Undiscovered treasure galleons

[Salvor6]

Those look like top quality emeralds. The emeralds that came off the 1622 Atocha were just as good as new after over 350 years under seawater. Since the Atocha sank just 17 years after the 1605 fleet, not much new will be learned. Whats so important about the San Roque? I heard the manifest lists 2,000 pounds of emeralds as property of the King. Do you have any idea what that is worth today?
The Atocha had two grades of emeralds from the Muzo mines. The dark green ones and what we called the "milky white" emeralds. If the wrecks are found of course Spain will claim them. No doubt.

 

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[Colombiapictures]

There are many interesting things about emeralds in general.
There are many very interesting things about the 1605 fleet emeralds. Take for example the quantity.
You say 2 thousand pounds.
How do you get to this number? Interesting number anyway.
How does it compare with the amount of emeralds that are mined per year in Colombia nowadays?
How does the quality compare?
How many carats of high quality emeralds does the world market absorb every year? By the way, I express the modern emeralds in carats, about 2250 carats per pound.

About Spain claiming the wrecks. You are probably right. But, how is Spain going to enforce it's claim? Are they going to station a warship on Bajo Nuevo to prevent the fishing boats from Colombia, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Honduras and the USA from fishing there?

Below is an aerial photo of Bajo Nuevo. The area to be surveyed by Magnetometer, is about 150 square kilometers, but I have a sketch made by a friendly fisherman who marked 11 places of ballast piles or other "old shipwreck stuff". specifically it marks the place where he found the sundial he showed me.

The sundial, as far as I could tell, could very well be form a 1605 shipwreck.
So obviously this would be the first place to check out.

Let's talk a bit more of how we could "locate and checkout the shipwrecks"
How can we quickly date the artifacts on site?

CP

 

[Voldbjerg]

First, let's go back to post #32.

This is one example of the fantastic tools that we have available today.

We see a picture of the world. It is actually a computation of the position of the sun and the moon, at sunset of November 6, 1605 in the region where the disaster happened.
We see that the moon is over the Pacific Ocean, so it was a dark stormy night. We could even compute the tides, but I think they had very little influence on the happenings.

Sunset was at about 17:50 local time. In theses latitudes it gets dark quick once the sun is down, so we can say it was pitch dark at 18:30Hrs.

About 2 hours later, 21:30Hrs., the storm hit the fleet. We notice one thing: The witness states that the Capitana fired a warning shot and turned around. So she must have been not more than 1/2 mile away otherwise they could not have seen the Capitana's navigation lights to notice the change in course.
The warning shot must have been a signal they had arranged and knew how to interpret.

About 10 hours later, the storm was over and the seas got calmer.

We have tools at hand nowadays that can help a lot in finding the lost 1605 fleet. Tools that I could not even have dreamed of at the time I went to Bajo Nuevo.

CP

If you want to use a tool like that you would need to know which calendar to use. For instance Spain adopted the gregorian calendar in 1582 but UK did not adopt the calendar until 1752.

/V

 

[Colombiapictures]

First, let's go back to post #32.

This is one example of the fantastic tools that we have available today.

We see a picture of the world. It is actually a computation of the position of the sun and the moon, at sunset of November 6, 1605 in the region where the disaster happened.
We see that the moon is over the Pacific Ocean, so it was a dark stormy night. We could even compute the tides, but I think they had very little influence on the happenings.

Sunset was at about 17:50 local time. In theses latitudes it gets dark quick once the sun is down, so we can say it was pitch dark at 18:30Hrs.

About 2 hours later, 21:30Hrs., the storm hit the fleet. We notice one thing: The witness states that the Capitana fired a warning shot and turned around. So she must have been not more than 1/2 mile away otherwise they could not have seen the Capitana's navigation lights to notice the change in course.
The warning shot must have been a signal they had arranged and knew how to interpret.

About 10 hours later, the storm was over and the seas got calmer.

We have tools at hand nowadays that can help a lot in finding the lost 1605 fleet. Tools that I could not even have dreamed of at the time I went to Bajo Nuevo.

CP

If you want to use a tool like that you would need to know which calendar to use. For instance Spain adopted the gregorian calendar in 1582 but UK did not adopt the calendar until 1752.

