Bill Muir, a shipwreck historian and draftsman, used photos, measurements, and the original contract specifications to draft a preliminary reconstruction of the Atocha. Built in Havana, Cuba in 1620 by Alonso Ferreira, Master Shipwright, the Spanish Guard galleon weighed 550 tons. The lines of the ships- the raised forecastle, towering sterncastle, square sails, and long bowspirit, and everything above it is superstructure. This modular construction made galleons susceptible to breaking into numerous parts during or after they sank.

In 1503, a regulatory agency was established to oversee every aspect of Spain’s trade with the Indies. Called the Casa de Contrastacion, it
functioned both as ministry of commerce and official school of navigation. A clerk, or escribano, accompanied each vessel and maintained the
official record of all cargo loaded and unloaded: the ship’s manifest. The manifest served as the basis for collecting the quinto and the averia, an additional tax, as high as 40% helped the government offset the cost of defending the merchant vessels that brought Indies wealth to Spain.
To discourage smuggling, the Crown decreed in 1510 that smugglers would forfeit their contraband and pay a fine of four times its value. Naval officers convicted of smuggling could be sentenced to several years as a galley slave. Despite the tough laws, it’s estimated that more than 20 percent of the gold and silver mined in the New World was smuggled back to Spain untaxed.
 

To minimize losses to armed raiders, Spain required all mer-
chant ships to sail in convoys, which were protected by escort ships
known as galleons. The galleons were a special type of warship, up to a
hundred feet long and rigged with square sails. The profile was unmis-
takable, as the stern section of a galleon, called the sterncastle, soared
up to 35 feet above the ship’s waterline, and was capped with the classic
high poop deck. And the galleons were heavily armed, mounting huge
bronze cannons. Although slower than the quick brigantines and sloops
favored by pirates, the galleons possessed immense firepower. Still,
perhaps five percent of the silver and gold mined by Spain in the New
World was lose at sea or confiscated by pirates. In addition to the
galleons sailing among the merchant ships in convoy, two strong
galleons—a capitana, which led the group, and an almiranta, which
brought up the rear—provided extra protection against English, French,
and Dutch raiders. The convoys sailed from Spain in early spring and,
upon arriving in the Caribbean, dispersed into groups to pick up heavy
consignments of Royal treasure from various ports in the colonies,
Each fleet, or flota, had a specific destination, The Manila fleet
sailed from the Philippines and delivered fine china, porcelain, silk, and
other products of Spain’s trade in the Orient to Acapulco. The cargo was
then transported overland to Veracruz, on the east coast of Mexico, At
Veracruz, it was picked up by the New Spain fleet along with gold and
silver from the Royal mint at Mexico City.
The Tierra Firme fleet was loaded in Portobello and Cartagena
with silver and gold from Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia,
Copper from the King’s mines in Cuba was added in Havana. The
Honduras fleet called at Trujillo for valuable indigo dye.
When things went according to plan, all fleets met in Ha-
vana, Cuba in July to assemble the cargo for the voyage back to Spain.
The bulk of the gold and silver was usually carried by the large,
heavily-armed galleons, while the smaller merchant ships transported
agricultural products.
Spain was still the preeminent power in 1622. However,
her position of power was badly slipping as the crucial stages of the
Thirty Years War unfolded. The year before, Spain had ended a 12-year
truce with her rebellious Dutch provinces. The Dutch had joined with
France, openly attacking Spanish naval and merchant vessels. The cost
of the fighting sapped Spain’s economy, and the Royal Treasury was
seriously overextended. To finance the war and continue the pomp and
splendor of the Royal Court, the Crown borrowed heavily; so heavily
that the king’s bankers kept representatives in Seville to claim a large
share of the wealth when the rich convoys arrived from the New World
each year.
Although the treasure fleet had sailed in 1621, money in the treasury was dangerously low.
 Collected taxes and royal proceeds accumulating in the Americas were desperately needed. It was paramount that the 1622 fleet successfully make the long and dangerous voyage.
 The government’s creditors were impatient, and the king’s share of the treasure
would keep them at hay a hit longer. It might even convince them to extend more
badly needed funds for the war effort. Despite the urgent need, the fleet could only
begin its voyage in late spring or early summer.

  The Atlantic is hospitable to sailing ships only a few months each year. Winter storms in the North Atlantic made the trip to the Americas dangerous if taken before early spring. And from June to October, the South Atlantic routes traveled by the convoys on their journey back to Spain from Havana were racked by hurricanes. Lashed by mammoth seas, ships ambushed by a hurricane could neither steer nor sail, They could merely run in front of the wind and hope it blew itself out before the ship was swamped or her hull was torn open on a shallow coral reef. The later in the summer the fleets sailed from Havana, the more likely they were to encounter a major hurricane, If the convoys waited out the hurricane season in the harbor at Havana— leaving in late October or November—they risked sailing into the violent winter storms of the North Atlantic.

