They came, in colonies settled around Jamestown, with the
pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in the Massachusetts Bay, and they began what we would term the America of today. There would be treaties with the Indian nations and battles amongst warring tribes. There would be contests of wills between colonies funded and founded by British, Spanish, and French concerns. But this would be the century that began true settlement, for all its wonder and hardship and harbinger of a nation that would come.
Image above: Lithograph by Sarony and Major, 1846, of the landing on Plymouth Rock by William Bradford and the pilgrims with the Mayflower in the distance. Courtesy Library of Congress. Right: Painting of the Signing of the Mayflower Compact, 1899, Jean Leon Gerome Ferris. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons.
September 6, 1622 - Spanish treasure fleet, including the heavily laden treasure ships Atocha, Margarita, and Rosario sink off Marquesas Keys in the straits of Florida. The ships would not be found until the 20th century.
The Spanish had been making gold and silver hay since the day Columbus traveled to the islands of Hispaniola, then expanded their empire to South America and Mexico. Problem was, how to transport the treasure back to Spain without succumbing to English pirates or Portuegese privateers or Dutch ships looking for a quick score or the vagaries of traveling a turbulent ocean.
However, for the most part, the journeys ended up back in Europe enriching the backers and King Philip IV, seventeen years old and one year on the throne, of the expeditions. In 1622, a treasure fleet was heading back off the Florida Keys. Its main galleon, Nuestra Señora de Atocha (Our Lady of Atocha), was carrying copper, silver, gold, tobacco, gems, and indigo. They had left the ports of Cartegena and Porto Bello in today's Columbia and Panama, then made a stop in Havana. The ship was heavily armored. The Atocha was the rear guard of the flotilla, safeguarding against a rear attack.
The ship Atocha had been built in 1620 in Havana for the Spanish King. It was one hundred and twelve feet long and rated at 550 tons. She had made only one previous trip to Spain. The Santa Margarita was an even larger vessel; it was rated at 600 tons and carried twenty-eight cannon for protection. Other ships in the flotilla included the the Nuestra Señora de Rosario, the Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, which was the lead ship, and the Santa Cruz.
The 1622 Shipwreck
The Atocha was taking a record load of treasure back from Panama, and because of the time it took to record and load in Veracruz, they were late getting back to Havana to meet the twenty-eight ships of the Tierra Firme (Mainland) Fleet. The fleet would include the Santa Margarita and Rosario. On September 4, 1622, they finally departed from Havana; the fleet was six weeks late in departing.
The treasure on the Atocha alone was worth $250 to $500 million and came from all places of the Spanish colonial empire; Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Columbia, and Venezuela. The other ships of the fleet carried similar cargo, plus crew, passengers, and soldiers.
The treasure on the Santa Margarita included nearly two hundred thousand pieces of eight silver coins, fifty hundred and fifty silver ingots weighing ten thousand pounds and nine thousand ounces of gold in registered cargo. It is reported that twenty percent more unregistered cargo was also on board in order to pay the King his twenty percent share.
On the second day of the voyage back to Spain, a large hurricane hit the fleet. By the morning of September 6, 1622, eight ships were sunk, scattered between the Marquesas Key and the Dry Tortugas. A small ship, the Nuestra Señora de la Consolacion, could be seen from the Atocha as it was swallowed up by the sea. The Rosario hit a rock and its survivors held onto it. Surprisingly, the Atocha, about twenty leagues from Havana, was one of those which sank. It lost all its treasure, two hundred and sixty-five crew members and passengers, except for three sailors and two slaves. They held onto the mizzenmast until the Cuban merchant ship, the Santa Cruz, which had survived, rescued them.
In all, five hundred and fifty people lost their lives; on the Santa Margarita alone, one hundred and forty-two. Sixty-eight people on the Santa Margarita were recued by the Santa Cruz. The lead ship Candelaria and the twenty ships directly behind it rode the winds to safety past the Dry Tortugas. The others were scattered over fifty miles of sea, sunk by the storm.
