This 17th-Century Shipwreck Has A Connection To The Real Pirates Of The Caribbean
On January 4, 1656, the Spanish galleon known as the Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas (Our Lady of Wonders) sank in what are now the waters of the northern Bahamas.
The vessel was built in northern Spain. It weighed 891 tons, had two decks, and was armed with 36 brass cannons.
The Maravillas was on its way to Cádiz in southwestern Spain with around 650 people on board when a storm hit in the Florida Strait. During the storm, the galleon collided with a reef and went down late in the night.
All the treasure it had been carrying was lost to the sea, including the objects and contraband salvaged from the Jesus Maria de la Limpia Concepión, which was lost off the coast of Ecuador. At the time, the Maravillas was one of the richest treasure ships ever lost.
Between 1656 and 1679, Spanish salvors from Havana salvaged the wreck. They were followed by English and colonial wreckers in the later 17th century.
In 1972, Bob Marx rediscovered the remains, and exploration of the wreck continued into the early 1990s. Finally, the Bahamian government put a stop to wreck hunting in 1992.
In 2019, a new license was issued to Allen Exploration (AllenX) so they could conduct scientific studies of the wreck.
This past summer, the company tracked a trail of wreckage south of where the Maravillas sank. They uncovered a link to the rise of the pirates of the Caribbean, who were once based in the port of Nassau in what is known as the Bahamas today.
During AllenX’s investigations, the team made several fresh finds, such as Chinese and Spanish pottery, grinding stones from the galleon’s kitchen, iron spikes that nailed the hull together, silver bars, and silver coins from Mexico.
omer – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
According to Carl Allen, the director of AllenX, the western side of the Little Bahama Bank that is exposed to the Florida Strait is a tough and tricky spot to explore. Three consecutive days of diving would be considered lucky.
“Today, when a storm rolls in, we can cut and run to my island base at Walker’s Cay or head south to Grand Bahama. When the Maravillas was lost 368 years ago, and Spanish boats arrived to salvage its treasure, there was nowhere in the Bahamas to shelter, fix leaking hulls and buy essential supplies,” said Allen.
“So, we ask ourselves: if it’s so hard for AllenX with all our modern technology, how did salvors manage their operations hundreds of years ago?”
The team used magnetometers and divers to search offshore. Meanwhile, historians perused Spanish and English archives to determine how the shipwreck was salvaged for treasure in the second half of the 17th century.
They discovered that the first settlers of Nassau on the island of New Providence established themselves there to salvage shipwrecks, not to plant sugar and coffee.
The port town of Nassau was thought to have taken off as a pirate headquarters when a Spanish treasure fleet was wrecked in July 1715, south of Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The town was a place where treasure was plundered and divided among the pirates. It was also a space where every male and female pirate were considered equal. They lived by the same rules and earned their fair share of loot.
The latest findings call into question what really triggered the rise of Nassau as a haven for pirates.
According to the new research, the team believes that the demise of the Maravillas in 1656 brought pirates to the area instead of the Spanish ship lost in Florida in 1715. That pushes back the birth date of Nassau as a pirate paradise by more than three decades.
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