The Almiranta Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas (1656)

The Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas was one of the ships of the fleet that sailed from the port of Cartagena de Indias on July 3, 1655. She carried some 5 million pesos and other goods, partly from a Spanish shipwreck off Ecuador.

Shortly after beginning the voyage, the fleet was warned of enemies in the area, so the galleons decided to change course and take refuge in the port of Veracruz. They departed from this port and arrived in Havana on October 30 and, on January 1, 1656, they left for Spain. As usual, they headed for the Florida Channel to pass the Keys and use the currents of the Gulf Stream to their advantage to continue sailing towards Spain.

While sailing in convoy in the middle of a storm, she was accidentally hit and rammed by another ship of the fleet, leaving several gashes on the hull.

The admiral, Matías de Orellana, then decided to look for a shallow water point to make landfall, assess the damage and repair it immediately. However, the area they were in was full of sandbanks and dangerous shoals and coral reefs, which, at low tide, are not visible, as is the case of the so-called Little Bahama Bank, now a protected natural park located in the north of the Bahamas.

The galleon Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas tried several times to find shelter to make landfall, but on January 4, right in the middle of a storm, she hit bottom at Matarrilla Reef, in the western area of Little Bahamas Bank, about 70 kilometers from the coast. Part of the galleon’s stern broke off and it drifted away until it was no longer visible.

Of the crew and passengers, only about 45 people survived, out of the more than 600 souls on board. Among them was a sailor named Diego Portichuelo de Rivadeneira who, years later, abandoned life at sea and joined the religious order of the Augustinians, where he wrote a diary of his travels.

According to several records kept in the General Archive of the Indies in Seville, part of the galleon’s cargo, including silver and artillery pieces, was recovered the same year of the shipwreck. Some of the diving operations undertaken led to major lawsuits at the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) in Seville, such as that of Juan de Somodevilla Tejada, who had signed a loan contract, or asiento, and his partner Diego Zapata, governor of Cartagena de Indias, both accused of misappropriation of large sums of money; or that of José de Iriarte, who had to save his neck from the gallows by paying 10,000 pesos, due to his misappropriation of part of the cargo of the Maravillas.

The rest of the cargo was scattered among the reefs and sands at the bottom of the sea, forming mounds of materials that were later stirred by other Spanish, English and Dutch sailors and explorers during the 17th and 18th centuries.

A first-person account

Gaspar de los Reyes Palacios, assistant to the pilot of the Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas, narrates in detail the shipwreck and the loss of the treasure:

(…) On the fourth day of said month, around midnight or thereabouts, the whole navy turned northeast, at a shoal called El Mimbre, located at 27º and 15’. After recognizing the shoal, the almiranta took soundings and found eleven fathoms of water. A cannon was immediately shot to warn the other ships and we tacked at once. By that time, the capitana was coming from windward, a little to the stern of the almiranta. Their intention was to make the same maneuver of tacking after recognizing the shoal, and without paying attention to the fact that the almiranta was located on her leeward side and very close, or maybe because a wave was breaking on the stern of the almiranta, unable to do anything about it, the almiranta was rammed amidships and on the starboard side by the capitana. The blow was so strong that all the dead works were pushed inward. It was obvious that she was sinking, hitting bottom at six fathoms. The ship was immediately filled with water and right there in the same shallows, due to two more impacts, the bottom was torn out, breaking to pieces. Nothing could be saved and everybody died, except for this informant and forty-four other people who were picked up the next day at four o’clock in the afternoon by a boat that belonged to Captain Juan de Hoyos’ ship, which anchored at dawn about half a league away, having lost her rudder in the same shallows…. The bottom of the almiranta was lost with the treasure along the edge of the channel, about a cannon shot distance, and the water is so clear and the sand so white that everything on the bottom can be seen very clearly (…).

The discovery

In 1972, the wreck was located by treasure hunter Robert F. Marx, while surveying the area with the vessel Seafinders, at a depth of about 5 to 7 meters. Marx recovered a large number of coins (silver hammered coins, resealed silver pieces from Potosi and coins minted in New Spain and Bogota), which he auctioned through the Schulman auction house in New York in 1974. The Bahamian authorities terminated Marx’s contract for his bad practices on the wreck, specifically the use of explosives to remove sediment and coral.

A few years later, another treasure hunter, Herbert Humfreys, with permission from the Bahamian authorities, worked in the area from 1988 until the early 1990s, and sold part of his finds in London, through Christie’s auction house, between 1992 and 1993.

Since 1990, Bahamian authorities have not granted concessions to treasure hunters and have tried to preserve the wreck and its increasingly deteriorating marine environment.

Currently, a team led by entrepreneur Carl Allen has obtained government permission to continue the exploration of the wreck and exhibit the recovered remains at the National Museum of History.

Among the best known finds from this shipwreck are a filigree gold chain with rosette motifs, several gold pendants with the Cross of Santiago, rings with pearls, Colombian emeralds and amethysts, Chinese porcelain and Mexican ceramics.

Construction elements of the galleon and testimonies of daily life on board were also recovered, such as sword hilts, oil and olive jars, remains of ballast stones, iron nails and metal eyelets from the rigging.