BRIEF HISTORY OF SALVAGE ACTIVITIES ON CAPITANA SITE BETWEEN 1654 AND 2002.
The 1654 wreck site of the Jesus Maria de la Limpia Concepcion was abandoned in 2003 after Sub-America Discovery did not bother to renew the lease and no one else rushed in right away to obtain the area again. This was because the wreck was widely believed to have been worked out. Only recently in the pastv two years was a new lease on the site obtained by a new Ecuadorian company called INCIAR S.A.
However, the large salvage expeditions of 1997 and 2002, both utilizing 100 ft blow boats, gave up the site after exhausting all possibilities and concluding that it was not economically worth the while to continue further salavge ops over a potential return handful of razor coins.
Also, new research located in summer of 1997 in the Jesuit archives in France revealed extensive new information which revealed that the Spanish had employed their own recovery operations for ten solid years between 1654 and 1663 and had in fact left little unrecovered treasure behind. In 1663, the last year of the Spanish recovery operation, the salvage master wrote that it would not be worth returning to the wreck for another year since nothing significant was left to recover. After the Spanish pulled out local pirates and Indian divers fished the site for years still occaisionally scoring a handful of coins.
The Spanish documents found in the Jesuit archive categorically state that salvors quit recovery operations on the wreck in 1663 after reporting to creditors in France that the wreck had nothing further to yield and that they had already recovered over five times what had been officially manifested. The king, for his part, had already recovered his share of the treasure some 8 years earlier and had renounced further claims to the wreck and the continued management of the wreck was placed under the administration of the Viceroy of Peru.. The Viceroy subsequently gave salvage rights to a private concern, of which he and other insider friends had an interest in, to recover anything left. That second recovery lasted eight more years and recovered a fortune five times over the Kings share of 2 million pesos and what had been manifested.
The Capitana site is easy to excavate because it sits in shallows in 18 ft of water at low tide sitting atop flat bedrock with only about a yard of loose sand over most parts of it and the entire wreck is in one pile and never suffered massive break up or scatter over thousands of yards and for all purposes, it was a controlled and deliberate crash.The Spaniards ran her aground at that location on purpose for salvage purposes after being unable to repair a hole in the hull caused by striking a rock some 12 hours earlier the night before. They kept her afloat long enough to find a suitable place to let her rest and then ran her aground. Recovery work began almost immediately and continued for ten more years.
Sub-America Corporation, owned by Argentine Herman Moro and financed by Dave Horner, first obtained the lease on the site in 1996 and discovered the wreck site with a magnetometer. However, about the same time of the mag discovery and before Sub-America's divers could verify the site, diver Rob McClung who was working for another company which held the adjacent lease, also stumbled upon it and filed a discovery claim before Sub-America could verify its own discovery.
Confusion, accusations of theft and legal threats followed: However, after some initial acrimony, the two groups agreed to work together to conduct the salvage and entered into leagl agreements and the R/V Explorer, a 96 ft ship, was contracted and sent from Florida in late February of 1997 to excavate the site. The site itself is located about a mile out in front of a small bay opposite the village of El Real...so named by the Spaniards because they had based their own recovery effort from that location.
The subsequent recovery work by Sub-America was conducted legally and in cooperation with the Ecuadorian Navy and members of the Cultural Patrimony and both governmental organizations had many representatives present during the recovery work and the recoveries were well documented and covered in the media.
A conservation lab was also established at the Salinas Naval Base and all of the artifacts were processed at that location before being transfered to the central bank to await division. I ran the lab and inventoried and conserved the artifacts. The division was held about a year later and the American investors were allowed to take their share out of Ecuador for sale in the US. A subsequent coin auction in Chicago managed by the Ponteirio group out of California brought in $280,000 dollars and the investor roup just about broke even.
During the course of the 1997 recovery project the entire remaining hull structure of the Capitana was completely uncovered with all the sand removed from around the wreck and cleared out down to bedrock for at least 200 ft in each direction around the wreck. 96 ft of timbers, remaining lower ribs and a keel were uncovered along with a large pile of egg ballast.
