Divers Find New Wealth From a Sunken Treasure Ship That Was Carefully Selected

Sean Kingsley, editor-in-chief of Wreckwatch magazine, told Newsweek that experts believed the Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas, or "Our Lady of Wonders," a 17th-century Spanish galleon, had been "salvaged into oblivion."

Nonetheless, Allen Exploration (AllenX) has meticulously mapped the widely dispersed wreckage of the 891-ton galleon over four years of underwater archaeology. The group recognized various sections of the vessel in addition to thousands of artifacts, such as amethysts, emeralds, and silver ingots.

Gold pieces from the Maravillas wreck, set with an emerald and amethyst, a coin, and a pendant with a gem inlay created for the Knights of the Order of Santiago. A group of adventurers has discovered a three-mile-long trail of wreckage from the sunk galleon in the Bahamas.

About 650 people were on board when the Maravillas sank late at night on January 4, 1656, in the northern Bahamas on its way home to Cádiz, southwestern Spain; the majority of them perished. The galleon sustained severe damage when its flagship rammed it and caused it to crash into a reef. It was loaded with treasure at the time, including a lot of illegal goods and items that had been recovered from a different galleon that had gone missing two years earlier off the coast of Ecuador.

Author of the report Kingsley said, "It was one of the richest treasure ships ever lost at sea when it sank." Spain's golden age was quickly coming to an end in 1656. It was said of the courtiers and officers who flocked to King Philip IV's court in Madrid that they were corrupt, wasteful, and idle. His palace was reputed to be the most evil in recorded history. The Crown was badly impacted by unregistered treasure, and trade with the Indies had come to a complete halt.

"The bottomless Americas' contraband smuggled on the Maravillas—stowed under floorboards or stuffed under beds—shows how 17th-century writers were right to worry," said Kingsley. "Everyone had a mission. "The King's treasury is like an owl from which every little bird plucks a feather," a chronicler once said. The unstamped silver ingots, unregistered Mexican coins, and large quantities of Colombian amethyst and emeralds discovered by AllenX are a microcosm of the get-rich-quick schemes of the day."

Following its sinking, the galleon was extensively looted by Spanish salvors and subsequently by several expeditions with crews from the Americas and Europe. Between 1656 and 1683, the wreck was at least 21 times searched for treasure, yielding about 5 million pesos' worth of coins, silver bars, and worked silver.

The wreck was then rediscovered between 1972 and 1991 by contemporary salvage teams, who took away an estimated 30 tonnes of gold bars, coins, silver nuggets, jewelry, emeralds, iron anchors, and cannons, among other treasures.

"Many experts think that the Maravillas' story is finished, having been picked dry by previous salvage operations. The founder of Allen Exploration, American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and explorer Carl Allen, stated in a press release that "nothing survived." "AllenX begged to differ, and now we've proven the wreck has not all vanished."

Using a magnetometer, AllenX has conducted surveys off the western Little Bahama Bank, an area of shallow sea, since 2019. The surveys have identified approximately 8,800 targets that may be of cultural significance.

According to Kingsley, "the 8,800 magnetometer targets are curious anomalies earmarked for checking," many of which turn out to be cultural remnants.

When a research ship is towed behind it, a magnetometer 'fish' measures the magnetism of the seabed and anything above it with a different magnetic profile. Determining whether those "spikes" could be wreckage and worth diving into is the art. With decades of experience in Florida, the Caribbean, and Latin America, Dan Porter and his offshore team examine these spikes as if they had X-ray vision. They would appear to be meaningless smudges to the majority of people "said Kingsley.

Divers investigating possible targets of interest discovered a vast field of artifacts that extended southeast for over three miles from the galleon's original location.

The team discovered several ship components, including two iron swivel guns, ballast stones, and iron rigging, hidden beneath the waves and sand. Among other things, they recorded almost 11,000 pieces of olive jars, rifles, cannonballs, over 800 lead musket balls, nearly 3,000 silver coins, and various gemstones like amethysts and emeralds. Every discovery has been meticulously mapped.

"At first glance, one might assume that the Maravillas were destroyed by centuries' worth of hurricanes and storms. However, the archaeology has compelled us to reconsider that hypothesis," said Dan Porter, the offshore stated in the press release, the manager in charge of the mapping.

"The wreckage would be dispersed over the four points of the compass if hurricane after hurricane broke up the galleon. This is not the case in reality. Porter stated that they are primarily concentrated in a single artifact scatter trail that runs southeast.

There were also a few "unique" objects in the debris field. These include pendants made of gold and gems for the Knights of the Order of Santiago, a Christian military-religious order that was established in Spain in the 12th century, and a gold chain that was crafted in Manila, the Philippines. These kinds of things were probably owned by senior ship officials.

Jim Sinclair, the project's lead archaeologist, stated in the press release, "You can be sure that if these valuable items were still sitting on the main wreck when the Maravillas was salvaged in 1656, they'd have been brought up, too." "This can only mean that the treasures found by AllenX were scattered during the five months before the Spanish salvage operations began in June 1656."

AllenX thinks that the debris trail between January and June 1656 might have been caused by storms. To connect the sunken artifacts to their original locations on the Maravillas 367 years ago, the team also created a model.

"The proxy evidence shows how the Maravillas broke up from powerful storms very quickly after the ship sunk," Kingsley explained to Newsweek. From 1656 until the 1990s, salvors showed little regard for the ancient galleon. To ensure that the Maravillas take their proper place in history, AllenX has reversed that trend.