Undiscovered Treasure Shipwrecks

EL DORADO - Poetic justice in a tragic form took place on July 4, 1502. A fleet of 32 caravels had assembled at Santo Domingo four days before, making ready to sail for Spain. Among the passengers on Antgonio de Torres' flagship, El Dorado, was the scheming Bobadilla who had imprisoned Columbus two years earlier. By coincidence, their paths crossed again when Columbus put in at Santa Domingo on his return from a voyage. He didn't like the feel of the heavy, still atmosphere, recognizing the familiar forwarning of hurricane. He told Bobadilla as much, but his advice was scorned. Perhaps Bobadilla remembered the navigator's warning four days later as he struggled for his life in the watery fury of the worst hurricane ever recorded at that time. During twelve hours of July 4, its cyclonic winds and massive waves tore the flota to shreds, swamping a dozen of the ships in the Mona Passage and breaking most of the rest against the shores of Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, and Mona islands. Only five lived through the day. Twenty-seven caravels, among them El Dorado, were lost with over 500 lives, including Bobadilla's. There was treasure, in quantity, on the destroyed ships. Perhaps half of its gold nuggets and dust, and pearls, had been stowed aboard El Dorado. The single richest item was a solid gold table, reputed to weigh 1.5 tons, through which Bobadilla intended to express his gratitude to the Catholic Kings for his appointment as governor.

  The flagship was believed to have gone down in the Mona Passage, where depths of 1000 feet are encountered. No trace of its wreckage was discovered during the salvage work along the coasts after the seas had subsided. Much was recovered from wrecks which had been thrown up on reefs and beaches, but at least $3,000,000 (note: value was in 1962) in gold and pearls was gone. If accounts of Bobadilla's 3310-pound golden table were true, about $2,000,000 in treasure lie in the remanants of El Dorado, way down under Mona Passage. Some of the other wrecks against the coasts, partly salvaged or beyond reach of 1500 Indian skin divers, might make worthwhile targets for modern SCUBA-diving skin divers, but El Dorado and her treasures will probably never be found.




FLOR DE LA MAR - Wrecked in 1511, the Portuguese had a field day when they overran the ancient kingdom of Malacca in present-day Malaysia after its sultan declined a request for permission to trade there. Admiral Alfonso d'Albuquerque's men spent three days sacking the city and relieving it of 60 tons of gold booty plus the sultan's throne - not to mention his ingots and coinage - and more than 200 chests of diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires. The admiral called it "the richest treasure on earth that I have ever seen," and loaded it aboard the Flor de la Mar. The Portuguese didn't get far with it, though; she went down in a storm off the northern coast of Sumatra along with riches estimated to be worth $1.7 to $3 billion.




NEW SPAIN FLEET - In 1567, before the New Spain Flota of Captain-General Juan Velasco de Barrio sailed from Veracruz for Spain it received word that there were two English fleets waiting to intercept the flota-one near Havana and the other near the mouth of the Bahama Channel. To protect the treasure they decided to sail back to Spain by a very unusual route. Hugging the coast of Yucatan they turned south, passing south of Jamaica. They planned to sail toward the Virgin Islands, then head directly for Spain. However, when nearing Puerto Rico they were struck by a bad storm and forced to run before it. Six of the major ships of the flota, carrying over 3 million pesos in treasure were wrecked near the northwest tip of Dominica. The lost ships were: the Capitana, San Juan, 150 tons, Captain Benito de Santana; the Almiranta, Santa Barbola, 150 tons, Captain Vicencio Garullo; galleon San Felipe, 120 tons, Captain Juan Lopez de Sosa; nao El Espiritu Santo, 120 tons, Captain Juan de Rosales; and two unidentified naos of 120 tons each. Due to the storm, none of the other ships in the flota could stop to pick up the treasure or the survivors, most of whom reached shore, where they were all cruelly massacred by the Carib Indians.