However, the Spaniards had indeed, as their reports state, done their work thoroughly and only another further 6300 silver coins, one gold coin, three silver bars, 54 bronze cannon balls, a small gold cross, some broken jewelry, hundreds of musket balls and piles of broken ceramics were recovered from the remains of the Capitana by Sub-America Discoveries.
Most of the valuable artifacts were found buried inside a large 6 ft hole in the bedrock just behind the stern section where the early salvors had not been able to remove the sand otherwise there would have not been much found at all.
Over 200 large feed sacks full of encrusted objects, which turned out to be mostly spikes, were also brought up during the 1997 recovery and lab techs at Salinas maticulously took them apart finding a further 300 or 400 more coins encased within. Otherwise the eo s consisted primarily of oxidized iron spikes which could not be conserved. One small contraband silver finger bar was about the only surprise they produced.
In light of the small quantity of treasure recovered from the wreck, only about 6300 coins, the Directors of the two salvage companies held a meeting in July 1997 and decided jointly that it was not worth any further expenditure to continue working the site as by then it had been completely uncovered and everything of note had been lifted out. Picking up oxidized coin chips, which there are probably still some abounding, at the cost of $50,000 per month was not deemed worth the while. Thus, the site was abandoned and the RV Explorer returned to Florida where it was deployed in fall of 1997 to work at Jupiter Wreck under my direction.
Another group out of Tampa, Florida involving Rob McClung again obtained a sub contract from Sub America Discovery in 2002 and returned with an even larger ship to re excavate the site after Rob rather incredibly fabricated a story and convinced new investors that the work had been terminated early due to interference from the Ecuadorian Navy and so implying that the work had supposedly not been completed and that much treasure was left behind.
However, in reality, nothing of the kind had ever transpired at all and the 2002 recovery expedition was essentially an investor scam. The account of Rob McClung, which even appeared on TV at one point, had absolutely no basis in reality although sadly enough sufficient persons with money bought into it and financed another expedition to the site in 2002.
This second expedition in 2002, to its credit, was extremely thorough in its work and employed another 100 ft vessel out of Tampa with heavy cranes. The ballast pile was moved around, timbers lifted and peered under and all the sand on either side of the remaining 97 feet of the Capitana's keel was blown out down to bedrock and checked under for more coins. The overburden for over five hundred feet around the remains of the hull were also blown off down to bedrock to look for trails, but little or nothing more was found. A number of the Capitana's giant timbers were even carted off as souveniers and are today may be viewed on display at the Farallon Dillon Hotel in Ballenita near Salinas.
According to Cultural Patrimony officials who were present during the work and the attorney for Sub-America who looked after the company's interest and attended the subsequent divison, only about 600 more coins, most in razor poor condition, were lifted from the site during this second massive recovery operation. Of course the investors who had been told that millions remained, (at least fifty million I recall,) and who were even tantalized with stories about a missing six foot gold Madonna said to be still laying on the site, all lost their money.
Recriminations, lawsuits and even an FBI investigation into the Tampa operation subsequently flowed but little or nothing ever came of any of it.
Local Ecuadorian skin divers and pirates have since swarmed the site occaisonally still fanning up a badly eroded coin or two and which later appear for sale a Guayaquil street markets, but that is about all that is left out there.
Meanwhile, contrarywise and in disregard of all the modern and ancient historical information about the Capitana site and the various salvage operations which have taken place there, another big ship is now enroute from the USA to the site to excavate more "lost millions" which were supposedly all missed by the first four salavge groups. I believe the figure two million pesos is being tossed around this time...and a giant gold Madonna!
Robert Marx has provided this information to the salvage group in question and this time the vessel en route to Ecuador, the old R/V Beacon which used belong to Herbo Humphreys, which has a colorful history and was used at the Maravillas site in the Bahamas and in Haiti, is now in the employ of INCIAR S.A. (A Scott Heimdal Operation) is on its way to Ecuador as you read this.
