SHIPWRECK (AND HOARD) HISTORIES

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 and 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 rediscovered 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. Thousands more coins and artifacts were recovered by the salvage company Sealit in the 1990s.

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.

Feversham, sunk in 1711 off Nova Scotia, Canada

                The Feversham was on its way north with three other ships from New York to Quebec with provisions and cash to assist a British campaign against the French when all four ships sank on and around Scatarie Island off Cape Breton in a storm on October 7, 1711. About 100 people died in the disaster, while the remaining 49 survivors were able to bribe a passing French fisherman to take them to New York for 200 pounds. Apparently no one—British or French—was able to salvage anything from the wreck in its time.

                In 1968 the wrecksite of the Feversham was rediscovered by a group of divers led by famous Canadian salvager, Alex Storm, whose recoveries were sold privately to a “highly-reputable Canadian institution” in 1972. In the mid-1980s the Feversham was salvaged again by a new group of divers. The Feversham’s numismatic yield was small in comparison with Spanish galleon treasures, but quite important as a cross-section of coinage in circulation in New York at the time. Mostly it was Spanish American silver cobs and Massachusetts Bay Colony shillings, many of the former with rare, weight-adjustment plugs to bring them up to standard. A small group of gold cobs—almost entirely Bogotá 2 escudos, virtually identical to those from the Spanish 1715 Fleet—was found in later salvage efforts. An abundance of auctions offered these coins from 1989 through 1999.

DeLiefde, sunk in 1711 off the Shetland Islands, north of Scotland

                During the War of Spanish Succession it was deemed safer to take the northern route around Scotland than to skirt French coasts in the English Channel, but in so doing the Dutch East Indiaman DeLiefde wrecked on a reef in the Out Skerries due to faulty navigation under overcast skies, leaving only one survivor to tell the tale. Prompt salvage attempts by the VOC to recover the cargo of silver and gold coins turned up nothing—looting by locals was greatly suspected. Modern expeditions in the 1960s, however, located the ship and yielded upwards of 4000 coins (mostly silver “rider” ducatoons and gold ducats) in 1966-1968, many of which were sold at auction by Glendining (London) in 1969.

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. It was a typical case of overloaded Spanish galleons foundering in a hurricane after delayed departure. In effect the 1715 Fleet was a combination of two fleets: the Nueva España (New Spain, i.e., Mexico) Fleet from Mexico and the Tierra Firme (Mainland) Fleet from South America, some 12 or 13 ships in all. Encountering a hurricane on July 30, all the ships were driven shoreward and destroyed except for a lone vessel, the tag-along French ship Grifón, which sailed onward without incident. Hundreds of the crew 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.

                Salvage commenced soon afterward and lasted for several years. Nearly half of the vast treasure (at least the registered part) was recovered and kept in a nearby storehouse. In 1716, a flotilla of British freebooters under Henry Jennings 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, whose ranks later included such luminaries as Robert Marx and the flamboyant Mel Fisher. The Fisher family still sub-leases the sites to hopeful salvagers today.

                The vast treasures yielded by the 1715 Fleet in our time fall into nearly every category, from coins to jewelry, precious stones to cannons, religious artifacts to Chinese porcelains. The 1715 Fleet remains the world’s largest source for New World gold cobs, while the silver cobs recovered number in the hundreds of thousands. Promotions of the coins by Real Eight and others have spanned the decades, in addition to significant 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).

                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), “Corrigans” (Vero Beach), “Rio Mar” (Vero Beach), “Sandy Point” (Vero Beach), “Wedge” (Fort Pierce), and “Colored Beach” (Fort Pierce). Regardless of the exact site of origin, a great majority of the coins and artifacts 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.

Slot ter Hooge, sunk in 1724 off Porto Santo, Madeira Islands

                This East Indiaman, whose Dutch name means “Castle of Hooge” (a place in modern-day Belgium), was outbound to Batavia (Jakarta) with a load of three tons of silver ingots (15 chests) plus four chests of silver coins, three of which contained nothing but Mexican cobs. Blown off course by a storm, the Slot ter Hooge wrecked on November 19 off Porto Santo Island in the Madeira Islands (northwest of Africa), to the demise of some 221 people on board (only 33 survived). More than half the treasure was salvaged over the next ten years by the famous English inventor John Lethbridge, but the rest was forgotten until our time. In 1974 the wreck was rediscovered by the well-known salvager Robert Sténuit, who recovered many silver ingots and coins, mostly Dutch ducatoons but also some Mexican 8-reales cobs.