 An early 19th century English chart of the area west of the Marquesas Keys shows where the Atocha and Margarita sank. The early 17th century Spanish name, "Cayos y Baxos del Marques" denotes the Quicksands area.

This year, the flotas left Spain separately: the Tierra Firme
fleet, including the heavily-armed Nuestra Señora de Atocha, left March
23, 1622, arriving at Portobello on the Isthmus of Panama on May 24.
Seven Guard galleons, including the Santa Margarita, sailed from Cadiz
on April 23, arriving at the island of Dominica on May 31. There, 16
smaller vessels fanned out to pick up goods from around the Caribbean
while the Guard galleons sailed to Cartagena, Colombia to unload their
outbound cargos, arriving on June 24. Finding that much of the silver
and gold to be shipped back to Spain had not yet arrived at the port for
loading, the Guard galleons sailed for Portobello, joining the Tierra Firme
fleet there on July 1.
The commander of the Guard fleet, the Marquis of Cadereita,
was told that 36 Dutch warships were at the Araya salt-pans on the
north coast of South America. For extra protection he commandeered a
privately owned galleon , Nuestra Señora del Rosario, to his Guard fleet,
bringing it up to its full authorized strength of eight ships.
The ships left Portobello, arriving back in Cartagena on July
27. After receiving more cargo, they sailed for Cuba on August 3, Poor
sailing conditions delayed their arrival, and the fleet didn’t reach Ha-
vana until August 22. The presence of so many Dutch raiders must have
weighed heavily on the Marquis’ mind. The New Spain fleet had
collected its cargo in Mexico and waited in Havana for the rest of the
fleets. Now, as the most dangerous part of the hurricane season
neared, its commander impatiently requested permission to sail for
Spain. The Marquis assented, but directed that the bulk of the bullion
and coins carried by the New Spain ships be held in Havana, to be
shipped back under the protection of the big cannons of the Guard fleet.
The Marquis split his fleet into two parts. He would sail in the
capitana, the lead ship, the Nuestra Señora de Candeleria. Much of the one
and a half million pesos worth of treasure—a hoard worth today per-
haps $400 million—was assigned to the Santa Margarita and a new ship,
the Nuestra Senora de Atocha. The Atocha had been built in the Havana
shipyard and, sure to bring her good luck, was named for the most
revered religious shrine in Spain. Just in case the Almighty's providence
didn’t extend to sinking Dutch warships, the Atocha was fitted with 20
bronze cannons. This strong ship was to be the almiranta, sailing last to
protect the slow, lumbering merchant ships in the rear of the flota. The
Tierra Firm and Guard ships—28 vessels in all—departed from Havana
on September 1, six weeks behind schedule,
Neither God’s providence nor gunpowder could protect the
ships from the weather.

On September 5, the fleets were overtaken by a rapidly moving hurricane. As dawn streaked the horizon, it brought dread to the more experienced sailors. The gale force winds, rising out of the northeast, quickly increased, The gusts raked the surface of the northward-flowing Gulf Stream, piling up huge seas in front of the ships. Aboard the Atocha, the chief pilot lit a lantern as clouds and rain blackened the sky. Ahead, the lead galleons were already out of sight. The merchant ships sailing close by the almiranta were themselves hidden by rain as the storm swept by. Crewmen scrambled into the rigging to take in sail. As they hung from this fragile rope spider’s web high above the deck, the ends of the yard arms dipped into the ocean as the ship railed violently, Frothing green water roared across the deck. Just before darkness, a veil of spray closed around the seasick passengers and crew of the Atocha. They watched in horror as the tiny Nuestra de la Consolation, wallowing in the mammoth seas, simply Cap-sized and disappeared.

That night, the wind shifted, coming out of the south. The
hurricane now hurled the fleet north toward the Florida reef line, Before
daylight, the Marquis’ ship—the Candeleria—and 20 other vessels passed
to the west of a group of rocky islands, the Dry Tortugas. Beyond the
reefs of the Straits of Florida, they rode out the winds in the safe, deep
waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Behind them, they’d left several small
merchant vessels on the bottom in deep water. At least four ships,
including the ,Atocha and Santa Margarita, were swept headlong into the
Florida Keys. Near a low-lying atoll fringed with mangroves, 15-foot
rollers carried the Margarita across the reef, grounding her in the shal-
lows beyond. As she crossed the reef, her commander, Captain Ber-
nardino de Lugo, looked to the east. There he saw the Atocha.
With crew and passengers huddled, praying below deck, the
Atocha approached the line of reefs dividing safe, deep water from
certain death. The frenzied crew dropped anchors into the reef face,
hoping to hold the groaning, creaking galleon off the jagged coral, A
wave lifted the ship, and, in the next instant, flung it down directly onto
the reef. The main mast snapped as the huge seas washed Atocha off the
reef and beyond, trailing her broken mast. Water poured through a
gaping hole in the bow, quickly filling the hull with water, The great
ship slipped beneath the surface, finding bottom 55 feet below; only the
stump of the mizzenmast broke the waves. Of the 265 persons aboard,
260 drowned. Three crewmen and two black slaves clung to the mast
until they were rescued the next morning by a launch from another fleet
ship, the Santa Cruz.
The lost ships of the 1622 treasure fleet lay scattered over 50
miles stretching from the Dry Tortugas eastward to where the Atocha
slipped beneath the water, About 550 people perished along with a total
cargo worth more than 2 million pesos.
 

