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The 1715 Fleet Society

Commemorating the 300th Anniversary

of the loss of the

1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the loss of the 1715 Treasure Fleet.
In the early morning hours of July 31, 1715, a Spanish treasure fleet found
itself in desperate trouble off Florida’s eastern coast. Carrying a fortune
in gold, silver, jewels and other treasure from Spain’s New World Empire,
the ships of this fleet had foolishly tried to outrun an ominous storm bear-
ing down on them from the Bahamas. The bulky treasure-laden galleons
and their escorts were not fast enough. By 2 a.m., 100 mile per hour winds,
heavy rain, and massive waves broke over the Fleet. A hurricane had caught
the Spanish Treasure Fleet and was irresistibly driving the soon dismasted
ships onto the Florida coast. Eleven of the twelve ships in the Fleet, includ-
ing all the treasure galleons, were lost before dawn, either capsizing in deep water or wrecking upon deadly reefs
that line the Florida shore. More than a thousand crew and passengers perished with the ships in the fury of the
storm. By dawn the next morning, the beach was strewn with bodies and the wreckage of the fleet. It was one of
the worst maritime disasters for Spain’s New World Empire.

About the 1715 Fleet Society

The 1715 Fleet Society is a group of historians, educators, and numismatists deeply interested in an important but
neglected incident in Florida’s Spanish Colonial history, the loss of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet. Starting in 2008,
the Society began planning to commemorate this event.
First and foremost, the mission of the 1715 Fleet Society is to promote public awareness of this event through
educational programs focused on the significance of this maritime tragedy.
Second, it is to advance scholarly study of all facets of the 1715 Fleet Disaster. We hope to accomplish this goal
by acting as a magnet for archival records, articles, letters and documents, publishing this material on our website so
that it can be studied before it is lost to history. We appeal to individuals who have firsthand knowledge of important
Fleet-related events or who possess Fleet documents to share this information with us for research purposes.
Our website (www.1715fleetsociety.com) was launched in the Spring of 2011 and has grown to include hun-
dreds of historical photos and articles about the 1715 Fleet and its treasures. Our photo gallery includes the John
de Bry Collection and the 1715 Research Collection. The De Bry Collection offers some of the highest quality images
of treasure recovered from Spanish galleons lost in Florida waters. Dr. John de Bry, Director of the non-profit Center
for Historical Archaeology in, has extensive experience photographing artifacts recovered from Florida waters.
The 1715 Fleet Research Collection was started in 2013 and has developed
into one of the most popular features of our website. Millions of pesos of silver From the
and gold coinage sailed in the coffers of the 1715 Spanish Fleet. The goal of this John de Bry
collection is to provide prime examples of the cob coinage found on the 1715 collection
Fleet. Five Spanish colonial mints--Mexico City, Lima, Santa Fe de Bogota, Po-
tosi, and Cuzco—are all well represented in the salvage finds. So far
the Fleet Society has managed to assemble and publish an extensive
collection of silver cob reales. We are currently working on organiz-
ing a collection of gold escudos from the Fleet, to be published as a
companion to our silver collection.

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