We wish them the best in their endeavor.
P
The 1654 wreck site of the Jesus Maria de la Limpia Concepcion was abandoned in 2003 after Sub-America Discovery did not bother to renew the lease and no one else rushed in right away to obtain the area again. This was because the wreck was widely believed to have been worked out. Only recently in the pastv two years was a new lease on the site obtained by a new Ecuadorian company called INCIAR S.A.
However, the large salvage expeditions of 1997 and 2002, both utilizing 100 ft blow boats, gave up the site after exhausting all possibilities and concluding that it was not economically worth the while to continue further salavge ops over a potential return handful of razor coins.
Also, new research located in summer of 1997 in the Jesuit archives in France revealed extensive new information which revealed that the Spanish had employed their own recovery operations for ten solid years between 1654 and 1663 and had in fact left little unrecovered treasure behind. In 1663, the last year of the Spanish recovery operation, the salvage master wrote that it would not be worth returning to the wreck for another year since nothing significant was left to recover. After the Spanish pulled out local pirates and Indian divers fished the site for years still occaisionally scoring a handful of coins.
The Spanish documents found in the Jesuit archive categorically state that salvors quit recovery operations on the wreck in 1663 after reporting to creditors in France that the wreck had nothing further to yield and that they had already recovered over five times what had been officially manifested. The king, for his part, had already recovered his share of the treasure some 8 years earlier and had renounced further claims to the wreck and the continued management of the wreck was placed under the administration of the Viceroy of Peru.. The Viceroy subsequently gave salvage rights to a private concern, of which he and other insider friends had an interest in, to recover anything left. That second recovery lasted eight more years and recovered a fortune five times over the Kings share of 2 million pesos and what had been manifested.
The Capitana site is easy to excavate because it sits in shallows in 18 ft of water at low tide sitting atop flat bedrock with only about a yard of loose sand over most parts of it and the entire wreck is in one pile and never suffered massive break up or scatter over thousands of yards and for all purposes, it was a controlled and deliberate crash.The Spaniards ran her aground at that location on purpose for salvage purposes after being unable to repair a hole in the hull caused by striking a rock some 12 hours earlier the night before. They kept her afloat long enough to find a suitable place to let her rest and then ran her aground. Recovery work began almost immediately and continued for ten more years.
Sub-America Corporation, owned by Argentine Herman Moro and financed by Dave Horner, first obtained the lease on the site in 1996 and discovered the wreck site with a magnetometer. However, about the same time of the mag discovery and before Sub-America's divers could verify the site, diver Rob McClung who was working for another company which held the adjacent lease, also stumbled upon it and filed a discovery claim before Sub-America could verify its own discovery.
Confusion, accusations of theft and legal threats followed: However, after some initial acrimony, the two groups agreed to work together to conduct the salvage and entered into leagl agreements and the R/V Explorer, a 96 ft ship, was contracted and sent from Florida in late February of 1997 to excavate the site. The site itself is located about a mile out in front of a small bay opposite the village of El Real...so named by the Spaniards because they had based their own recovery effort from that location.
The subsequent recovery work by Sub-America was conducted legally and in cooperation with the Ecuadorian Navy and members of the Cultural Patrimony and both governmental organizations had many representatives present during the recovery work and the recoveries were well documented and covered in the media.
A conservation lab was also established at the Salinas Naval Base and all of the artifacts were processed at that location before being transfered to the central bank to await division. I ran the lab and inventoried and conserved the artifacts. The division was held about a year later and the American investors were allowed to take their share out of Ecuador for sale in the US. A subsequent coin auction in Chicago managed by the Ponteirio group out of California brought in $280,000 dollars and the investor roup just about broke even.
During the course of the 1997 recovery project the entire remaining hull structure of the Capitana was completely uncovered with all the sand removed from around the wreck and cleared out down to bedrock for at least 200 ft in each direction around the wreck. 96 ft of timbers, remaining lower ribs and a keel were uncovered along with a large pile of egg ballast.
