wreck diving - Atocha Treasure Company

WRECK DIVING MAGAZINE
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1715 Fleet Part IV • Aquarium Dive on the USS Monitor • Boats of “Cherbourg Affair”
Great Storm of 1913 • Smyrna • SS Thistlegorm • U-550 • USS Tucker • Wrecks of Gulen
Following the
fins of Cousteau
The SS Thistlegorm
and its incredible
cargo
The Elusive
Wolf The discovery
of the U-550
Issue 31
$7.95
The 100 year
anniversary of
the Great Storm
of 1913
Thirteen of the
most dramatic
stories about a
single storm that
took over 250 lives
Issue 31
A Quarterly Publication
The Queen’s Priceless Jewels
An eighteenth-century nautical chart showing the location where the 1715 fleet was lost.
THE QUEST FOR THE
A diving bell like this one was
used right after the 1715 ships
were lost to salvage amounts
of treasure off of them.
46
ISSUE 31 • 2013
QUEEN’S PRICELESS JEWELS
In 1700, Charles II of Spain, last of the Hapsburg rulers, died. In his will, he nominated the
grandson of Louis XIV of France to succeed him as Philip V. The English, Dutch, and Austrians
regarded this extension of Bourbon power as a threat to their countries and joined forces in a
destructive and costly war against Spain and France — the War of the Spanish Succession (17011714). France lost the war, but, in the peace treaty, the major European powers agreed to accept
Philip V, provided the crowns of France and Spain were never joined.
During the course of the war, the Dutch and English concentrated on disrupting communications
between Spain and her American colonies, thus depriving her of the treasures of the New
World, which she desperately needed to finance the war. In 1702 a combined Anglo–Dutch fleet
annihilated a convoy of returning Spanish treasure ships and its escort of French warships in Vigo
Bay off the Spanish coast. Subsequently, Spain suspended annual sailings of the treasure fleets to
and from the Indies.
Only three further attempts to carry treasure to Spain were made. In 1708 the English destroyed
a fleet off Cartagena. Its flagship, the San Jose, sank with the richest silver treasure ever lost in
the Western Hemisphere – a total of 22,000,000 pesos excluding contraband. And, in 1711, a
hurricane wrecked a treasure fleet off Cuba’s north coast. Consequently, as the war drew to a close,
the Spanish Crown was on the verge of bankruptcy.
At sunrise on July 24, 1715, a convoy consisting of twelve ships set sail from Havana harbor for the
long voyage back to Spain. It was composed of five ships of the New Spain Flota, commanded by
Captain-General Don Juan Esteban de Ubilla; six ships of the Flota de Tierra Firme, commanded
by Captain-General Don Antonio de Echeverz y Zubiza; and a French ship, the Grifon, under the
command of Captain Antonio Daire. The Grifon, which happened to be in Havana at the time,
received permission to return to Europe in the convoy.
Echeverz’s flota sailed from Spain directly to Cartagena, Colombia, carrying assorted merchandise
to sell in Cartagena, Portobelo, Panama, and in Havana. When he arrived in Cartagena, Echeverz
sent word to the viceroy of Peru to deliver, as usual, the accumulated treasure of Peru and Chile
to Panama City. From there, mules generally transported it overland to Portobelo, where a
commercial fair was held. Then, the treasure would be loaded aboard the ships of the Flota de
Tierra Firme for transport to Spain. Echeverz also notified the viceroy of New Granada in Bogotá
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✴
Both early 18th-century charts showing the Bahama Channel with Cuba, Bahamas and Florida.
Shipwrecks of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet
By Robert F. Marx
Part FOUR
to send his stored-up treasure, and he alerted the governor
of the island of Margarita to send pearls. When the Tierra
Firme Flota sailed to Havana to join up with the New Spain
Flota, its three largest galleons were crammed with all the
pearls and South American treasure of emeralds, gold, silver
specie and bullion.
The New Spain Flota sailed from Spain with eight ships,
but four sank during a storm while in Veracruz, so only four
ships sailed for Havana where Ubilla added a small frigate.
His Capitana or lead ship was one of the richest vessels ever
to sail from the New World to Spain. She carried over three
and a half million pesos in gold and silver plus vast amounts
of jewelry, Chinese porcelain and other objects from the
Orient.
However, her most valuable cargo was some forty chests
of jewelry and gold objects especially crafted in the Orient
for the new Queen of Spain, Elizabeth Farnese. A powerful
Savoy princess who married Philip V in 1701, she demanded
an enormous dowry, everything from several hundred jewelstudded crowns to an eight-hundred-piece, gold, dinner set.
In 1706, the entire collection, having safely reached Veracruz
from Manila, was loaded on a galleon. Sometime after the
flota set sail for Havana, the galleon carrying these treasures
sank without a trace in the Gulf of Mexico. Unbelievable
as it may sound, the same scenario was repeated five years
later, in 1711. Then, in 1715, Ubilla was entrusted with a
third and equally ill-fated collection for the Queen. In the
hurricane that shattered the fleet, his Capitana with the
Farnese treasure aboard went down just south of Sebastian
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Inlet in the area known today as the “Cabin Site.” Until now
it has eluded discovery.