Guadalupe-Tolosa, sunk in 1724 in Samaná Bay, Dominican Republic

                Inbound from Spain and often referred to as the “quicksilver galleons,” these two ships were carrying a cargo of 400 tons of mercury, a critical element in the silver- and gold-refining process in Mexico, where these ships were headed. In late August the ships were blown by a hurricane into Samaná Bay on the northeast coast of what is now the Dominican Republic and wrecked there in relatively close proximity to each other (about 7½ miles), which is why their names are intermingled today. Well over 500 people died in the tragedy. The wrecks were discovered and salvaged in the late 1970s and yielded many earthenware olive jars and other artifacts in addition to the mercury. In 2005 it became known that the 1970s salvage also turned up a small group of gold coins (including thirteen cobs from the mints of Bogotá, Cuzco, Lima, and Mexico), which were auctioned that same year.

Akerendam, sunk in 1725 off the coast of Norway

                Separated from her two companion vessels in a heavy storm, the East Indiaman Akerendam foundered off the northern point of Runde Island off the west coast of Norway on March 8, with no survivors among the 200 people on board. Throughout the next several months, five of the 19 chests of coins aboard the Akerendam were recovered, and one of those five had opened up, scattering coins over the wrecksite. No more was found, and the site was forgotten until Norwegian amateur divers rediscovered it in 1972 and brought up almost 40,000 gold and silver coins, with another 16,000 or so found the next year. Ultimately the coins were split between the divers and the Norwegian and Dutch governments, and the divers’ portion was offered as a whole at auction in 1978, following which the coins were largely assembled into leather-bound promotional sets (each consisting of one Dutch gold ducat and up to 23 silver coins, generally Mexican cobs and Dutch ducatoons and minors).

1733 Fleet, Florida Keys

                Much like the 1715-Fleet disaster, the 1733 Fleet was an entire Spanish convoy lost in a hurricane off Florida. However, due to the lesser severity of the 1733 hurricane, which struck the fleet on July 15, and the shallowness of the wrecksites in the Keys, there were many survivors, and four ships remained in good enough condition to be refloated and sent back to Havana. A highly successful salvage effort by the Spanish yielded even more than the 12 million pesos of precious cargo listed 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 (note there is not universal agreement as to which wrecksite pertains to each galleon, and each name is a contemporaneous abbreviation or nickname): El Pópulo, El Infante, San José, El Rubí (the capitana), Chávez, Herrera, Tres Puentes, San Pedro, El Terri (also spelled Lerri or Herri), San Francisco, El Gallo Indiano (the almiranta), 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 south-westernmost 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. Unfortunately throughout the next several decades 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 provided a piece of evidence, a secret map, that emerged from obscurity in 1977. Stemming from that, divers employed by 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 (by the calendar in use by the British at the time), 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 (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.

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 more than 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.

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. Forty-two 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, although 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.

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 further salvage.

                Beginning in 1979, modern salvage on the wreck by the salvage company Sealit yielded 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 there were also 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

                Actually a Portuguese vessel leased by the Spanish, 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 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 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 is pristine, but the silver coins all show at least moderate corrosion.

                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+ ounces 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 eighteenth 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.

Grosvenor, sunk in 1782 off Port St. Johns, South Africa

                In one of the most celebrated shipwreck stories in South Africa and England, the aging English East Indiaman Grosvenor was on her way home from India when she suddenly struck a reef and sank at Lwambazi Bay off the “Wild Coast” of South Africa. The tales of the fates of the survivors, of whom some reached European settlements and others became integrated into local tribal societies, are particularly captivating and have been greatly embellished over the years. Also exaggerated were rumors of great treasures lost on the wreck, which naturally have spurred many salvage attempts over the centuries since the sinking. In truth, very little treasure was on board, and not much has been found, to the point that genuine, certified items from this wreck are rather rare today, especially outside South Africa.

 

Nicobar, sunk in 1783 off False Bay, South Africa

                One of very few famous shipwrecks of the Danish East India Company, the Nicobar was outbound to India with a load of copper plates from Sweden that were actually a form of coins, inasmuch as each one bore a date, denomination and mintmark, along with the monogram of the king or queen. Demonetized in 1771, the copper “plate money” became more like ingots, with trade value at the current rate for pure copper. But the Nicobar never reached its destination: After stopping at False Bay to replenish supplies and offload sick crew, the ship left again on July 10, 1783, and ran aground in a storm that night. The wreck was rediscovered in 1987 by local fishermen, who salvaged some 3,000 copper plates, the bulk of which were sold by Ponterio & Associates in California.

                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.

                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.