“The weather was fair and clear, with a pleasant wind. And so the twenty-eight ships weighed anchor and set sail: eight galleons with three couriers, and the rest of the fleet.” – This is how a report written a little later in Havana describes the departure of the silver fleet from Cuba in 1622. In the spring the ships had arrived from Spain, one of two fleets which annually brought trade of all kinds to the colonies and the treasures of the New World to Seville. Large war galleons accompanied them for protection against pirates.
Arriving in the Caribbean, a few ships swarmed out to peddle their wares in various ports, loading pearls, gold and emeralds, copper, indigo and tobacco – riches that African slaves and indigenous forced laborers had produced under brutal conditions. The rest went to Portobelo on the Isthmus of Panama, a hub for Potosí silver.
Silver from the “Hell’s Mouth” of Potosí
“Without exaggeration, I can say that this city of Potosí is the richest and most famous in the whole world,” wrote one chronicler. Four thousand meters high in the Andes it was on a mountain with the largest silver deposit in the world. The Spanish crown claimed a fifth of the yield. A Dominican called the mines “the abyss of hell” and even a viceroy of Peru said: “It is not silver that is brought to Spain, but the blood and sweat of Indians.”
Llamas carried the silver from Potosí to the coast, then it was carried to Panama by ship and across the Isthmus by mule. This year, the caravan only arrived in Portobelo in July. After a big sales fair there, the fleet regrouped and turned to Cuba.
35 tons of silver in the belly of the Atocha
“The galleons and the fleet entered the port of Havana on August 22,” notes the report, but the fleet did not set sail again until early September. At the head of the convoy sailed the Capitana, the Captain-General’s flagship, and at the rear the Almiranta, the Vice-Admiral’s galleon. This was the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, armed with twenty large guns.
Besides the sailors she had a company of soldiers and forty-eight passengers on board. Her belly was filled with thirty-five tons of silver, large quantities of tobacco, copper and indigo, and chests of gold and emeralds. The fleet was supposed to reach the open Atlantic between Florida and the Bahamas, but the next morning the warning signs of a hurricane appeared:
“The ships began to make the necessary arrangements, lowering the masts and furling the sails. The wind picked up by the hour, the clouds hung low and the ships could hardly see each other.” – The storm tore down yards, snapped masts and threatened to throw the fleet into the Florida Keys.
“The Almiranta ran north all night, and at dawn she struck a reef. Torn open from below, she drifted a little further and sank. The galleon Margarita, on the same course, ran aground on a reef and the breakers smashed it ship. 462 people were on these two galleons, of which 391 drowned.”
Three and a half centuries lost at the bottom of the sea
Later that day, September 6, the elements calmed down. Twenty ships gradually returned to Havana. Eight were lost, including three galleons and with them most of the royal tax revenue. The Spaniards therefore looked for the galleons. They found one stranded on a small island and rescued crew and cargo. It took years for them to track down the Margarita.
A mast tip sticking out of the water indicated where the Nuestra Señora de Atocha was, but divers could not penetrate the hull. The wreck later crumbled, sand covered the debris, and the Atocha was thought to have been lost – for three and a half centuries. In 1985, treasure hunters from the United States discovered their remains with the cargo, valued at $400 million. The Spanish lost more silver ships to storms than to pirates. There are still treasures to be found.