The 1715 convoy had made its uneventful way from
Havana, up the Bahamas Channel, also known as the Straits
of Florida. But, on the night of July 30, a fierce hurricane
dashed all the ships but the Grifon upon the coast of
Florida. Over a thousand people perished, including Ubilla
and his principal officers. Fifteen hundred reached shore
by swimming or floating on pieces of wreckage. Many of
them perished from exposure, thirst, and hunger before aid
arrived from Havana and St. Augustine.
Ubilla’s flagship (Almiranta), carrying over 2,700,000 pesos
of registered gold and silver, plus other valuables, met her
fate several miles north of Vero Beach. Two ships carrying
lesser amounts of treasure sank near Fort Pierce at Douglas
Beach. According to the bills of lading, the smallest one, a
patache, (a small advice boat, which rarely carried treasure
or cargo), had only 44,000 pesos in registered silver coins.
However, like virtually all Spanish ships sailing home, this
little vessel was no exception to the rule that Spanish vessels
invariably carried tremendous amounts of contraband cargo
in an effort to escape the government’s onerous taxes.
According to official records, contemporary salvors made
no attempt to salvage the patache. However, in the past 30
years divers have recovered over 30,000 gold coins (more
than all the other 1715 ships combined) and over 50,000
silver coins, plus large amounts of jewelry. Salvage attempts
began immediately after the hurricane. By the end of
December 1715, officials in charge of the operation reported
ISSUE 31 • 2013 47
they had recovered all of the treasure—the major part of
that belonging to private individuals and totaling 5,200,000
pesos. At that time a peso was not an actual coin but rather
a monetary unit equivalent to an ounce and a quarter of
silver. A piece of eight was one ounce of silver in weight.
The following spring, salvors recovered an additional small
amount. By July, when salvage efforts halted, they reported
a total find of 5,241,166 pesos in silver specie and bars,
excluding gold specie and bars, silverware, and general
cargoes.
After Spanish salvage operations ended, Englishmen
from Jamaica and the Bahamas continued to recover
unknown amounts from these wrecks. When the Spaniards
stopped salvage work, an official total of 1,244,900 pesos of
registered treasure was unaccounted for. The actual amount
is unknown since both survivors and salvors stole what
they could and there is no way to determine how much
unregistered treasure remains.
Gold, which in terms of weight was then sixteen times more
valuable than silver, was the most common item smuggled to
Spain. This is substantiated by the fact that most of the gold
disks recovered lacked the multiple required markings for
registered gold bars. Smugglers used ingenious methods. In
1606, for example, Custom’s Officers in Cadiz, suspicious of
two, freshly-painted, huge anchors on a galleon, discovered
they were not iron but solid gold, weighing over two tons.
There is no recorded mention of the 1715 wrecks until
around the beginning of the nineteenth century when a
surveyor discovered several hundred silver and gold coins
on a beach near Fort Pierce Inlet. Then, in 1948, a building
contractor named Kip Wagner, walking along the beach
near Sebastian Inlet (about midway between Fort Pierce
Inlet and Cape Canaveral), found seven Spanish silver
coins. Although Wagner hadn’t been interested in history or
treasure, this discovery hooked him for life and led to one
of the most amazing treasure finds in history. During the
next year he spent hours each day walking up and down the
beaches without finding another coin. He began to think the
coins he had found might have been planted by someone
playing a joke on him.
He borrowed a metal detector and discovered a coin
buried under several inches of sand. Over the next several
months he unearthed forty more coins and concluded that,
since he made most of his finds after storms, the coins must
be coming from an offshore wreck. So he began wading and
swimming off shore when the water was calm and clear,
using his toes to search in the crevices and holes on the reef
for any objects that might identify a wreck. All he got for his
labors were severe cuts on his legs and feet from the razorrock and coral. In those days he didn’t dive; he didn’t even
have a facemask.
A neighbor and close friend, Kip Kelso, a physician
who was also a history buff, disagreed with Wagner. He
believed the coins were coming from a buried hoard on a
shipwreck that bad weather had uncovered and scattered
over the beach. For several years, the two men spent many
evenings arguing this point. Meanwhile, Wagner continued
to find more coins. Ignorant of their numismatic value, he
melted many coins and fashioned them into toy soldiers for
“
48
ISSUE 31 • 2013
When the Spaniards stopped
salvage work, an official total
of 1,244,900 pesos of registered
treasure was unaccounted for.
neighborhood children.
One day he heard that some boys had just discovered a
shipwreck while swimming about 75 feet from shore in four
feet of water, about three miles south of Sebastian Inlet and
about one mile from where he had found many coins on
the beach. Believing the wreck might well be the source of
the coins, Wagner and Kelso and several friends spent the
summer of 1949 salvaging what they thought was a treasure
wreck.
