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The Lost Plate Fleet of Vigo

No treasure yarn is the real thing unless it glitters with ducats, ingots, and pieces of eight, which means that in the brave days when riches were quickest won with cutlass, boarding pike, and carronade, it was Spain that furnished the best hunting afloat. For three centuries her galleons and treasure fleets were harried and despoiled of wealth that staggers the imagination, and their wreckage littered every ocean. English sea rovers captured many millions of gold and silver, and pirates took their fat shares in the West Indies, along the coasts of America from the Spanish Main to Lima and Panama, and across the Pacific to Manila. And to-day, the quests of the treasure seekers are mostly inspired by hopes of finding some of the vanished wealth of Spain that was hidden or sunk in the age of the Conquistadores and the Viceroys. Of all the argosies of Spain, the richest were those plate fleets which each year carried to Cadiz and Seville the cargoes of bullion from the mines of Peru, and Mexico, and the greatest treasure ever lost since the world began was that which filled the holds of the fleet of galleons that sailed from Cartagena, Porto Bello, and Vera Cruz in the year 1702. What distinguishes this treasure story from all others is that it is not befogged in legend and con-fused by mystery and uncertainty. And while 221 222 THE BOOK OF BURIED TREASURE ships' companies are roaming the Seven Seas to find what small pickings the pirates and buccaneers may have lifted in their time, the most marvelous Spanish treasure of them all is no farther away than a harbor on the other side of the Atlantic. At the bottom of Vigo Bay, on the coast of Spain, lies that fleet of galleons and one hundred millions of dollars in gold ingots and silver bars. This estimate is smaller than the documentary evidence vouches for. In fact, twenty-eight million pounds sterling is the accepted amount, but one hundred million dollars has a sufficiently large and impressive sound, and it is wise to be conservative to the verge of caution in dealing with lost treasure which has been made so much more the theme of fiction than a question of veracity. After escaping the perils of buccaneer and privateer and frigate, this treasure fleet went down in a home port, amid smoke and flame and the thunder of guns manned by English and Dutch tars under that doughty admiral of Queen Anne, Sir George Rooke. It was the deadliest blow ever dealt the mighty commerce of Spain during those centuries when her ruthless grasp was squeezing the New World of its riches. There, indeed, is the prize for the treasure seeker of to-day who dreams of doubloons and pieces of eight. Nor could pirate hoard have a more blood-stained, adventurous history than these millions upon millions, lapped by the tides of Vigo Bay, which were won by the sword and lost in battle. During these last two hundred years many efforts have been made to recover the freightage of this fleet, but the bulk of the treasure is still untouched, and it awaits the man with the cash and the ingenuity to evolve the right salvage equipment. At work now in Vigo THE LOST PLATE FLEET OF VIGO 223 Bay is the latest of these explorers, an Italian, Pino by name, inventor of a submarine boat, a system of raising wreck, and a wonderful machine called a hydroscope for seeing and working at the bottom of the sea. With Pino it is a business affair operated by means of a concession from the Spanish government, but he is something more than an inventor. He is a poet, he has the artistic temperament, and when he talks of his plans it is in words like these: "I have found means to disclose to human eyes the things hidden in the being of the furious waves of the infinite ocean, and how to recover them. Mine is the simple key with which to open to man the mysterious virgin temples of the nymphs and sirens who, by their sweet singing, draw men to see and to take their endless treasures." This interesting Pino is no dreamer, however, and he has enlisted ample capital with which to build costly machinery and charter yachts and steamers. With him is associated Carlo L. Iberti, and there is an ideal pattern of a treasure seeker for you, a man of immense enthusiasm, of indefatigable industry, dreaming, thinking, living in the story of the galleons of Vigo Bay. It was he who secured the con-cession from Madrid, it was he who as he says, "was flying from province to province, from country to country, from archives to archives, from library to library, ever studying, copying, and acquiring all documents relating to Vigo. I had made up my mind to find out all that was to be known about the treasure. And I believe I have succeeded." Never was there such a prospectus as Iberti wrote to awaken the interest of investors in the undertaking of Pino. It was a historical work bristling with 224 THE BOOK OF BURIED TREASURE data, authorities, references, from French, Spanish, and English sources. It was convincing, final, positively superb. One blinked at reading it, as if dazzled by the sight of mountains of gold, and moreover every word of it was true. As a text for this narrative, his summary, the peroration, so to speak, fairly hits one between the eyes : "As the total quantity of treasure which arrived at Vigo in 1702 amounted to_126,470,600 pesos, or 27,493,609, there is not the least doubt that the treasure in gold and silver still lying in the galleons of Vigo Bay amounts to as much as 113,396,085 pieces of eight, or 24,651,323, after deducting the treasure unloaded before the battle, the booty taken by the victors, and that recovered by explorers. That would have been the value of the treasure two hundred years ago. To-day, its value would be greater, at a moderate estimate of 28,000,000. Such is the sum which we who are interested in the recovery of the treasure have set our hearts on winning from the sea." After this, the hoards of the most notorious and hard-working pirates seem picayune, trifling, shabby, the small change of the age of buried treasure. Why Signor Iberti is so cock-sure of his figures, and how that wondrous treasure fleet was lost in Vigo Bay is a story worth telling if there be any merit in high adventures, hard fighting, and the tang of salty seas in the days when the world was young. No more than nine years after the first voyage of Columbus, galleons laden with treasure were winging it from the West Indies to Spain, and this golden stream was flowing year by year until the time of the American Revolution. The total was to be counted not in millions but in billions, and