Archives and Artifacts

On September 12, 1622, the Marquis of Cade-
reita held a meeting attended by shaken sur-
vivors of the storm. Twenty of the 28 ships had returned to Havana,
It was decided that the treasure fleet would stay in Havana while an
attempt was made to salvage the Atocha and the Margarita which had
carried the bulk of the fleet’s treasure. Gaspar de Vargas, a veteran
seaman, was dispatched later with five ships, salvage tackle, and
divers, On September 17, Bartolome Lopez, owner of the frigate Santa
Catalina, arrived in Havana after spotting the wreck of the Atocha near
the last Key of Matecumbe, The Marquis sent Lopez to guide Vargas to
the wrecks.

Lopez caught up with Vargas and they found the Mocha quickly, her mizzenmast still protruding above the water. The almiranta was down 55 feet—very deep for the salvage divers who could work only as long as the air in their lungs held out. The divers reported that the hatches and gunports were securely fastened. Unable to force their way into the hold, the divers could do no more than salvage two small iron swivel cannons off the deck, Vargas turned west, looking for the spot where the Margarita had gone aground and broken up. Failing to find the wrecksite, Vargas sailed further west to look for his ship, the Rosario, At Loggerhead Key, he found the hull of the Rosario and a small group of survivors who had waded ashore. They had spent three weeks marooned on the windswept islet, with little food or water. Vargas burned the Rosario to the waterline, exposing her cargo—bullion, copper, and cannons for quick salvage. After some initial success, on October 5 a second hurricane swept through the Florida Straits. Vargas and the survivors of the Rosario, facing their second storm in as many months, moved to the highest ground on the Key, The ocean surged up after them, but eventually receded. Quickly finishing the work on the Rosario, Vargas returned to Havana for more tools to salvage the Atocha.

Equipped with more divers, including pearl divers from the
island of Margarita, Vargas’ crew camped on a small mangrove atoll
near the place where they had seen the wreck of the Atocha. But the
almiranta could not be found—her mizzenmast had disappeared. The
salvage crews dragged the bottom with grapnel hooks, hoping to snag a
part of the wreck, The crews rowed out to the wrecksite from the small
island again and again, sometimes three hours out and up to eight hours
back. The men’s calloused palms, dried by the salt spray and rubbed
raw by the rough oar handles, split open as they struggled to push their
small boats through heavy swells kicked up by the blustery January
winds. Worse still, the bottom here was a bed of shifting sands which
moved at the slightest provocation. No doubt Vargas suspected that the
sands, stirred by the October hurricane and the winter storms, had
already covered the Atocha,
In February, the Marquis sailed from Havana to take charge
of the salvage efforts, setting up camp with Vargas on the small island.
The salvors renamed the atoll in his honor, calling it Cayo de Marques,
and redoubled their efforts, Although a few silver ingots were found, the
hull of the Atocha eluded them. In April, the Marquis returned to

 Unlike the silver bars on the Atocha's manifest, the gold bars were not individually listed as clearly, making it more difficult to use them in identifying the wreck. The small bars are often called "finger bars" due to their size.

Havana. There he found Captain Nicholas de Cardona and a team of skilled divers who had arrived from Mexico to help with the salvage. While the Marquis sailed for Spain with the long-delayed fleet, Cardona sailed for the Keys, joining Vargas for the final salvage effort. Each time the grapnel hooks caught on something, the divers went over the side. Holding rocks to speed them down, they plunged headfirst, eardrums snapping and popping from the increase in water pressure as they descended. The deep water gave them precious little time on the bottom, and even the experienced pearl divers were forced to surface gasping for air time after time, their hands as empty as their lungs. By August, Vargas was thoroughly discouraged. Leaving buoys to mark the search area, the salvors returned to Havana and Vargas
for Spain. Nicholas de Cardona prepared a map of the search area for the salvage report before he too left Havana.

