Shipwrecked Treasure Galleons – Part II

With time the seventeen-mile reef that claimed the galleon became known as Silver Shoals. Subsequent treasure hunters failed to uncover her remaining cargo until 1978 when Burt Weber succeeded in his second attempt to locate the wreckage of Concepción with the aid of a historian who had located the log of one of Sir William Phips' ships. In a single day of diving, they salvaged six thousand coins, a teacup from the Ming Dynasty, indigo, an astrolabe, a sword, and a silver bowl. They also retrieved a chest that contained more than one thousand pieces of eight hidden under a false bottom. At first Weber believed he had found Phips' wreck, but a trail of ballast stones revealed that he had actually discovered the stern whereas Phips had found the bow. Appraisers valued the treasure recovered from the Concepción's stern at about thirteen million dollars.

The largest treasure galleon to sink was the Jesus Maria del Limpia Concepción, commonly called La Capitana, for she was the flagship of the South Sea Armada. Four times the size of the Atocha, she was built for Philip IV of Spain. At the time of her sinking off the coast of Ecuador on 26 October 1654, she carried a treasure worth ten million pesos.

Padre Diego Rivadeneira watched La Capitana sink from the deck of another ship in the fleet and wrote about it in his diary. Two years later, he sailed aboard the 900-ton Maravillas. When she sank off the Bahamas, six hundred souls perished and five million pesos in silver and gold were lost. Padre Diego was one of forty-five who survived. His diary eventually found its way into the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, where its rediscovery provided Robert McClung with the clues he needed to locate and salvage La Capitana in 1996. Among the artifacts recovered were four thousand silver coins, pottery, two silver ingots, and bronze cannon balls. Dave Horner's Shipwreck contains a complete recounting of La Capitana and the salvaging of her cargo.

Next: The 1722 Treasure Fleet

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