Re: accounting for the 1715 fleet vessels by their own " offical records"
Every Chart i can find except one shows the Bleach Yard North of St Lucie River but i did come across some interesting accounts.....
On the west of Hobe Sound, the land rises into hills and ridges of light
sand, scattered over with shrub pines and vacciniums, This tract is marked
on the old charts, the Bleach Yard. On Gomez Island, north of Jupiter
Inlet, is the old plantation of Padre Torry, now grown up with bushes, but
embracing several fruit trees, that contend with the cabbage-palms for possession.
1715. On the 31st of June of this year, a Spanish fleet of fourteen sail
of galleons on their return from Mexico through the Gulf of Florida,
ran foul of the reef near Carysfard, through the ignorance of the Admiral
Don Rodrigues de Torres. Every ship but one was destroyed. The
Captain of the ship that was saved disobeyed the signal of the Admiral and
bore away. An immense treasure was lost. The Spaniards, some time
afterwords, fitted out a company of wreckers and dives, and sent them to
attempt a recovery of the specie and bullion that was on board the galleons,
were very successful, and raised a large quantity of the treasure.
1716. The English in Jamaica, learning how the Spaniards were
employed, fitted out two ship and four sloops, under the command of
Captain Henry Jennings, who immediately sailed to the Florida Keys,
anchored his fleet, and sent three hundred men on shore to attack the
spanish guard, which consisted of sixty men, who fled into the woods and
abandoned to the English three hundred and fifty thousand pieces of eight,
which was carried in triumph to Jamaica.
You might be right Tom..... When you bring minds together new things are learned...
?
Maybe I can go dig my files out and give the references for what I found back then. This has been a great thread!