/V

Thank you for the feedback.
Luck for us, Spain adopted the Gregorian calender in 1582, so we can surmise that by 1605 the Gregorian date was used in all Spanish official documents.

CP

 

[Colombiapictures]

Those look like top quality emeralds. The emeralds that came off the 1622 Atocha were just as good as new after over 350 years under seawater. Since the Atocha sank just 17 years after the 1605 fleet, not much new will be learned. Whats so important about the San Roque? I heard the manifest lists 2,000 pounds of emeralds as property of the King. Do you have any idea what that is worth today?
The Atocha had two grades of emeralds from the Muzo mines. The dark green ones and what we called the "milky white" emeralds. If the wrecks are found of course Spain will claim them. No doubt.

Your comparison with the Atocha is quite realistic. 17 years was a short time in those times. Not too much changed.
As far as emeralds? Attached are a few pictures of Atocha emeralds.

 

[Colombiapictures]

We might wonder about the value of the emeralds.
Attached are estimated values for a Christie auction of Atocha emeralds. The page above is also from Christie's auction catalog.
Interesting that there was no mention of emeralds in the Atocha cargo manifest.

Now about the emeralds from the "San Roque".
Do we have actual documents proving that emeralds were shipped? and how much?

Would the finding and recovery of such an amount of emeralds impact the world emerald market?

What if some have been found already? Is it possible to slip them into the market without generating suspicions?

Did any untraceable emeralds turn up on the emerald market in recent years?

When I was on Bajo Nuevo, I met with fishermen from the Miskito coast. They were very familiar with all the off lying banks in the western Caribbean. This was their usual fishing grounds.

It is one of them who showed me the sundial. He did not let me buy it, he had a connection with a buyer.

I seem to have heard something about the Miskito coast going through a minor economic boom in recent years.
Could it be that they found a batch of emeralds?
Is it possible that they would be able to sell the emeralds without being found out?

CP

 

[Colombiapictures]

One of the problems in locating a shipwreck, is that there are so many shipwrecks on every shoal and reef.
It needs specific knowledge to date and identify a shipwreck.
Even for a person who is perfectly capable to identify an artifact in the lab, it is not so easy to identify the artifact in the field or even underwater.
In the warm waters of the Caribbean, coral grows sometimes very fast. Algae and soft corals, barnacles and oysters can completely cover any artifact within months of it sinking to the bottom of the sea.
Quite often a more modern wreck lies on top of an old one. Only a keen, trained eye can spot the few telltale signs.

So how are we going to solve this problem? First of all we have to be grateful that it is so difficult to recognize and old shipwreck site. If it were not so, many more would have been already found on the shallow reefs.

There is only one way to train the eye to recognize a coral encrusted artifact. Experience.
So the most important thing to do is to find experienced key people who can train the other newer members of an expedition. It is always worth spending the time to visit a known old wreck site for training purposes.

An expedition trying to locate an old shipwreck needs to have at least one member on site who is capable of identifying common artifacts and dating them within 50 years or so.

For more precise dating and identifying, experts need to be consulted.
Nowadays we have some new tools available for that. Digital photo and video, giving instant access to the pictures is something we could not even dream of in the old times.

The we can send the pictures over an Internet satellite link to any place on earth, for experts to give their opinion via internet within hours.
Below is a link about satellite Internet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access

A list of experts who are capable of dating and identifying artifacts from a galleon of the 1605 fleet?

Then there is U-tube of course.

Daily updates from the remote Bajo Nuevo shoal might be able to gather quite a few followers.
The coral is of staggering beauty. Lobsters are king size. Conch is plentiful. Groupers of man size still exist. Hawksbill, Leatherback, Green and Loggerhead Turtles. And of course there are also sharks. Of every size.

How many thousands of people from all over the world might wait eagerly, every day, for a brief update and a few highlights from the expedition to this remote forlorn place.

CP

 

[OldGold74]

Sounds like a nice place, as for magging I would ask Goho on this forum, ive some years but lack patience, nice photos

 

[Salvor6]

A seafood lovers paradise!

 

[Mackaydon]

But those birds can be a deckcrew's nightmare unless you anchor off a ways from shore.
Don.......