this pro- THE LOST PLATE FLEET OF VIGO 225 digious looting of the New World gave to Spain such wealth and power that her centuries of greatness were literally builded upon foundations of ingots and silver bars. Before Sir Francis Drake sailed into the Caribbean, the Dutch and English had been playing at the great game of galleon hunting, but their exploits had been no more than vexations, and the security of the plate fleets was not seriously menaced until "El Draque" spread terror and destruction down one coast of the Americas and up the other, from Nombre de Dios to Panama. Heaven alone knows how many great galleons he shattered and plundered, but from the San Felipe and the Caca f uego he took two million dollars in treasure, and he numbered his other prizes by the score. Martin Frobisher carried the huge East India galleon Madre de Dios by boarding in the face of tremendous odds, the blood running from her scuppers, and was re-warded with $1,250,000 worth of precious stones, ebony, ivory, and Turkish carpets. During the period of the English Commonwealth, Admiral Stayner pounded to pieces a West Indian treasure fleet of eight sail, and from one of them took two millions in silver, while Blake fought his way into the harbor of Teneriffe and destroyed an-other splendid argosy under the guns of the forts. It is recorded that thirty-eight wagons were required to carry the gold and jewels thus obtained from Portsmouth to London. The records of the British Admiralty have preserved a memorandum of the prize money distributed to the officers and men of the Active and Favorite from the treasures taken in the Hermione galleon off Cadiz in 1762, and it is a document to make a modern mariner sigh for 226 THE BOOK OF BURIED TREASURE the days of his forefathers. Here is treasure finding as it used to flourish : The Admiral and the Commander of the Fleet $324,815 The Captain of the Active 332,265 Each of three Commissioned Officers 65,000 " " Eight Warrant Officers 21,600 " " Twenty Officers 9,030 " " 150 Seamen and Marines 2,425 The Captain of the Favorite 324,360 Each of 2 Commissioned Officers 64,870 " " 77 Warrant Officers 30,268 ` ` " 15 Petty Officers 9,000 " " 100 Seamen and Marines 2,420 In 1702 it happened that no treasure fleet had re-turned to Spain for three years, and the gold and silver and costly merchandise were piling up at Cartagena and Porto Bello and Vera Cruz waiting for shipment. Spain was torn with strife over the royal succession, and inasmuch as the king claimed as his own one-fifth of all the treasure coming from the New World, the West India Company and the officials of the treasury kept the galleons away until it should be known who had the better right to the cargoes. Moreover, the high seas were perilous for the passage of treasure ships, what with the havoc wrought by the cursed English men-of-war and privateers, not to mention the buccaneers of San Domingo and the Windward Islands who had a trick of storming aboard a galleon from any crazy little craft that would float a handful of them. Timidly the galleons delayed until a fleet of French men-of-war was sent out to convey them home, and at length this richest argosy that ever fur-rowed blue water, freighted with three years' treas- THE LOST PLATE FLEET OF VIGO 227 ure from the mines, made its leisurely way into mid-ocean by way of the Azores, bound to the home port of Cadiz. There were forty sail in all, seventeen of the plate fleet, under Don Manuel de Velasco, and twenty-three French ships-of-the-line and frigates obeying the Admiral's pennant of the Count of Chateaurenaud. The news came to Queen Anne that this fleet had departed from the Spanish Main, and a squadron of twenty-seven British war vessels, commanded by the famous Sir Cloudesley Shovel, was fitted out to intercept and attack it. The manoeuvres of the hunted galleons and their convoy wear an aspect grimly humorous as pictured in the letters and narratives of that time. One of these explains that "the fleet was performing its voyage always with the fear that the enemy was lying in wait for it ; the King of France also was in continual anxiety on the same account, and urged by these forebodings he sent dispatches in different vessels so that the fleet might avoid the threatened danger. One of the dispatch boats met it on the open sea, and gave it notice of the enemy's armada being over against Cadiz, upon which warning the commander called a council of war in the ship Capitana to consider and fix upon the port which they ought to make for. At this meeting various views were ex-pressed, for the French held that the fleet would be more secure in the ports of France, and especially in that of Rochelle. Of the same opinion were many of the Spaniards, who were looking not to the interests of individuals, but to the public good. `And yet there were also seen the ill-consequences that might arise from the treasure not being conveyed to its proper destination and the possibility 228 THE BOOK OF BURIED TREASURE of the Most Christian King's finding some pretext which would endanger its safety." Which is to say that if "His Most Christian Majesty," Louis XIV of France, who was safe-guarding the treasure, should once entice it into one of his own ports, he was likely to keep it there. And so the courteous Spanish captains and the equally. polite French captains eyed one another suspiciously in the cabin of the galleon and held council until it was decided to seek refuge in Vigo Bay on the coast of Gallicia, thereby both dodging the English and remaining at a sufficient distance from France to spoil any designs which might be prompted by the greed of "His Most Christian Majesty." Without mishap, the treasure fleet and the convoy anchored in the sheltered, narrow stretch of Vigo harbor, and preparations for standing off an English attack were begun at once. The forts were manned, the militia called out, and a great chain boom stretched across the entrance of the inner road-stead. This was all very well in its way, but so in-credible a comedy of blundering, stupid delay ensued that although for one whole month the galleons lay unmolested, the treasure was not unloaded and carried to safety ashore. In a 'letter from Brussels, printed in the London Postman of November 10, 1702, the grave results of this Spanish procrastination were indicated in these words: "The last advices from Spain and Paris have caused great consternation here. The treasure and other goods brought by the said fleet are of such consequence to Spain, and in particular to this province, that most of our traders are ruined if this fleet is taken and destroyed."