“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.”