However, the Spaniards had indeed, as their reports state, done their work thoroughly and only another further 6300 silver coins, one gold coin, three silver bars, 54 bronze cannon balls, a small gold cross, some broken jewelry, hundreds of musket balls and piles of broken ceramics were recovered from the remains of the Capitana by Sub-America Discoveries.
Most of the valuable artifacts were found buried inside a large 6 ft hole in the bedrock just behind the stern section where the early salvors had not been able to remove the sand otherwise there would have not been much found at all.
Over 200 large feed sacks full of encrusted objects, which turned out to be mostly spikes, were also brought up during the 1997 recovery and lab techs at Salinas maticulously took them apart finding a further 300 or 400 more coins encased within. Otherwise the eo s consisted primarily of oxidized iron spikes which could not be conserved. One small contraband silver finger bar was about the only surprise they produced.
In light of the small quantity of treasure recovered from the wreck, only about 6300 coins, the Directors of the two salvage companies held a meeting in July 1997 and decided jointly that it was not worth any further expenditure to continue working the site as by then it had been completely uncovered and everything of note had been lifted out. Picking up oxidized coin chips, which there are probably still some abounding, at the cost of $50,000 per month was not deemed worth the while. Thus, the site was abandoned and the RV Explorer returned to Florida where it was deployed in fall of 1997 to work at Jupiter Wreck under my direction.
Another group out of Tampa, Florida involving Rob McClung again obtained a sub contract from Sub America Discovery in 2002 and returned with an even larger ship to re excavate the site after Rob rather incredibly fabricated a story and convinced new investors that the work had been terminated early due to interference from the Ecuadorian Navy and so implying that the work had supposedly not been completed and that much treasure was left behind.
However, in reality, nothing of the kind had ever transpired at all and the 2002 recovery expedition was essentially an investor scam. The account of Rob McClung, which even appeared on TV at one point, had absolutely no basis in reality although sadly enough sufficient persons with money bought into it and financed another expedition to the site in 2002.
This second expedition in 2002, to its credit, was extremely thorough in its work and employed another 100 ft vessel out of Tampa with heavy cranes. The ballast pile was moved around, timbers lifted and peered under and all the sand on either side of the remaining 97 feet of the Capitana's keel was blown out down to bedrock and checked under for more coins. The overburden for over five hundred feet around the remains of the hull were also blown off down to bedrock to look for trails, but little or nothing more was found. A number of the Capitana's giant timbers were even carted off as souveniers and are today may be viewed on display at the Farallon Dillon Hotel in Ballenita near Salinas.
According to Cultural Patrimony officials who were present during the work and the attorney for Sub-America who looked after the company's interest and attended the subsequent divison, only about 600 more coins, most in razor poor condition, were lifted from the site during this second massive recovery operation. Of course the investors who had been told that millions remained, (at least fifty million I recall,) and who were even tantalized with stories about a missing six foot gold Madonna said to be still laying on the site, all lost their money.
Recriminations, lawsuits and even an FBI investigation into the Tampa operation subsequently flowed but little or nothing ever came of any of it.
Local Ecuadorian skin divers and pirates have since swarmed the site occaisonally still fanning up a badly eroded coin or two and which later appear for sale a Guayaquil street markets, but that is about all that is left out there.
Meanwhile, contrarywise and in disregard of all the modern and ancient historical information about the Capitana site and the various salvage operations which have taken place there, another big ship is now enroute from the USA to the site to excavate more "lost millions" which were supposedly all missed by the first four salavge groups. I believe the figure two million pesos is being tossed around this time...and a giant gold Madonna!
Robert Marx has provided this information to the salvage group in question and this time the vessel en route to Ecuador, the old R/V Beacon which used belong to Herbo Humphreys, which has a colorful history and was used at the Maravillas site in the Bahamas and in Haiti, is now in the employ of INCIAR S.A. (A Scott Heimdal Operation) is on its way to Ecuador as you read this.
We wish them the best in their endeavor.
P
