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"The Dreamweaver,"
The Story of Mel Fisher and his Quest for the Treasure of the Spanish
Galleon ATOCHA
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It was an occasion for
celebration Brightly colored flags whipped briskly in the breeze, while
booming ceremonial cannon fire rang in the ears of the excited citizens of
Havana as they crowded the docks to wave good-bye. The annual Spanish
treasure fleet had hauled anchors and was proceeding past
El Morro,
the grim stone fortress that guarded the
entrance to the harbor. It was September 4, 1622, and well into the
hurricane season.
The sailing had been
delayed for weeks at Portobello as more than 100,000 silver coins and over
1,000 silver ingots were loaded on board. Another delay occurred at
Cartagena where more silver coins and bars --as well as over 20,000 pesos in
gold bars and discs-- were logged into the manifest it was August 22 when
the fleet finally reached the docks at Havana. last minute cargoes of copper
slabs, baled indigo, tobacco, and more private treasure found room aboard
the galleons which were already seriously overloaded. |
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A chest of silver coins spills its
contents onto the ballast mound. Credit: K.T. Budde-Jones.
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Pilots of
the galleons had generally disagreed on a sailing date, feeling that the
danger of a hurricane was too great to risk losing such a huge treasure now
carried by the flotilla. The final decision was made by the fleet commander
the Marquis of Cadereita. He had considered the conjunction of the moon,
which greatly affected the weather. This was the time of the new moon when
the Earth, sun, and moon were in ‘conjunction’. If bad weather prevailed, he
would delay sailing. But on September 4, the day before the conjunction
occurred, the weather looked promising. His decision was to sail. |
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another urgency to sail as well. The King of Spain was, as always, in
desperate need of the gold and silver By 1622 the financial straits of Spain
were stretched to the limits. The Fugger family of Augsburg had financed
Spanish wars and religious expansion but in 1607 a suspension of debt
payment by Philip III drove the Fuggers out of royal finance. In l621 Philip
III died, and his son Philip IV became king. The thirty-year religious war
between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire had already
begun, and Philip IV needed the
galleon treasures to support Spain’s efforts in this war, The fortunes of Spain literally rose and fell
with the flow of precious metals from her overseas empire.
It took more than an hour for the fleet
of 28 ships to clear the harbor. Once they had formed into a sailing order,
the capitana led the fleet off on a north-by-northwest course that
would carry them to the Gulf Stream. Once there the current would give them
an additional two knots, which would boost them homeward By sunset they had
reached the center of the Gulf Stream, but the weather had changed. The deep
red sunset and a bank of clouds that began to pile up to the southeast gave
the pilots their first uneasiness. Unknown to them a hurricane had formed
and was rapidly moving along the Leeward Islands. |
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As darkness descended upon
the fleet, topmast lights were lit as ships tried to maintain position. But
now the gusts of wind began to toss the ships about. Long, undulating seas
made it difficult to maintain their course. Before morning the winds had
increased and were now whipping the tops of the waves into a white froth.
The almiranta of the fleet, Nuestra Senora
de Atocha,
positioned in the rear of the flotilla, had
to reduce sail by morning in order to weather the storm that was now upon
them. Deck cargo had to be secured and cargo hatches firmly lashed down as
the day darkened and the weather worsened. By
noontime the winds had shifted to the east and reached gale force. No longer
could they see other ships in the convoy. The mainsail was lowered and
secured, and the foresail alone kept her bow into the wind. |
Gold spoon recovered in 1985 from Atocha.
Credit: Pat Clyne.
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Now the sea boiled around the galleon,
her yards disappearing into the green water that began to wash over her
waist. Great seas swept all around, and flying spray obscured the horizon.
Atocha
plunged into each wave, lifted up on a
crest to roll wildly into the next. No longer could the galleon be steered.
