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February
7, 1997
Mel
Fisher Maritime Heritage Society
Atocha
and Santa Margarita
On
July 20, 1985, after a sixteen-year search, Mel Fisher
and his Treasure Salvors crew found the remains of the
sunken Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha, lying in fifty-four feet of water,
forty-one miles off the coast of Key West, Florida. The
600-ton triple-masted galleon, named for the virgin of a
famous Madrid shrine, had been part of a flotilla of
twenty-eight ships that left Havana in September of 1622
bound for Spain.
The
Atocha’s
cargo, according to her manifest, included a quarter of
a million silver pieces of eight, 901 silver bars, 161
gold bars or discs, large sums from papal indulgences,
and Crown money from a head tax on 1,400 slaves sold in
Cartagena. On the second day out of Havana harbor, the
flotilla encountered a devastating hurricane that sank
seven of the vessels—including the Atocha
and her sister ship, the Santa
Margarita.
Using
sand-clearing “mailboxes” that he invented and
specially-developed proton magnetometers, Mel Fisher and
the Treasure Salvors crew spent long years doggedly
following the shipwrecks’ elusive trail—sometimes
finding nothing for month after month, sometimes
recovering treasure and artifacts that teasingly
indicated the proximity of the vessels and their cargo.
In
1973, three silver bars found were matched by weight and
tally number to the Atocha’s
manifest, verifying that Fisher was close to the
wrecksite. In 1975, his son Dirk found five bronze
cannons whose markings would clinch identification with
the Atocha. Only days later, Dirk and his wife Angel, with diver Rick
Gage, were killed when one of the salvage boats
capsized. Yet Fisher and his intrepid crew persevered.
By
1980, they had found a significant portion of the
remains of the Santa Margarita—with a fortune in gold bars, ballast stones and
pottery shards, and thousands of silver coins. On May
12, 1980, Fisher’s son Kane discovered a complete
section of the Margarita’s
hull, weighted down by ballast stones, copper ingots,
and artifacts of seventeenth-century Spain.
On
a hot summer day five years later, Kane Fisher, captain
of the salvage vessel Dauntless,
sent a jubilant radio message to his father’s
headquarters: the searchers could “put away the
charts; we’ve got the Atocha’s
mother lode.” Ecstatic crew members described the find
as looking like a reef of silver bars. Within days, the
shippers’ marks on the bars were matched to the Atocha’s
cargo manifest, confirming Kane Fisher’s triumphant
claim. At long last, the wreck’s mother lode had
indeed been found—and the excavation of what was
widely referred to as “the shipwreck of the century”
began.
Quickly,
Duncan Mathewson, Mel Fisher’s chief archaeologist,
assembled an international team of archaeologists and
conservators to ensure that the artifacts and treasure
were excavated and preserved properly. Because the
material had lain on the ocean floor for three and a
half centuries, much of it was in an extremely unstable
state; immediate preservation was required to prevent
its destruction once it left its saltwater tomb.
Today,
artifacts and treasures from the two Spanish galleons
form the cornerstone of the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage
Society’s museum collection. Among the items found on
the wrecks are a fortune in gold, silver bars, and coins
destined for the coffers of Spain; a solid gold
Renaissance necklace set with gems; a gold poison cup
and an intricately-tooled gold plate; a gold chain
valued at more than a quarter of a million dollars; a
horde of contraband emeralds—including an impressive
77.76-carat hexagonal emerald crystal that experts
believe may have come from the Muzo mines in Colombia;
religious and secular jewelry; and a variety of rare
navigational instruments.
With
the treasure—and perhaps ultimately more
important—archaeologists have uncovered countless
articles that provide insight into seventeenth-century
life under sail. A thirty-foot by twenty-foot section of
the Atocha’s
lower hull structure proved to be a priceless
archaeological find, and the timbers recovered from the
wreck were preserved in a sheltered lagoon at Florida
Keys Community College for study and examination.
Following
a long conservation process, the artifacts from the Atocha and Margarita are
now on permanent display in the Mel Fisher Maritime
Heritage Museum’s navigation exhibit and treasure
gallery. Approximately 200,000 people visit the Key West
museum annually to marvel at them—and applaud the
triumph of the human spirit that their recovery
represents.
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