 

[Panfilo]

CP:
Somehow that second picture doesn't look to me to be Bajo Nuevo, perhaps I jumped to that conclusion. There are some constructions and a tower on the background that don't quite match the way things are there. When you're there, one gets the impression that big waves can almost clear from one side to the other as you can see in some of these illustrative photographs. Here is also a satelite picture of Bajo Nuevo:

 

[Colombiapictures]

Panfilo,

you are right, there is much too much land on the bird picture. Forgive me the mistake, it is nearly 30 years since I was there. The picture if from the same year of the same expedition, some other forlorn heap of sand in the middle of nowhere, with different shipwrecks.

The light tower and it's base that you show, do not look familiar. I seem to remember a different structure and a little bit more land. Probably washed away by one or several of the hurricanes that passed over Bajo Nuevo since my visit.

The hurricanes are probably the biggest problem for exploring Bajo Nuevo. The nearest harbor, Kingston, Jamaica is nearly 200 miles away.

CP

 

[Chagy]

The entire area is full of possible traps where these galleons may have wrecked and here I am not listing all the cayos and shoals on the east coast of Honduras:

The Rosalind Bank is a large shallow-water carbonate bank formation rising from the Nicaragua Rise — a structure that stretches across the southwestern Caribbean from Honduras to Jamaica. The bank is located 30 km northwest from the Serranilla Bank formation and some 270 km northeast from Cabo Gracias a Dios on the Nicaraguan coast of Central America.The sandy-bottomed Rosalind Bank has an approximately triangular shape, measuring 100 km in length and 55 km in width (at the -200 m contour), covering an area in the region of 4,500 km². Depths over the bank range from 18 m to 38 m. There are no emergent reefs or cays.

There is also:

Alice Shoal Located in the far northern reaches of the San Andrés Archipelago, northwest from Serranilla Bank, Alice Shoal (Banco Alicia or Bajo Alicia) is a completely submerged bank with no emergent reefs or islets. The bank measures approximately 16 km across (at the -200 m contour) covering an area in the region of 50 km².

The 65 km² Roncador Bank, is an atoll-like formation consisting of a shallow platform structure of some 15 km by 6 km, protected by a by a sickle-shaped reef crest on the east. The bank is located 140 km to the east of Isla de Providencia and around 200 km northeast of San Andrés. It is home to the small Roncador Cay (600 m by 300 m) located at the extreme northern end of the reef.

The Quita Sueño (Quitasueño) Bank is an elongated, carbonate bank structure located 70 km northeast from Providencia's northernmost reefs and 80 km west from the Serrana Bank. The bank measures around 40 km in length (north to south) and is up to 10 km across. Much of the formation lies in relatively deep waters (particularly in the southwest), with only the eastern reefs forming an emergent barrier-like crest upon which the sea swells break.

Cayos del Este Sudeste located 22 km southeast from the Isla de San Andrés and 45 km northeast from the Cayos de Albuquerque, the Cayos del Este Sudeste (also known as the Courtown Cays or as Cayos de ESE) comprise a butterfly-shaped reef formation of 14 km in length and 4 km in width. Several small sand cays are located at the southern end, including Cayo Arena, Cayo del Este, West Cay and the larger Cayo Bolivar.

The Cayos de Albuquerque (Albuquerque Cays) — sometimes known as the Southwest Cays — are two small vegetated cays lying on the eastern side of a mostly-submerged, heart-shaped reef. The reef is located 32 km southwest of the Isla de San Andrés and 175 km east of the Nicaraguan coast at Punta de Perlas. The reef forms an atoll-like complex of reefs and patches of around 8 km across that enclose a central lagoon area. The eastern side of the formation is marked by a shallow reef crest upon which the ocean swells break.
The two cays — Cayo del Norte and Cayo del Sur — sit on the margins of the central lagoon. They each measure a few hundered meters across and are thickly vegetated with coconut palm.