The loss of the 1622 fleet was a disaster for the Royal Treasury,
The Crown was forced to borrow vast new sums from its already nervous
bankers to continue the Thirty Years War. Armed ships from Spain’s
rebellious Dutch provinces pressed their attacks on Spanish maritime
trade. Despite these attacks, the merchants in charge of administering
the averia tax for the protection of the treasure convoys sold several
Guard galleons, raising cash to help cover the loss of the 1622 fleet. It
was imperative that the treasure of the Margarita and the Atocha be
found to bolster the faltering Royal Treasury and the merchants whose
private purses had been crippled by the sinkings. But Gaspar de Vargas,
as experienced a seaman as Spain had in the Indies, had given up hope
of finding the galleons. Nicholas de Cardona, with his team of skilled
divers, had given up. What was needed was an ambitious man with an
equally ambitious plan for locating and salvaging the wrecks.
Nunez Melián was such a man. In 1624, the politician
and adventurer was granted a contract to salvage the Atocha and the
Margarita. It took Melián nearly two years to prepare for his effort, At a
cost of 5,000 reales, he had a 680-pound copper diving bell cast to aid in
the search. Once on site, in June 1626, the bell soon paid for itself, Juan
Banon, a slave, spotted wreckage through the diving bell’s windows.
Surfacing for a rope, he quickly returned to the bottom and brought up a
silver ingot. The Santa Margarita was found!
News of the find spread quickly. No doubt it was greeted
with enthusiasm at the Royal Court in Spain. It also sparked action
among Spain’s enemies. The Dutch and English were as interested in
keeping the treasure out of Spain’s coffers as in adding it to their own
war chests. Piet Heyn, a Dutch admiral, soon arrived in the Caribbean
with 30 warships. Raiding parties interrupted Melian’s work three times
over the next four years but, in between the sporadic skirmishes and
winter storms, Melián’s crews were able to recover more than 380 silver
ingots, 67,000 silver coins, and eight bronze cannons from the Margarita.
Surveys failed to locate any more of the Atocha’s cargo.

The treasure which had brought so little luck to the people aboard the Margarita brought mixed blessings to Melián. Jealous political
rivals complained that Melián had misappropriated some of the salvaged treasure, However, the Council of the Indies declined to act on the charges and he was appointed governor of Venezuela. His appointment was conditional on finding someone to work the Margarita site.
Melián hired Captain Juan de Anuez, who continued the salvage on and off until 1641. Hearing that the Indians of the Keys knew where the Atocha lay, Melián applied for another salvage contract in that year. But,
before anything was found, Melián died in 1614. His salvage accounts were audited in Havana and the documents eventually forwarded to
Seville, Spain to join the other commercial documents in the Archives of the Indies.

 Treasure doesn't always come in big amounts; this diver was rewarded for hours of underwater search by the discovery of this tiny piece of a gold bar. While it seems hard to believe a wrecksite marked by 50 tons of precious metals, 20 cannons, six anchors, and 200 tons of rock ballast could elude searchers for 16 years, this tiny artifact sums up the problem: it's a big ocean and even a galleon is a small object in such vast unexplored expanese.

Throughout the rest of the 17th century, Spain’s fortunes
spiraled downward as the English, French, and Dutch attacked her both
in Europe and overseas. In the Americas the strategically-located Turks
and Caicos Islands, which straddle one of only two deep water ap-
proaches to the vital Windward Passage between Hispaniola and Cuba,
fell to the English. So did Bermuda and Jamaica. The Dutch took
Curaçao and St. Maarten. The French moved into Hispaniola, naming
half of it “Haiti,’ and into the lower Antilles—Guadeloupe, Martinique,

Grenada. Captain Henry Morgan began the notorious piracies that
made him a legend in England and hated throughout the Spanish
empire. Morgan sacked Portobello and Panama City in Panama, and
Maracaibo, Venezuela. The Caribbean was no longer a “Spanish Lake.”
In 1688, the Casa de Contrastacion tallied the sunken vessels still
missing; the Atocha was at the top of the list, Hurricanes and pirates
continued to take their toll on other treasure ships. In 1715 and 1733
entire fleets were lost off the Florida coast. The Spanish salvaged what
they could from these wrecks, too, although they were continually
harried by the English pressing down from Virginia, the Carolinas, and
Nassau in the Bahamas. In 1817 a new power, the United States,
bought Florida, transforming it from a strategic military outpost be-
tween Spain and her New World colonies into a thinly-populated
agricultural backwater. The legacy of Imperial Spain was forgotten, and
the records locating the treasure wrecks were moved to Seville.
 

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Reprinted with permission from Treasure Of The Atocha by R. Duncan Mathewson III
Archaeological Director Of The Search For The Nuestra Senora De Atocha

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