On the morning of September 4, 1622, a large convoy consisting of
twenty-eight ships of the Armada de
Tierra Firme and the Tierra Firme
Flota, commanded by the Marqués de Cadereita, sailed from Havana bound for
Spain. The convoy’s main pilot Lorenzo
Vernal and the other pilots had unanimously recommended that the fleet set
sail, although their recommendation went against the better judgment of others,
who warned that there were imminent signs of a hurricane.
The Tierra Firme Armada had departed Spain bound for ports of South America in early spring of 1622. The armada made the traditional stops along the Spanish Main which included the ports of Cartagena and Porto Bello and others stops along the coast of Venezuela where the ships would load gold and silver from Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia. The larger and more heavily armed galleons transported the bulk of the gold and silver, while the smaller merchant ships carried mostly agricultural products. With its cargo of precious goods, the fleet would then proceed to the port of Havana in March to rejoin the Nueva España Flota (New Spain Fleet) which had sailed separately for Vera Cruz to collect treasures from Mexico and exotic products from the Orient and Philippines shipped via the Pacific. Once the fleet arrived in Havana, the ships were refitted and provisioned for their return trip to Spain.
Unfortunately, the fleet never completed the voyage to Spain. The fleet was struck by a fierce hurricane.
The Nuestra Señora de la Consolacion was the first to
sink, after capsizing in deep water.
Nine others were lost in the Florida Keys and several more were probably
lost on the high seas, as they were never accounted for. The flagship, Nuestra Señora de Candelaria,
and twenty other vessels passed west of the Dry Tortugas and rode out the storm
in the Gulf of Mexico. The surviving
ships then returned to Cuba in battered condition. Of those that reached Havana, all had lost
their masts, and many had been forced to jettison cannons and parts of their
cargoes. This disaster was considered
the worst to have occurred to the flotas
in over fifty years. Of the nine ships
that were wrecked in the Florida Keys, three were treasure-laden galleons, five
were merchant naos, and one was a patache that served as a reconnaissance vessel
for the convoy. Only the locations of
the three galleons and the patache
are given in the documents, and only four of the nine were identified.
Nuestra Señora de Atocha: The
galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha,
550-tons, was armed with twenty-two bronze cannons and built two years earlier
in Havana by master shipwright Alonso Ferreria.
The Atocha was commanded by
Captain Bartolomé de Nodal (some sources list Captain Jacome de Veider), and
owned by the Administrators of the Averia (a branch of the House of Trade in
Seville that regulated and collected a special tax on all returning treasure and
products from the New World for the maintenance of a fleet of warships that
generally met all returning fleets off the Azores and escorted them on the
final leg of the voyage to Spain), she carried a crew of 155, eighteen trained
gunners, eighty-two soldiers and forty-eight passengers. The Atocha wrecked in ten fathoms of water
off Matecumbe Key with a cargo valued at over one million pesos, including 901
silver bars, each weighing seventy pounds, 250,000 silver reales and a small
amount of tobacco belonging to the King.[1]
Santa Margarita: The galleon Santa Margarita also listed as La Margarita, 630-tons, was armed with twenty-five cannons. She was commanded by Captain Bernadino de Lugo, (some sources list Pedro Guerrero de Espinosa), and carried a crew of ninety-one men, plus sixteen officers and 152 soldiers. The Santa Margarita was also officially carrying over half a million pesos in silver bullion and specie and a small amount of tobacco belonging to private merchants, and no doubt a great deal more clandestinely as contraband, sank near the Atocha, in five fathoms of water, off Matecumbe Key.
Nuestra Señora del Rosario: The galleon Nuestra Señora del Rosario, 600-tons, Captain Francisco Rodríguez Rico, owned by Admiral Gaspar de Vargas, wrecked at the Dry Tortugas with about half a million pesos in silver bullion and specie aboard.
Only the identity of one of the five merchant naos is currently known: the navío Buen Jesús y Nuestra Señora del Rosario, 117-tons, Captain Manuel Diaz. The vessel was originally built in Portugal and was owned by Juan de la Torre. Neither her location nor that of the other four shipwrecks were precisely given, only that they were lost in the Florida Keys, in the vicinity of the other wrecks.
[1] The cargo of the Atocha was astounding and
included 24 tons of silver bullion in 1,038 ingots, 180,000 pesos in silver
coins, 582 copper ingots, 125 gold bars and discs, 350 chests of indigo, 1,200
pounds of worked silverware, 525 bales of tobacco in addition to an unknown
fortune in unregistered and smuggled jewelry and personal goods.