 

[Colombiapictures]

Chagy,

thank you for your valuable contribution.
Indeed, there are many shipwrecks on each and every one of the places that you stated. It is maybe the richest untouched area. It is really a divers paradise. The water is warm and crystal clear. The reefs are pristine.
Now, about the 1605 fleet.
Panfilo is certain that the galleons are on Serranilla and he has a whole cupboard full of documents that led him to believe that. Mackaydon believes they sank in deep water. He reasons that the salvage expeditions sent out soon after the disaster should have found the shipwrecks, if they were on some reefs. I agree with him there, except, there is Bajo Nuevo, that the salvagers did not know it existed yet.
And Bajo Nuevo lies in the direction the galleons were blown by the storm.
And then, well I was there. I did not find the wrecks. Expeditions to far off places do not always turn out the way one wishes. But I got valuable information.
I kept this information a secret for near 30 years, but, now I am too old to even dive anymore, so should I take the secret with me into the grave?
No, I rather give it away. But I don't want to give it to one single person. I will give it to the whole world. To everybody at the same time. Well, almost. I might give a few people a head start. Just for the fun of it.

Some time ago Pavel Novak offered documents about the 1605 fleet. Are they any good? No documents will show where the galleons are, because the Spaniards never found them themselves. I am sure Panfilo has much more documents. The documents can only give clues.
And they can help drawing a picture. A great picture, like a giant puzzle. Lots of little pieces to be put together. Some are key pieces. A key piece helps to fit together many other pieces.

Just like key people hold together the whole crew. Key people with knowledge and experience. Like you.

The location of the 1605 fleet is one of the great enigmas. It is fun to solve one of the great enigmas. It can also pay off in a big way.

CP

 

[Chagy]

Here is one of Pawel Newack stories.

There are many ships which sank in the Cozumel waters over the centuries. For example in 1606 on the North side of the Island, the Spanish ship called „San Miguel” sank with the gold and silver cargo on board. That ship carried cargo recovered from the galleon which sank in 1605 under don Luis Fernandez de Cordoba. The documents have been found by me in Archivo General de Indias in Seville, in the section called „Guatemala”, legajo number 1.

 

[Salvor6]

CP the one thing I cannot agree with you is the direction of the storm. The winds and the prevailing current were comming from the East so the wrecks must be west of Baja Nuevo. I agree with Donmackay that the 1605 fleet may be sunk in deep water. Maybe They cleared the Seranillas and sank on Rosalind Bank. Don't trust Pawel Nowak. Look on this forum to see the many people he has cheated.

 

[Colombiapictures]

Here is one of Pawel Newack stories.

There are many ships which sank in the Cozumel waters over the centuries. For example in 1606 on the North side of the Island, the Spanish ship called „San Miguel” sank with the gold and silver cargo on board. That ship carried cargo recovered from the galleon which sank in 1605 under don Luis Fernandez de Cordoba. The documents have been found by me in Archivo General de Indias in Seville, in the section called „Guatemala”, legajo number 1.

Has anybody else searched in the "Guatemala" section, legajo # 1? Vox Veritas, what do you think of this information?

CP

 

[Colombiapictures]

CP the one thing I cannot agree with you is the direction of the storm. The winds and the prevailing current were comming from the East so the wrecks must be west of Baja Nuevo. I agree with Donmackay that the 1605 fleet may be sunk in deep water. Maybe They cleared the Seranillas and sank on Rosalind Bank. Don't trust Pawel Nowak. Look on this forum to see the many people he has cheated.

Salvor6,

I know that you count among some of the most experienced people "in the trade". I respect your knowledge. Where is your information coming from?

Unfortunately I do not have any first hand accounts of the disaster. My sources are second hand translations.
The information I have at hand, telling about the storm etc. fit very much the way a very violent Norther ripps through the region.
Having sailed the route of the galleons in a time before modern GPS etc. and having been hit by a (not extreme) Norther myself in the region, give me a kind of understanding of the circumstances of the disaster, that comes from a fairly vast experience as a mariner, combined with personal, local experience.

I also survived 3 hurricanes on my boat, in the Caribbean. Two of the hurricanes went right over us, the quiet of the storm, while the eye was passing and the tension, are feelings not easily forgotten.

So, yes, my interpretation of second hand information is biased by my personal experiences.

I may be wrong. If anybody is willing to offer first hand information that proves me wrong, I will be glad to accept a new theory.

