until modern times.
The wreck was re-found and salvaged in the early 1970s, yielding almost exclusively Dutch silver ducatoons from the 1600s. The number of coins found in the 1970s was around 15,000 and is believed to be nowhere near all of the treasure that was lost.
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.”
Guadalupe-Tolosa,
sunk in 1724 in Samaná Bay, Dominican Republic
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.
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.
(Also see the Arqueonautas section following this.)
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.
Reijgersdaal,
sunk in 1747 off South Africa
More popularly known in the U.S. as Reygersdahl, this typical East Indiaman was carrying eight chests of silver coins (nearly 30,000 coins) when she sank on October 25, 1747, between Robben and Dassen Islands. After four-and-a-half months at sea, the crew had anchored there to fetch rock rabbits (“dassies,” for which Dassen Island was named) and other fresh food to relieve massive illness on board the ship, on which some 125 had died and 83 were incapacitated out of 297 people; but in the face of a gale, the anchor-line snapped and the ship foundered on the rocks. Only 20 survived the sinking, and only one incomplete chest of coins was recovered. The area was deemed too dangerous to attempt contemporaneous salvage.
Beginning in 1979, modern salvage-divers on the wrecksite recovered thousands of coins (as many as 15,000 by the early 1980s, when protective legislation was enacted in South Africa), mostly in near pristine condition, which have been sold in various auctions and private offerings ever since. A great majority of the coins from this wreck are Mexican pillar dollars (in excellent condition), but it also yielded a few hundred New World silver cobs, including Guatemala cobs, which are rarely seen from shipwrecks.
Nuestra Señora de la Luz,
sunk in 1752 off Montevideo, Uruguay
Like the Capitana (1654) and 1733 Fleet, this wreck is a case for modern salvage of Spanish wrecks where all or most of the registered cargo was found in its own time, for contraband was always a factor and was generally abandoned if the ship did not make its destination. The Luz left Buenos Aires in the summer of 1752 with a load of money bound for Spain, and had just stopped in Montevideo for provisioning when a strong storm swept her into the coastline, spreading wreckage over a wide area and killing all on board. While over 90% of the treasure on board was recovered soon afterward, the powder-hold was never found, and as it turns out, that is where some 200,000 pesos (according to later reports) of contraband had been stored.
In April of 1992, divers working under Rubén Collado began to recover gold coins on a wrecksite in the Río de la Plata, and soon it became clear the wreck in question had to be from 1751 or 1752, as none of the coins was dated later than 1751. The finds, which were split with the Uruguayan government and then sold at auction in New York and Montevideo, consisted of mostly milled (bust-type) 8 escudos from the new mint at Santiago, Chile. Also in these auctions were 95 gold cobs and 353 silver cobs, the former mostly Lima 8 and 4 escudos (but also some Bogotá 2 escudos), and the latter mostly 8 and 4 reales from Potosí (with several more gold and silver cob sold privately). The gold, of course, is pristine, but the silver coins all show at least moderate corrosion.
Bredenhof,
sunk in 1753 off Mozambique
The Bredenhof was a Dutch East Indiaman headed to India with 14 barrels of copper “duits” (penny-like coins), 29 chests of silver bars, and one chest of gold ducats. On June 6, 1753, about 13 miles from the eastern coast of Africa and 120 miles south of the Portuguese settlement of Mozambique, the Bredenhof found herself in difficult currents and struck a reef. Amazingly, among the first items jettisoned to try to raise the ship off the reef were some of the chests of silver bars! The gold was taken by the ship’s officers, some of whom survived the trip to Mozambique, but the silver bars and copper coins were lost until modern times, despite salvage attempts in the 1750s.
In 1986, divers found the wreck, which yielded hundreds of silver ingots and thousands of copper coins, all sold at auction by Christie’s Amsterdam that same year.
“Cape Haitien wreck,” sunk ca. 1750-1760 off Haiti
Nothing is known so far about this mysterious wreck located at the entrance of the bay of Cape Haitien on the north coast of Haiti. All we know is that it was a large sailing vessel, almost certainly French, sunk between 1750 and 1760.
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.
Auguste,
sunk in 1761 off Nova Scotia, Canada
After the end of the Seven Years’ War between England and France in 1759, French officers and aristocrats in Canada were sent from Quebec back to France in ships such as the Auguste. In stormy conditions and damaged by fire, the Auguste struck a sand bar on November 15 and subsequently sank in Aspy Bay off Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Only 7 of the 121 on board survived, and the wealth of the passengers was lost until our time. To date, well over a thousand coins of various nationalities have been found, along with many important artifacts.