NAU CHAGAS - Sunk on June 13th, 1594, the Portuguese carrack (merchant ship) Nau Chagas was returning home from the East Indies in June of 1594 bulging with treasure that included bounty rescued from two other wrecked ships. 3,500,000 cruzadoes, plus an unknown number of chests of diamonds, rubies and pearls. The overloaded vessel sailed into the Azores to replenish stocks, pulled out the next day, and came under protracted attack by four English warships. She went down in deep waters about 18 miles south of the channel between Pico and Fayal, in the Azores. The riches that sank with her is believed to have been thousands of tons of the richest cargo (including diamonds, rubies, and pearls) ever to leave an Asian port. Reputed value more than 1 Billion US Dollars.



NEUSTRA SENORA DE BEGONA, SANTO DOMINGO, SAN AMBROSIO & SAN ROQUE - The seven galleons of the Terra Firma Fleet left Cartagena in January 1605, confident that it was well past the hurricane season, and headed north toward Havana. As the fleet passed the Serranilla banks, halfway between Jamaica and Yucatan, a surprise storm struck. One ship was able to make it back to Cartagena, two pressed on and found shelter in Jamaica, but four galleons-carrying by some estimates about eight million pesos worth of gold, silver and emeralds went down on the Serranilla Banks. All of the crew and passengers, some 1,300 people in all were lost.




SANTISSIMA TRINIDAD - In 1616, Santissima Trinidad, a Spanish Manila Galleon, on her way to Acapulco, went down in a typhoon, somewhere around the Osumi Strait, off the southern extremity of Japan. Her cargo is estimated to have been 3,000,000 pesos (94 tons of coins).




MERCHANT ROYAL - Possibly the greatest hoard of sunken treasure still waiting to be found on the seabed around Great Britain is that which went down in the Merchant Royal, of Dartmouth, on 23 September, 1641. Returning to England with a king's ransom in Spanish treasure, her sinking in bad weather was witnessed by another vessel in company which reported the location as "ten leagues from Land's End". Carrying thirty-six bronze cannon, a crew of eighty and a few passengers under the command of Captain John Limbrey, in her hold lay "£300,000 in silver, £100,000 in gold, and as much again in jewel." Wooden chests held perhaps more than half a million Spanish silver pesos, 500 heavy bars of gold and thick ingots of silver, rubies, emeralds, diamonds and pearls by the hundreds, and heavy pieces of jewelry set with precious stones. Loss of the ship made news throughout maritime Europe. From the official London Gazette to the financial paper Mercurische Courant in Amsterdam, the reports alerted horrified merchants and financiers, who had expected to receive their jewels, silver, gold, laces and spices.



SAN FRANCISCO XAVIER - In 1656, the San Francisco Xavier was lost in Spain's Bay of Cadiz. After battling with an English squadron, she made for port and just before reaching her destination, blew up. She went down with more than 2,000,000 pesos (63 tons of coins).




LA VIERGE DU BON PORT - This East Indiaman is probably one of the richest French vessel ever lost at sea and never found. The La Vierge du Bon Port was bought in Saint Malo in 1664, armed with 30 cannons and 300 tons of cargo space. Her captain, Truchot de la Chesnaie, from Saint Malo also, was commanding this vessel on a special order from the Minister Colbert, a dedicated Minister for the Marine Affairs, appointed by Louis XIV, the Sun King.



At this time, France was far from the main European military power on land and sea. This mission was the first expedition to Madagascar for the creation of a strong colony on the island, under the privileged of the newly created French East India Company. For this purpose, four ships were being prepared in Le Havre, La Rochelle and Saint Malo and gathered together at Brest for a cost to the Company of more than 500,000 Livres.


With 230 elite crew and 288 passengers (soldiers, high rank civil servants, etc.), the little squadron left Brest on 7 of March 1665, and reach Madagascar on the 10th of July, for the "Le Saint Paul" and at the end of August, "Le Taureau" and "La Vierge du Bon Port" also reach their destination. The goals for this first expedition, were principally to send to France, in the shortest times, a ship fully loaded with a large variety of samples which could be found in Madagascar and the islands in its vicinity. It was vital to show to everybody a first good result for the future expeditions.


