At the beginning of the 16th century, unprecedented wealth poured from America to Europe. The treasures of the Aztecs and Incas that filled the holds of the Spanish galleons in just one century increased the gold and silver reserves of European countries fivefold.
The amount of precious metals exported from America to Spain in the period from 1503 to 1680 is estimated at 300 tons of gold and 25 thousand tons of silver.
However, not all ships loaded with treasures reached their native shores. Some of the wealth passed into the hands of pirates, and some still rests on the seabed, waiting for its new owner. Thus, the redistribution of the treasures of the Spanish crown continues to this day.
JEWELS UNDER WATER
Remnants of the "gold" and "silver" Spanish ships dot the seabed from the east coast of Florida to the Bahamas, in the Cape Hatteras region, near Bermuda, in Vito Bay in Spain, as well as in Zey-derze Bay in Holland. The island of Tortu-ga off the northwestern coast of Haiti is literally surrounded by a ring of sunken ships: hundreds of galleons, frigates, sloops, barges that died on their way to Spain. And not far from the island is Silver Bank, where in the middle of the 17th century several ships with a cargo totaling $ 21 million were lost.
Located in the same region of the Atlantic, the Azores also store considerable values in their coastal waters. For example, in 1594 the Portuguese ship "Chagas" was returning from the Indian colony with a cargo worth two million of the then ducats - gold coins, each of which weighed 3.5 grams. It was the most expensive cargo ever sent to Europe from India. The voyage turned out to be unsuccessful - the captain of "Chagas" was forced to pick up at sea the teams of two other Portuguese schooners that had crashed.
Excessive crowding of people and the lack of basic living conditions on the ship quickly did their job: epidemics of several diseases broke out on board at once. Almost every hour another dead man went overboard. In the end, near one of the Azores "floating infirmary" was overtaken and attacked by three ships of the British pirates. After a short artillery firefight, fire broke out in the Chagas gunpowder hold, the ship exploded and quickly sank with all the treasures.
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Three years earlier, in 1591, the Spanish Silver Fleet disappeared without a trace near the Azores - the ships fell victim to the famous Carpenter's Wind. This insidious southeastern hurricane is so named because it often sweeps the wooden debris of wrecked ships ashore.
UNDERWATER STORAGE DETECTORS
The sea has taken away wealth from people for centuries, and people stubbornly tried to find and return them. And until now, for some, underwater treasure hunting is an interesting hobby and an opportunity to escape from everyday worries, but for someone it is a profession and a lifelong business.
Already in the 17th century, the first hunters for drowned gold appeared. In 1686, the Englishman William Phipps raised gold and silver from the bottom of the Caribbean Sea in an amount equivalent to one and a half million US dollars. But this was only a small part of the treasures of the sixteen galleons of the Spanish "Golden Fleet", which sank in a storm in 1643 in the Silver Bank banks north of Haiti. Another treasure hunter, Herbert Humphrey, stumbled upon the Nuestra Senora de las Maravil-jas galleon in the area of Haiti (formerly Hispaniola), and picked up 177 silver bars, 15 half-kilogram gold bars and 10 gold nuggets.
Treasure seekers are not far behind in our days. For example, in the summer of 1997, a Portuguese-American expedition began exploring the Angra Bay off Terceira Island (one of the Azores) using modern equipment. According to historical records, at least 88 ships sank in the area of this bay.
Day after day, treasure hunters probed the bottom with special echo sounders, which could examine sediments at a depth of up to five meters, from the side of their vessel. Magnetometers that reacted to metal were also used, capable of detecting the slightest changes in the magnetic field. But the results of the search did not inspire optimism - the rocks hidden by the sand distorted any echo sounder signal; iron-containing volcanic rocks rather than gold bars made magnetometers react.
DEATH "NUESTRA SEKORA DE ATOCHA"
However, not all treasure hunters were pursued by failures. On September 4, 1622, 28 Spanish sailing ships left Havana. Such wealth rested in their holds that they could fully finance a couple of European wars or ensure the prosperity of a middle-class state for a hundred years.
The Spaniards were not afraid of pirates - the flotilla in total had more than two thousand cannons, crews hardened in battles and the best ships at that time - galleons. Indeed, no one was afraid of pirates, but the Spaniards certainly did not expect a hurricane.
On the second day of the voyage, such a gusty wind flew into the flotilla that by morning eight galleons went to the bottom, and the rest were scattered from the Marquesas to the Dry-Tortugas Islands. The flagship of the flotilla, the Nuestra Secora de Atocha galleon, in whose holds there was a cargo with a total weight of 24 tons, did not escape the common fate. It consisted of 1080 silver bars, 18,000 pesos in silver coins, 582 copper bars, 125 gold bars, 350 chests of the then very expensive indigo, 525 bales of tobacco, 20 bronze cannons (a hundred cast-iron ones that were on board the galleon do not count) and 1200 items of expensive silver dishes and cups.
But that was not all. The valuables of passengers and goods smuggled by crew members and passengers (mainly precious stones and gold bars) exceeded in value and value the value of officially transported gold and silver, together with the price of Atocha itself!
TO THE RESCUERS OF TREASURES
Over the next 60 years after the crash, the Spaniards tried to raise the treasures of the galleon, which sank at a shallow depth of 16.5 meters (and in those days, underwater work was quite commonplace - with the help of diving bells and breathing hoses, divers could descend to a depth of ten to twenty meters). But it was all in vain. Only after three and a half centuries the sea gave up gold and stones.
However, Mel Fisher's famous Treasure Rescuers team had to work hard for this - the duration of work at the depth was more than 16 years, and this all despite the fact that the cost of one day of searching cost at least $ 1000.
But the mining was worth it: 130,000 silver coins, 900 silver bars (some of 32 kilograms), about 750 high-quality emeralds (the largest is a faceted hexagonal stone of 77.7 carats), more than 2500 medium-sized emeralds, 250 gold bars, gold discs and large gold items, about a hundred items of jewelry, in terms of workmanship related to works of art …
In addition to gold, 85,000 antiquities (weapons, household items, ceramics, navigational instruments, and so on) fell into the hands of treasure seekers, the most valuable of which is the lower part of the hull of the protagonist of the story, the Atocha galleon.
In accordance with international law, the values found on the seabed must be divided between three parties: the country to which the sunken ship belonged; the country in whose territorial waters the treasures were found, and those who found them. So any underwater treasure hunter has a chance, and a considerable one, to get rich …