They rented a dragline, a bulldozer, and a pneumatic
hammer as excavation tools, establishing a campsite on
the beach. At low tide, they used the bulldozer to build a
temporary pier out to the wreck area and then dropped the
dragline in and pulled it ashore. They had to construct a
new sand pier after each high tide. When the dragline pulled
ashore fragments of wood, metal spikes, and ship’s fasteners
in the first few days, their anticipation soared. Several days
later they discovered a cannon carriage and some unbroken
bottles. After three months of backbreaking work, the only
treasure recovered was a single, Spanish copper maravedi
coin dated 1649.
The treasure seekers were exhausted and disillusioned.
They had spent $12,000, a small fortune in those days, and
had nothing to show for it. However, Wagner was unshaken
in his belief that an offshore shipwreck was the source of
coins on the beach. Years later, he discovered he had been
partially correct — what they had found was actually a
section of the superstructure of a galleon; the main body of
the wrecked ship and its treasure lay farther off shore.
During the next ten years, Wagner continued beachcombing
whenever he could get away from his construction business.
He found a few other places on the beach, miles from the
first area, which yielded similar coins. None of the hundreds
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Opposite Page: Every day there are beach combers with metal detectors
searching for treasure on the 1715 wreck sites and other wrecks in the area.
Above: Small bronze signal cannon draped with gold rosaries which were found
on the Flagship (Cabin) site in just four feet of water.
Bob Marx examining piles of Spanish silver pieces of
eight he and his crew recovered in 1968 off the Cabin
site on the 1715 wreck.
of coins were dated later than 1715. A National Park Service
historian told him he’d read somewhere that a Spanish
fleet had sunk off Cape Canaveral during a hurricane in
1715. Wagner wrote to an expert at the Smithsonian for
information. The reply he received indicated that a fleet had
indeed sunk in 1715, but off the Florida Keys, not off the
East Coast. Wagner was confused. Two “expert” opinions
placed the sunken fleet in locations more than 250 miles
apart.
Wagner wrote to the director of the Archives of the Indies in
Seville. His reply was vague, supplying no new information.
He asked a friend, who was in Spain, to visit the archives and
investigate. Months later he received a package containing
hundreds of microfilmed pages of documents concerning
the fleet. Ironically, the documents were uncovered in the
archives by Dr. Nancy Farris, PhD, my wife at that time.
This was when I learned of the Queen’s jewels. The ancient
documents mentioned that the Spanish salvors had camped
on the beach near Sebastian Inlet — opposite one of the
principal treasure ships.
Wagner located the camp after long searching with a
metal detector. He cleared thick scrub covering the site, and
began sifting the sand with a shovel and screen. Work under
the relentless sun was agonizingly slow, but for months
he persisted. In the first week he unearthed hundreds of
ceramic and porcelain shards, tacks, nails, musket balls, and
other items. Eventually, he found more interesting artifacts,
including a pair of cutlasses, coins, and chunks of silver,
which he believed the salvors made by melting coins they
recovered. His most spectacular find was a gold ring set with
six small diamonds.
One day Wagner was inspired to fashion a small surfboard
with a glass viewing port and every day spent time
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A pile of Spanish silver pieces of eight off the Cabin site
of the 1715 fleet.
ISSUE 31 • 2013 49
paddling in the shallow water searching for a trace
of the wreck he was certain was there. One afternoon
when the water was unusually limpid, he sighted
five iron cannon in nine feet of water. He rushed to
tell Kip Kelso of his find. Kelso immediately set out
to find scuba equipment for Wagner. Without any
instruction in scuba diving, Wagner dove on the
wreck site the following day and located more cannon
and several anchors. A few days later he found a fistsized cluster of small silver coins fused together in a
shape indicating they had originally been in a pouch,
which had long since disintegrated. After exploring
the wreck site for several weeks, Wagner realized most
of the vestiges of the wreck were buried under sand
and coral. He understood that if he had any hope of
finding the queen’s jewels, he needed to regroup and
develop a well-thought-out plan for salvaging the site
of the 1715 wreck.
About the Author: Robert Marx, in his many years as an underwater
archeologist, has discovered and excavated ancient shipwrecks in over
60 sites worldwide. He has written more than 50 books, several hundred
scientific reports and popular articles, and produced or shot over 50
documentary films.
Above: Kip Wagner examining Spanish silver wedges recovered from
one of the 1715 wrecks.
Right - Top to Bottom: A gold religious medallion which usually
contained some remnant of a saint’s possession.
Second and Third Photo: Exquisite Chinese porcelain tea cups
miraculously intact and found on the Cabin site.
A pile of beautiful Spanish gold escudo, or doubloon coins.
Girl with a large gold chain of which
thousands were lost on the 1715
galleons.
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