On the 20th of February 1666, the ship "La Vierge du Bon Port", full of goods and merchandise, was ready to sails on a voyage back to Le Havre, in France. Unfortunately, several month later, on the 9th of July, her voyage almost completed, she was attacked by an English corsair and sunk off Guernsey, with her 120 crew, the remaining survivors taken as prisoners and brought to England. With this event, perished all hopes for a rich colony to be raised and the commercial loss resulting from this expedition was immense, as all her treasures were lost forever. She sank fast, and thirty six English crewmen drowned while trying to save the treasure.



Although the initial report valued her cargo and contents at £1,500,000, a Channel Islander stated that this was a gross underestimate, since one chest alone of precious stones known to be aboard was valued at £40,000, and ambergris and other things were equal to a further £400,000. No record exists of any salvage on the wreck, so her remains probably lie on the seabed near the Channel Isles, awaiting discovery by some future generation of treasure seekers or salvage divers.




ISABELA - Somewhere south of Cape Santa Maria, Portugal, is the hull of the 600 ton Isabela, perhaps five miles from shore at a depth of 400 feet. The galleon, part of Duke de Veragua's armada of 1672, capsized and foundered there en route to Seville during a tempest. Her captain, Juan de Ugarte, and all 400 aboard were drowned. There is something like $1,000,000 in Colombian and Peruvian gold lying in the her waterlogged beams and ribs.




SOLEIL D'ORIENT - A vessel of the French East India Company, 1000 tons, one of the three most important and richest shipwrecks in the world. The 'Soleil d'Orient' set sail in 1681 with gifts from the King of Siam (Thailand) to King Louis XIV of France, the Pope, wife of the eldest son of Louis XIV, Duke of Burgundy, Duke of Anjou, Marquis of Croissy, Marquis of Sergnelay, Abbot of Choisy; three ambassadors and 20 valets accompanied the gifts including 60 crates of royal magnificent presents; major gifts from M. Constance and King of Bantam (including 'hundreds of diamonds') were also part of the cargo. Most accounts say she hit land and broke up near the southeast tip of Madagascar, so the wreckage may be in shallow water. Inside, the first to find it will discover a 1,000-piece gold dinner set (a gift from the Emperor of Japan), as well as silver, and porcelain. Some of the porcelain was a gift from the Chinese emperor, so the historical value is enormous.




HMS SUSSEX - On December 27, 1693, a mighty fleet of 166 merchant vessels and more than 40 men-of-war gathered off Portsmouth. At their head was the pride of the Royal Navy: HMS Sussex, an 80-gun ship of the line launched just eight months earlier, to destroy the forces of Britain's enemy, those of Louis XIV, the Sun King.


All but the lowliest crew member among the ship's company of 560 or so had some idea of where they were heading: to trading ports around the coasts of Lebanon and Turkey. In the privacy of his cabin, however, as the Sussex prepared to set sail, Admiral Sir Francis Wheeler was contemplating the envelope that contained his secret orders. On behalf of William III, and amid utmost secrecy, Admiral Wheeler was to bribe the Duke of Savoy with the gold to keep him in the Nine Years' War with France, and allow the Grand Alliance to attack Louis XIV through his weakly-defended southern border.


But the gold never reached the Duke. A day out of Gibraltar, the Sussex was caught in a gale that sprang from nowhere, and grew to an unprecedented ferocity. In modern parlance, it came close to being "the perfect storm," of the kind seen only once in 100 years. In the early morning gloom on February 19, 1694, as the log of HMS Carlisle recorded: "The Admiral was foundered and not a soul saved but two Turks." Somewhere in the bowels of the ship were iron chests packed with gold and silver coins, worth £1 million in the 17th century, and much, much more now - some estimates have suggested £2.6 billion.