With the tiller lashed in place, the whipstaff disconnected, each huge wave
sent shudders through the Atocha hull. Below decks was turmoil. Olive
jars filled with water or oil were sent crashing about. Passengers and crew
alike suffered wholesale seasickness, holding onto anything solid. Now they
were at the mercy of the sea. The struggle to stay afloat went on, but only
thoughts of survival put seamen through the motions of working the ship. The
winds had moved around to the northeast, and now the fleet was being driven
relentlessly towards the dreaded Florida reefs. |
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Portuguese cast bronze mariner's astrolabe
recovered from the "pilot's chest" in 1985.
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By first light of dawn on
Tuesday, September 6, the Atocha
had reached the shallows near
the deadly coral rocks. Her stream anchor had been deployed during the
night, and now as it struck bottom, the two main bow anchors were dropped in
an effort to keep the galleon from being driven onto the dragons teeth.
Fifteen foot waves had carried away the foremast and rudder, and now her bow
carried the brunt of each wave. The anchor lines, stretched tight as a
bowstring, soon snapped with a loud report, and
Atocha
became part of the mountainous waves
breaking on the reefs. Captain Bernardino de Lugo, gunnery captain aboard
Atocha’s
sister ship, the Santa
Margarita,
was able to see
Atocha
“rise up, strike a reef, and sink shortly
thereafter.” The Margarita
soon afterwards parted her own anchor
lines and was dashed against the reefs four miles away. |
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By a twist of fate, the
capitana
and nineteen of the ships in the fleet were
driven southward and passed west of the Dry Tortugas into calmer waters. One
vessel, Nuestrc,
Señora de Ia Consolación, was
lost in deep water. One of the larger naos, El
Rosario,
was driven onto the reefs near Loggerhead
Key in the Tortugas. A patache sank nearby in front of Loggerhead
Key, and a small Cuban coast guard vessel sank near the Marquesas Keys, A
morning calm found debris, floating trunks, barrels, masts, and a few
survivors.
Of the
Atocha,
sunk in
55
feet of water, only her mizzenmast
protruded above water. To it clung five desperate souls, thankful to have
survived. One of the merchant vessels, the
Santa Cruz,
had weathered the hurricane and, now loaded
with 68 survivors of the
Margarita, approached the sunken
Atocha.
The five men --a seaman, two apprentices,
and two black slaves-- were taken aboard the
Santa Cruz.
All trapped below decks, 260 souls were
lost aboard the Atocha.
The
Margarita
had lost 143 as her hull disintegrated
against a sand bar.
When the news of the
disaster reached Havana, Gaspar de Vargas was commissioned to locate and
salvage the sunken galleons. Within a week he had outfitted five vessels and
sailed for the area near “the last key of the Matecumbes.”
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He soon located the
mizzenmast of the Atocha, but was unable to retrieve the treasure
from her hold because the hatches were so securely fastened. He recovered
two small bronze cannon from her stern castle, buoyed the wreck site, and
then turned his attention to locating the
Margarita.
He searched in vain for any visible signs
of the Margarita,
then finding none, he sailed westward
towards the Tortugas
On the reefs of Loggerhead
Key de Vargas found the
Rosario
in ten feet of water, her keel broken and
badly holed. Her crew and passengers were huddled on Loggerhead, along with
the survivors of the pa/ache
which sank nearby. He brought
them aboard his salvage vessels, then went about the task of salvaging the
treasure front El Rosario
The hull was burned to the waterline,
and the one million pesos in silver bars and coins were recovered. Just as
the recovery was completed, a second hurricane --more powerful than the
first-- swept over the area- The salvage vessels were barely able to stay
afloat, protected somewhat by Loggerhead Key. The treasure and survivors
were taken to Havana, and preparations were made to return to
Atocha
with explosives. |
Gold rosary cross with nine emeralds.
Atocha 1985. Credits: Pat Clyne.
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Unknown to Gaspar de
Vargas, the second hurricane had separated the upper deck structure of the
Atocha
from the hull and sent it dancing over ten
miles across the waves, strewing the bottom along the way with coins, gold
bars, jewelry, and artifacts. The hull --nailed to the bottom with almost
forty tons of silver, fifteen tons of copper ingots, and sixty tons of
ballast stones-remained in deep water When the salvage ships reached the
Matecumbes they could find no trace of the
A tocha
The buoys were gone, as was the mizzenmast.