Dromadaire,
sunk in 1762 off the Cape Verde Islands, west of Africa
(See the Arqueonautas section following this.)
Colebrooke,
sunk in 1778 off South Africa
The Colebrooke was an English East Indiaman on her way to Bombay when she hit a reef known today as Anvil Rock and sank in Kogel Bay near Cape Town on August 24, 1778. Seven people drowned and none of the trading cargo was saved. The wreck was discovered in 1984 and salvaged in the 1980s and 1990s.
Scipion,
sunk in 1782 in Samaná Bay, Dominican Republic
A valiant fighter against the English in the American Revolutionary War, the French ship Scipion was engaged in battle when she inadvertently maneuvered onto a reef and sank in thirty feet of water on October 18, 1782. Discovered in our time by Tracy Bowden, the Scipion site is still being salvaged for its important artifacts.
Cazador,
sunk in 1784 off New Orleans, Louisiana
The Cazador was a Spanish brig of war headed from Vera Cruz, Mexico, to New Orleans under the direction of Captain Gabriel de Campos y Piñeda. Her cargo of some 450,000 pesos of newly minted silver coins was meant to stabilize the fragile economy in the Spanish possession of Louisiana, which had suffered from the use of French paper currency. The fact that the coins never arrived probably hastened the decision to cede the colony to Napoleon in 1800, soon after which Louisiana was sold to the fledgling United States of America for $15 million.
Nobody knows how the Cazador was lost, and no evidence of the ship was found until 1993, when a fishing crew led by Captain Jerry Murphy snagged their net on something about 50 miles south of New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico. When the net was brought up, it spilled out hundreds of silver coins onto the deck of Jerry’s boat, aptly named Mistake. Shortly thereafter, the fishermen obtained the rights to the find and began recoveries under the name of Grumpy Inc.
Hartwell,
sunk in 1787 off the Cape Verde Islands, west of Africa
(See the Arqueonautas section following this.)
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.” An estimated 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.
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.
Lady Burgess,
sunk in 1806 off the Cape Verde Islands, west of Africa
(See the Arqueonautas section following this.)
Admiral Gardner,
sunk in 1809 off the southeast coast of England
Along with her sister-ship Britannia, the English East Indiaman Admiral Gardner was outbound with an immense cargo (48 tons!) of copper coins for circulation in India when both ships sank in a storm on the Goodwin Sands on January 24, 1809. Ten lives were lost, as was all the cargo. The coins were recovered in modern times, literally a million of them packed in wax inside wooden barrels.
“Coconut wreck,” sunk ca. 1810 in deep water off Bermuda
This fascinating find has been touted as the deepest treasure wreck ever found, and it should hold that title for a long time! While searching in 1999 for Gus Grissom’s space capsule Liberty Bell 7 (lost in a test at sea, in which Grissom nearly died) from the Mercury program of 1961, underwater explorer Curt Newport (supported by the Discovery Channel) noticed an unidentified anomaly at a depth of 16,300 feet—not the space capsule (which was eventually found and recovered), but something interesting to be investigated later. That day came in 2001 when Michael McDowell used a pair of Russian submarines to view the wreck, whereupon they discovered the remains of a wooden trading vessel loaded with coconuts! A chest filled with more than 1300 silver coins was soon recovered, along with a small, ornate gold box containing 13 gold coins wrapped in a newspaper dated August 6, 1809. These gold coins were sold at auction in 2008 by Stack’s in New York, who dubbed this the “Coconut wreck,” despite its earlier names (given by divers and promoters) of “Piña Colada wreck” and “Atlantic Target Expedition wreck”.
Our Treasure Auction #3 marks the first time the silver coins from this wreck have ever been offered at auction. Each coin is accompanied by a numbered photo-certificate from archeologist James Sinclair and has been given a Grade (1 to 4, 1 being the best) to reflect the coin’s state of preservation.
“1810 wreck,” sunk off Ft. Pierce, Florida
A hurricane in 1810 sank several ships along the east coast of Florida, particularly in the vicinity of Ft. Pierce. Several ship names have been proposed for the site in question here including a Roberts, not to be confused with a ship of similar name (without the s) sunk off Vero Beach 11 years later.
Robert,
sunk in 1821 off Vero Beach, Florida
Very little is documented about this vessel sunk in 1821 in the same area as the 1618 San Ma