CP

 

[Chagy]

Maybe Don is right when he says they are in deep waters. Everyone that has gone searching for those galleons have concentrated their search in the so rounding area of Serranilla or the most known areas closer to the south coast of Jamaica such as the Port Royal Cays. Pedro Bank, an area of shallow seas, with a number of cays (low islands or reefs), extending generally east to west for over 160 km (99 mi), lies southwest of Jamaica. To the southeast lies Morant Bank, with the Morant Cays, 51 kilometers or 32 mi from Morant Point, the easternmost point of mainland Jamaica. Alice Shoal, 260 kilometers (160 mi) southwest of the main island of Jamaica, falls within the Jamaica-Colombia Joint Regime

But Jamaica is an archipelago, which is a group of islands within 100 miles off the coast. And most of Jamaica's cays and islands are on the south coast.

The inventory of the executive director of Caribbean Coastal Management Foundation, Peter Espeut, has 65 rocks, cays and islands making up the Jamaican archipelago.

The islands, rocks and cays in Jamaica's archipelago
Anvil Rock - Bowden, St. Thomas
Bare Bush Cay - Portland Bight
Big Half-Moon Cay - Portland Bight
Big Pelican Cay - Portland Bight
Big Portland Cay - Portland Bight
Blower Rock - Pedro Bank
Bogue Islands - Montego Bay, St. James
Booby Cay - Negril
Booby Cay - Pedro Cays
Booby Cay - Morant Cays
Bush Cay - Falmouth, Trelawny
Bushy Cay - Port Royal Cays
Cabarita Island - Port Maria, St. Mary
Careening Cay - Portland Bight
Christmas Island - Kensington, Portland
Dolphin Island - Portland Bight
Drunken Man's Cay - Port Royal Cays
East Crall - Wreck Bay, St. Catherine
Emerald Island - Bowden, St. Thomas
Fort Cay - Blue Mahoe, St. Thomas
Gordon Cay - Kingston Harbour (now joined to the mainland)
Great Goat Island - Portland Bight
Green Cay - North Bloody Bay, Hanover
Green Island - Green Island, Hanover
Gun Cay - Port Royal Cays
Hogsty Cay - Pera, St. Thomas
Lilyroot Cay - Bowden, St. Thomas
Lime Cay - Port Royal Cays
Little Goat Island - Portland Bight
Little Half-Moon Cay - Portland Bight
Little Pelican Cay - Portland Bight
Little Portland Cay - Portland Bight
Long Island - Salt River, Clarendon
Maiden Cay - Port Royal Cays
Man O' War Cays - West Harbour, Portland Bight
Mango Cay - Palm Point, St. Thomas
Mid Crall - Wreck Bay, St. Catherine
Middle Cay - Pedro Cays
Monkey Island - San San, Portland (also called Pellew Island)
Morant Cays
Navy Island - Port Antonio, Portland
Needles - Portland Bight
Northeast Cay - Morant Cays
Northeast Cay - Pedro Cays
One Tree Island - Green Island, Hanover
Pedro Cays
Pelican Cay - SE of North Negril Point
Pellew Island - San San, Portland (or Monkey Island)
Pigeon Island - Portland Bight
Portland Rock
Rackham's Cay - Port Royal Cays
Refuge Cay - Port Royal
Rocky Cay - Portland Bight
Salt Island - Salt River, Clarendon
Sandbank Cay - Portland Bight
Santamaria Island - Oracabessa, St. Mary
Sapphire Island - Tower Isle, St. Mary
Short Island - Salt River, Clarendon
South Cay - Port Royal Cays
Southeast Cay - Port Royal Cays
Southeast Cay - Morant Cays
Southwest Cay - Pedro Cays
Southwest Rock
Tern Cay - Portland Bight
West Crall - Wreck Bay, St. Catherine
Woods Island - Folly, Portland

 

[Vox veritas]

Here is one of Pawel Newack stories.

There are many ships which sank in the Cozumel waters over the centuries. For example in 1606 on the North side of the Island, the Spanish ship called „San Miguel” sank with the gold and silver cargo on board. That ship carried cargo recovered from the galleon which sank in 1605 under don Luis Fernandez de Cordoba. The documents have been found by me in Archivo General de Indias in Seville, in the section called „Guatemala”, legajo number 1.

Has anybody else searched in the "Guatemala" section, legajo # 1? Vox Veritas, what do you think of this information?

CP

Well, I took it out and I do not know why is a San Miguel. This information appears in 1609 among the correspondence of the governor of Guatemala. It seems that there are people who throws flowers ..... with my information.
Cheers VV