De Vargas and his men dragged the area for weeks without success, They also
could find no trace of Santa
Margarita
By February of 1623 the
Marquis de Cadereita sailed to the Matecumbes to take personal charge of the
salvage operation. He was under great pressure from Philip IV to recover the
treasure, and he thought that his presence might inspire the team of salvage
divers to work even harder. They named the last of the Matecumbes “Marquesa
Key” after him. But the
Atocha
still eluded them. For several months they
would row four hours to the potential site, drag the area for several more
hours, then return --exhausted--
to their base on the southwestern tip of Marquesa Key.
Without a trace to show for their
efforts, they returned to Havana. The site of
Nuestra Señora de Atocha
slipped into archival history. A history of galleons with
manifests of gold and silver lost on the wicked reefs of Florida, waiting
for a modem day salvager to recover them. |
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A SAILOR’S
PRAYER
A stout Ship
And loyal
Crew
A strong Wind
The Sea and
You
0 Lord
To Guide us.
Amen.
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THE 1622 TIERRA FIRME FLOTA LOSS
The
earliest major disaster involving a large part of an armada took place in
1622. On September 4 of that year the Tierra Firme “galleons,” commanded by
the Marquis de Caldereita (also spelled Cadereyta)
sailed from Havana. The captain general of the fleet was Juan de Lara Moran,
and other officers included Admiral Larraspuru and
Pedro Pasquier. Eight registry galleons, seventeen cargo
naos and three
pataches were strung along the
Straits of Florida two days later when a hurricane struck. The following
account of the destruction of several of the treasure
ships is quoted from the Royal Letter of the Marquis de Cadereyta which was
found in Legajo 1145,
Indifferente, at the
Archivo General de Indias, Seville. I am indebted to
Coin E. (Jack) Haskins, Jr., Southern Research &
Salvage Corporation, Islamorada, for a summary of
his and Hurt Webber’s findings on the 1622 loss
during a tremendous research project, and permission to quote from this
translation:
When I arrived Monday, September the 12th,
to Havana harbor {wrote the
Marquis} I found 10 ships of the ones that carried the provisions, and the
three galleons of silver; Nuestra
Señora del Rosario,
Capitana
of the fleet Santa Anna la Real, and
Nuestra Señora de Ia Candelaria, all of them without rigging or sails
and making much water,
and seven ships of the fleet,
five of them unrigged, and all in very poor condition.
And I saw Don Bernardino de Lugo, sea and war
Captain of the galleon Santa
Margarita
of the silver ones, and having been injured
about it and about the missing others, he said that on the day of the storm
the Captain headed in the southwest direction until night; that the wind
took away the sail of the foremast, and the galleon’s remaining main mast
broke, and also the rudder
. on
September 6th at dawn he threw the sounding line and took a depth of 40
brazas
. . .
the force of the wind mud the currents pushed
the
galleon forward up to 10 brazas where
it
grounded and was lost in the sand bank which is located on
the west side of the last of the
Matacumbe Keys, next to the
head of the Martires off the Florida coast. At 7
AM,
of that day he saw one legua to the East the galleon named Nuestra
Señora de Atocha, Almiranta of the fleet, without rigging or sails......
and as he watched he saw it go
down and sink to the bottom. At 10:00A.M.
the Santa
Margarita was wrecked and most of his men drowned. He was thrown out of
the ship by the force of the water, and was later picked up by the small
boat of a Jamaican vessel. He then obtained
material
to make a buoy and
placed the signal close to the
place where the two
galleons sank.
On Tuesday, the 13th of
September, the Juan Bautista
. . - entered the
port of Havana... and with it eight ships of the ones that carried
provisions. He was asked about the rest of the ships and answered that he
saw the Nuestra Senora del
Rosarlo stranded
on one of the Tortuga Keys.
Fifty—four persons
were saved. These people said that Gaspar Gonzales
de los Reyes’ ship capsized without leaving any
survivors,
and that he saw another ship, commanded by Juan do Ia Torre
Agala, which also sank.
