Careened and twice repaired during her lengthy stay in the New World, the twenty-year-old ship set sail for Cadiz on 20 September 1641. At the time a seaman earned two pieces of eight for one month's work. Stowed within Concepción's hold was a cargo valued at one million pesos according to Dr. Eugene Lyon, a Spanish Colonial Historian.
The fleet, which numbered about thirty vessels, departed Havana at the worst possible time--the height of the hurricane season. Nine days later a hurricane destroyed all but one ship, the Concepción. When the storm felled her main mast, the crew cut it away and jettisoned the anchors and some of the guns, thus giving the ship and themselves a chance to survive.
The admiral decided to sail her to Puerto Rico, but the pilots determined how to get there. They believed they were due north of the island, but the admiral knew otherwise. The chosen course would take the galleon through a treacherous and barely charted coral reef. In protest, the admiral washed his hands in a silver bowl, thus relinquishing all responsibility for the ship's fate. On All Soul's Day violent seas smashed the Concepción into the reef and she came to rest on one of the reef heads with her stern in the air. The survivors fashioned ten crude rafts from the wreckage, but many became easy prey for the sharks.
Eventually, 190 men lived to tell their harrowing story. They also told tales about a mountain of gold and silver fashioned from the coins rescued from the hold before Concepción slipped beneath the water. An inquiry absolved the admiral of any responsibility for the disaster and he convinced the officials that the pilots should be blamed. Although they were arrested, the pilots escaped and were never seen again.
Attempts to find the wreck and recover her cargo of silver failed until William Phips discovered the Concepción in 1687. Aided by a survivor of the ill-fated galleon, Phips and his crew of native divers salvaged 68,511 pounds of silver and some gold, believed to be about one-fourth of her cargo. Phips paid his backers, including James II of England, and returned to the wreckage to gain greater wealth. Others, however, had come after him and he gave up his second salvage attempt. After unsuccessfully serving as governor of the Massachusetts Colony, Phips returned to treasure hunting, but never found any other treasure. He died of fever eight years after he discovered the Concepción's silver.
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