From the Far East she took silk, porcelain, spices, jewelry, and much more. The cargo from South America included gold, silver, foodstuffs, emeralds, copper, indigo, and tobacco. All of it was carried home by ship. From the Far East the ships went across the Pacific to the coast of Panama. The cargo was unloaded there, carried across the Isthmus by horse and mule, then re-loaded onto other ships on the Atlantic side for the remainder of the journey. Cargo from South America was shipped from ports in Panama, Columbia, and elsewhere.
On both oceans the ships carried cargos of vast wealth. As you can imagine they made excellent targets for pirates, many of whom were English. To prevent such pillage the ships usually travelled in groups called flotillas that were made up of those carrying cargo and their armed escorts.
The Atocha (the “Nuestra Senora de Atocha”), one of Spain’s newest and largest galleons, was one of those cargo ships. In August 1622 she completed loading cargo from South America and headed for Cuba to join up with the others heading home. She sailed for Spain from Havana on September 4. Her flotilla was composed of 28 ships, including another treasure-laden galleon, the Santa Margarita.
The following day a hurricane overtook the flotilla. Eight ships were sunk near the Dry Tortugas islands, west of Florida; among the those sunk were the Atocha and the Santa Margarita. Salvage operations were begun almost immediately by the Spanish on the Santa Margarita, but another hurricane hit before they could start on the Atocha and they couldn’t find her. According to Spanish manifests the Atocha was loaded with 24 tons of silver, 180,000 silver pesos (“pieces of eight”), 582 copper ingots, 125 bars of gold, 350 chests of indigo, and 525 bales of tobacco. She also had several rich and powerful merchants and politician aboard who carried a huge but unknown quantity of valuable personal possessions. The Santa Margarita probably carried a somewhat similar cargo.
In 1969 a company called Treasure Salvors headed by Mel Fisher began looking for the Atocha. Over the next eleven years they found over $100 million from the Santa Margarita, but it wasn’t until 1985 that they finally found the Atocha; since then more that $400 million has been recovered. Mel Fisher estimates that there is more than $2 billion yet to be found.