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.