Spanish Shipwreck Artifact . metal tool , circ;1590 # 2

 History of the Spanish Fleet of 1715

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. The modern salvage of this fleet, begun in the early 1960s and ongoing today, has been the largest single source of gold cobs ever in the numismatic market, turning former rarities and unknown issues into collectible and popular (albeit still expensive) commodities. In typical fashion, the 1715 Fleet was a case of overloaded Spanish galleons foundering in a hurricane after delayed departure, but on a larger scale than anything before. The principal elements of the fleet, known as the Nueva España (New Spain, i.e., Mexico) Fleet, had gone to Veracruz in Mexico to deliver mercury (an essential substance in the refining of silver cobs), sell merchandise, and pick up quantities of Mexican-minted bars and cobs. An unfortunate series of complications kept the fleet in Veracruz for two whole years before it could rendezvous in Havana with the vessels of the Tierra Firme (Mainland) Fleet, bearing the Peruvian and Colombian treasure brought from Panama and Cartagena. After still more delays in Havana, what was ultimately a twelve- or thirteen-ship convoy (depending on which account you prefer) did not manage to depart for Spain until July 24, 1715, well into hurricane season.

The Urca de Lima and ten other treasure ships are sunk by a hurricane off the coast of Florida in 1715. Contemporary oil painting.

The trip back to Spain was to be the routine one: up the coast of Florida on the Gulf Stream, which gradually turns outward into and across the Atlantic at about the location where the fleet was lost. On July 31, the fleet encountered a hurricane, driving the ships shoreward. Some of the ships sank in deep water, some broke up in shallower water, and others ran aground close to the beach, while a lone vessel, the tag-along French ship Grifón, sailed onward without incident. Hundreds of the crews 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. Ultimately news of the disaster reached Havana, whence salvage ships were dispatched to the scene.

The Spaniards undertook salvage operations for several years, with the help of Indian slaves, and they recovered nearly half of the vast treasure (at least the registered part), from the holds of ships whose remains rested in water sufficiently shallow for breath-holding divers. Gradually the salvagers enlarged their encampment and built a storehouse on the spit of dune land just behind the beach that bordered a jungle. In 1716 a flotilla of British freebooters under Henry Jennings appeared on the scene, 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 1718. The rest of the treasure remained on the ocean floor until our time *