In
all, ten ships were lost during the hurricane. Of these, the three treasure
galleons—Santa Margarita, Nuestra Señora de Atocha,
and Nuestra Señora del
Rosario—were the subjects of immediate salvage
attempts.
On the 15th of the same
month the Governor, ministers and pilots of the army and fleet met to reach
an agreement to prepare the ships in order to search . . .
It was decided that
Captain Gaspar de Vargas would go
to make the
recovery
from the
two lost
galleons,
and
to search
for the lost one around the
Tortuga Keys, which he went out to do on the 16th of September with three
pataches
and two
chalupas
[smaller ships]. Having
reached the right place, he discovered the small mast of the
Almiranta . . .
The
galleon was in a depth of 10
brazas of water.
The divers went down to enter the
silver compartment, which could
not be
accomplished because the
portholes and hatches were locked and the decks were in one piece . . . He
then left to search for the Santa
Margarita.
The buoy
was
not found,
neither
was
the ship. A
storm kept them from working
further.
He headed for the Tortuga
Keys in search for the
Nuestra Señora del Rosario
which
he found stranded in one of
the keys, on the 24th
of
September, and found on the
land its people and on a nearby key a
patache
of the fleet . . They took
out all the silver and twenty pieces of artillery.
NUESTRA
SENORA DEL ROSARIO
and a PATACHE
As stated above, Captain Miguel de
Chazarreta’s galleon Rosario, and a nearby patache, were
salvaged of their valuables. The galleon’s upper decks were burned to
facilitate reaching the silver. The remnants of both vessels are believed to
have been located off the Dry Tortugas by Ray Eaton, of Hamden, Connecticut,
and several others.
The attempts at salvage continued:
On October 13th I sent from [Havana] Captain Don
Pedro de Ursua with three pataches and two chalupas and
instruments to
search for
the
galleon Santa
Margarita
. . . After a delay caused by a
storm it was decided that Captain Gaspar de Vargas should go to the
Matacumbe Keys
. . .
Vargas
took saws,
drills, and
other
new instruments
to blow up or
break
the deck of the
Almiranta Atocha and to take
out the treasure
and artillery, also from the Margarita. Divers were also taken.
[After more delays]
. . .
reaching the place where the Almiranta
was lost
he did not
see the mesana
[small mast], nor any
other signs,
and figuring that the October’s storm
had destroyed it, he went to look around all the
Matacumbe Keys to find some signs. In one of them he saw half die side of
the Almiranta
- -
you can figure that the two decks were
gone and that only the plan and ballast remained and in it the silver,
artillery and other heavy items, and to collect them was
sent Captain Gaspar de Vargas who was delayed by
wheather until November 8th
- - - and the same
day he departed he
was caught by a storm that sent
him to the port of Mariel
- -
he returned to
Havana
to
get supplies [and
so on].
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The SANTA
MARGARITA
Another account of this galleon’s loss reads: ‘The first of the shipwrecked
galleons was the Santa Margarita,
smashed against one of the keys
of Los Mártires, where
it broke into pieces and was
destroyed. Few people could be saved and this is the interesting galleon.’’
Together with the Atocha
(see below), it remains very interesting indeed to Burr D. Webber, Jr..
whose Continental Exploration Corporation was awarded Exploration Contract
#2o
on July 18, 1969. The
boundaries of this lease cover the region in which Webber is
nearly certain both galleons lie. He writes:
Most people think that the Santa
Margarita was a large and
heavily armed galleon, which was not the case. Her dimentions,
which were given on November 28,
1621,
when she was approved for a silver galleon,
were:
54 codes and
5/12
in length
17
short codes of extreme breadth by the first beam
8 large codes in depth of hold
.
. .and it seems to be sufficient for a silver
galleon.
The Santa
Margarita
carried approximately 25 pieces of artillery,
some of bronze which were later recovered. Although sought by both Gaspar de
Vargas and Pedro do Ursua, she was not found until 1626 by Francisco Nunez
Melian. In order to create an incentive among the slave divers, he agreed to
grant freedom to the first diver to locate and recover a bar of silver from
the site. A slave diver named Juan Banon did this, and salvage continued
through 1630.