Once news reached Havana, a rescue party of five ships under Spanish mariner Captain Gaspar de Vargas was sent back to recover what they could from the Atocha and the Santa Margarita. But the Atocha had sunk so deep, fifty-six feet, making recovery difficult, and the hatches were battened, so they marked the site and went toward the other sunken ships, including the Santa Margarita and the Nuestra Señora del Rosario. When a second hurricane hit on October 5, 1622, the recovery was even more difficult. In 1624, Francisco Melian, a Havana politician, received a royal salvage contract. For several years under that contract, the Spanish used slaves to attempt recovery, but the dangerous dive, in a diving bell, cost many lives. They did recover about half of the registered cargo from the Santa Margarita over ten years, found forty miles west of the Florida Keys. They never found the Atocha again.
The loss of this treasure caused a major impact on the Spanish economy, forcing the King to sell several galleons and borrow money to finance the Thirty Years War. The Spanish empire was starting to wane, although it still remained a world power.
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The Atocha and Treasure Ships Recovery
A sixteen year quest was undertaken in 1969. A man named Mel Fisher, an Indiana born chicken farmer moved west to open a dive shop in California, plus his Treasure Salvors crew, searched the sea floor for any clue to the Atocha's whereabouts. Four years into the search, they located three silver bars that matched the tally numbers from the manifest. It took two more years to find even more evidence; five bronze cannon from the Atocha. There was tragedy associated with the recovery, however. Mel's son, daughter-in-law Angel, and another diver, Rick Gage, were killed when their salvage boat capsized.
In 1980, the salvage crew found the main site of the Santa Margarita, including the hull and a fortune in gold bars, silver coins, and jewelry.
However, now, the state of Florida and the federal government wanted possession of the treasure, forcing Fisher to give the state 25%. On July 1, 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the treasure found completely belonged to Mel Fisher and the Treasure Salvors and that the state or federal government would not participate in the profits.
Three years later, 1985, they found the main pile of treasure from the Atocha. There was a reef of silver bars, plus gold bars, gem necklaces, gold chains, and emeralds. How about a 77.76 carat uncut crystal, too. The value was estimated at $400 million. Eventually the hull was raised and now rests in a protected lagoon at Florida Keys Community College. More fascinating artifacts are located at the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, which opened in 1991. As of 2017, ths stern castle of the ship had not been found; it may contain the remaining estimated half of the ship's treasure.
Source: Chromolithograph of shipwrecked people, holding onto debris, 1880, C.T. Webber, artist; F. Achert, lithographer; Ehrgott & Krebs, printer. Courtesy Library of Congress. Image below: Montage (background) Engraving of a shipwreck (not Atocha), 1646, illustration in Bontekoe, Willem Ysbrandsz. Ovrnael ofte gedenckwaerdige beschrijvinghe vande Oost-Indische reyse, Hoorn: Ghedruckt by I. Willemsz. Courtesy Library of Congress; (inset) Cannon from the Atocha in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain, 2011, Paul Hermans. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons C.C. 3.0. Info source: Mel Fisher Maritime Museum; melfisher.com; cannonbeachtreasure.com; atocha.com; "The Fate of the 1622 Fleet: Nuestra Señora de Atocha," 2017, Richard Perdomo, depaulas.com; Wikipedia.
History Photo Bomb
Painting of King Charles I, 1628, Gerard van Honthorst. Courtesy National Portrait Gallery via Wikipedia Commons.
Pequot War on February 22, 1837, 1890, Charles Stanley Reinhart. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons.
ABH Travel Tip
You can visit much of the Pre-Revolution history of the United States throughout the many trails and historic sites of the nation. And don't miss out on the Native American history throughout Florida or other regions. The history of the nation and North America comes from the culture of the many tribes that made up the mosaic of human culture in each state. They were here before the majority of us, after all, and their history is an amazing collection of wonder, beauty, and dedication to the land that sits beneath us.
Roger Conant's house in Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1898, illustration from Upper Canada Sketches, Thomas Conant. The house had been originally part of the Cape Ann Colony, later dismantled, then reassembled at Salem. Courtesy British Library via Wikipedia Commons.
