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“The climate was fine and distinct, with a pleasurable wind. And so the twenty-eight ships dropped anchor and set sail: 8 galleons with three couriers, and the rest of the fleet.” – As a result a report penned shortly just after in Havana describes the departure of the silver fleet from Cuba in 1622. In the spring the ships arrived from Spain, one of the two fleets that each and every 12 months introduced all types of trade to the colonies and treasures of the New Earth in Seville. Large war galleons accompanied them to safeguard by themselves from pirates.
Arriving in the Caribbean, ships swarmed out to provide their wares in several ports, loading pearls, gold and emeralds, copper, indigo and tobacco, riches that African slaves and indigenous compelled laborers had made underneath brutal ailments. The rest went to Portobelo on the Isthmus of Panama, a hub for Potosí silver.
Silver from the “Mouth of Hell” of Potosí
“Without exaggeration, I can say that this metropolis of Potosí is the richest and most renowned in the complete world,” wrote a chronicler. Four thousand meters significant in the Andes, it was located on a mountain with the most significant silver deposit in the environment. The Spanish crown claimed a fifth of the produce. A Dominican referred to as the mines “the abyss of hell” and even a viceroy of Peru explained: “It is not the silver that you bring to Spain, but the blood and sweat of the Indians.”
The lamas carried the silver from Potosí to the coast, then it was transported to Panama by ship and across the isthmus on the back of a mule. This year the caravan only arrived in Portobelo in July. Right after a big sales truthful there, the fleet regrouped and turned to Cuba.
35 tons of silver in the tummy of Atocha
“The galleons and the fleet entered the port of Havana on August 22,” the report notes, but the fleet did not sail yet again until finally early September. At the head of the convoy sailed the Capitana, flagship of the Captain Normal, and at the rear the Almiranta, the vice admiral’s galleon. This was the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, armed with twenty massive guns.
In addition to the sailors, he had a company of soldiers and forty-8 passengers on board. Her tummy was stuffed with 30-5 tons of silver, substantial quantities of tobacco, copper and indigo, and chests of gold and emeralds. The fleet was meant to arrive at the open up Atlantic involving Florida and the Bahamas, but the following early morning warning symptoms of a hurricane appeared:
“The ships started to make the needed preparations, reducing the masts and furling the sails. The wind was rising by the hour, the clouds were low and the ships were barely seen.” – The storm brought down building web-sites, shattered trees and threatened to toss the fleet into the Florida Keys.
“The Almiranta ran north all night and at dawn struck a rock. Torn from underneath, it drifted a minimal farther and sank. The Margarita galleon, on the same class, ran aground on a rock and the wreckers smashed it. Up. these two galleons ended up 462 people today, of which 391 drowned “.
A few and a 50 % generations misplaced at the bottom of the sea
Later that day, on September 6, the components calmed down. Twenty ships slowly returned to Havana. 8 ended up dropped, like a few galleons and with them most of the royal tax profits. The Spaniards then looked for the galleons. They found a single stranded on a modest island and rescued the crew and cargo. It took a long time to keep track of down the Margarita.
A mast tip protruding from the water indicated in which the Nuestra Señora de Atocha was, but divers could not penetrate the hull. The wreck later crumbled, sand coated the particles, and the Atocha was imagined to have been missing for three and a fifty percent generations. In 1985, US treasure hunters found their remains with the cargo, valued at $ 400 million. The Spaniards misplaced far more silver ships to storms than to pirates. There are nevertheless treasures to be discovered.
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