I have a letter which
indicates that the Indians also worked on this site, recovering gold and
many reales, before the Spaniards ever located the wreck. I cross-referenced
the registered bullion listings on the Margarita
against the Nuñez Melian salvage records. As I
recall, nearly
144 bars
of silver and thousands of pieces of eight were
accounted for. Although
some 30 bars and cakes of gold were in the register, none were listed as
salvaged. Did the Indians recover the unaccounted—for treasure? I don’t
know. The total registered treasure aboard the
Santa Margarita was 410,000 pesos in gold, silver,
copper and tobacco.
NUESTRA SENORA DE ATOCHA
The
Almiranta took down with
her Admiral Pedro Pasquier and nearly her entire crew when she sank. The
6oo-ton Tierra Firme galleon carried over 1,000,000 pesos in registered
silver and other treasure, worth at least $2,ooo,ooo today. She was found by
the Spanish, as described earlier, and partially salvaged in 1623.
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Before work
could
be
concluded the marker buoy
on
the wreck was
carried away in a
storm, and
the
site was never relocated.
Shifting sand blanketed the
ballast mound, which has probably
disappeared from view. There should be at least $1,000,000
in gold and
silver today in the ballast of the Atocha, buried under the sand in a
wide stretch between two reefs, 30—60
feet deep, within the
boundaries of Exploration Contract #20.
Burt
Webber’s Continental Exploration Corporation is a dynamic, technically
advanced organization.
Still young, Webber
started his salvage training in 1961 as chief diver on an expedition
directed by Art McKee aboard the Amigo on which an eighteenth-century
wreck on Banner Reef was excavated. During the next years he explored wrecks
in the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and off the Florida Keys on expeditions
managed by Gordon S. Patton and Fred Dickson, Jr., of Ocean City, Maryland,
Captain Leo Barker of Miami, and others. On another McKee expedition in
1963
he helped raise five old cannons which were sold
to all Ocho Rios hotel in Jamaica. He then formed a Jamaica company, Marine
Archaeological Research Corporation, Ltd., and charted wrecks along Serrana
and San Pedro banks. Webber spent much of 1965 and 1966 in Spain
directing a program of research at the Archivo General de Indias and Museo
Naval, during which over a thousand documents pertaining to the armadas were
located, photocopied, and catalogued by his staff of translators and
researchers. Then, fully equipped with information and experience, he formed
Continental Exploration Corporation.
The preparations for the
assault on the two Spanish galleons have cost already some
$200,000.
Much of this was spent procuring and testing such
sophisticated electronic search devices as Dr. Edgerton’s seismic profiling
equipment and the Varian Associates’ V-4937 proton magnetometer.
In a search for more sensitive and reliable detection units, a whole new
generation of rubidium and cesium magnetometers was checked out.
Webber’s
136-foot research motor vessel Revenge is one of the most modern and
fully equipped afloat. After purchasing her for $100,000, he spent another
$85,000 on specialized search and salvage equipment, including a two-man dry
submarine, recompression chamber, deep and shallow diving rigs, air lifts,
pave-breakers, and a full range of navigation equipment. His associates
include Art McKee, George MacDonald, Jack Haskins, and Kenneth Myers, the
president of Sea Borne Electronics Company, whose Varian 4938-G magnetometer
located the Endeavour’s cannons.
With such a competent management and team,
researched information, and advanced equipment, it seems likely that the
Continental Exploration Corporation may well have located the Atocha and
possibly the Margarita as well-by the time this book goes to press.
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Gold Rush
Off
Cape Cod
A Close-up of the 1717 Pirate Wreck off the Cape Cod Coast |
The Whydah Is
For Real
An Archaeological Assessment |
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The Treasure
Diver's Guide
by John S Potter
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Authentic
Atocha Coins
Grade 1
Grade 2
Grade 3
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www.atochastory.com
www.atochatreasures.com
www.1715fleet.com
www.shopatocha.com
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