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1649-1651 and 1652 transitionals, in addition to many Mexican Consolación (“Isla de Muerto shipwreck”), sunk in 1681 off
silver cobs and a few Bogotá cob 2 escudos. The second big salvage Santa Clara Island, Ecuador
effort on the Maravillas was achieved by Herbert Humphreys and his When salvage first
company, Marex, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, resulting in two began on this wreck in
big sales by Christie’s (London) in 1992 and 1993, which featured 1997, it was initially
many Bogotá cob 2 escudos, more Mexico and Potosí silver cobs, and believed to be the Santa
several important artifacts. The most recent big sale of Maravillas finds, Cruz and later called
presumably from one of the many salvage efforts from the 1970s and El Salvador y San José,
1980s, took place in California in 2005, again with a good quantity sunk in August of 1680;
of Bogotá cob 2 escudos. The wreck area is still being searched today, however, research by
but officially the Bahamian government has not granted any leases on Robert Marx after the
the site since the early 1990s. It is possible the bulk of the treasure is main find in subsequent
still to be found. years confirmed its
proper name and illuminated its fascinating history.
San Miguel el Arcángel (“Jupiter wreck”), sunk in 1659 off Intended to be part of the Spanish “South Seas Fleet” of 1681,
Jupiter Inlet, east coast of Florida which left Lima’s port of Callao in April, the Consolación apparently
As well known as this wreck has become among the Florida was delayed and ended up traveling alone. At the Gulf of Guayaquil,
treasure community and shipwreck collectors around the world, off modern-day Ecuador, the Consolación encountered English pirates,
surprisingly little has been written about it, and not one major auction led by Bartholomew Sharpe, who forced the Spanish galleon to sink
has been dedicated to its finds. on a reef off Santa Clara Island (later nicknamed “Isla de Muerto,”
The San Miguel was not a big treasure galleon in a huge or Dead Man’s Island). Before the pirates could get to the ship, the
convoy; rather, she was a lone aviso, a smaller ship for carrying letters crew set fire to her and tried to escape to the nearby island without
and other communications quickly back to Spain. But unlike most success. Angered by their inability to seize the valuable cargo of the
avisos, the San Miguel was carrying some important treasure, as it was in Consolación, Sharpe’s men killed the Spaniards and tried in vain to
the right time and place to take on samples of the unauthorized “Star of recover the treasure through the efforts of local fishermen. Spanish
Lima” coinage of 1659 for the King to see. In October the San Miguel attempts after that were also fruitless, so the treasure of the Consolación
encountered a hurricane off the southeast coast of Florida, grounded sat undisturbed until our time.
on a sandbar, and broke apart rapidly, leaving only 34 survivors among When vast amounts of silver coins were found in the area
the 121 people on board. Those survivors were all quickly captured by starting in the 1990s, by local entrepreneurs Roberto Aguirre and
natives (Ais) and therefore had no opportunity to salvage the scattered Carlos Saavedra (“ROBCAR”) and the government of Ecuador in
wreck. 1997 under mutual agreement, the exact name and history of the wreck
Today only parts of the wreck of the San Miguel have been were unknown, and about 8,000 of the coins (all Potosí silver cobs)
found, discovered by lifeguard Peter Leo in 1987, in about 10 to 20 were subsequently sold at auction by Spink New York in December
feet of water and under as much as 20 feet of sand. Salvage is ongoing. 2001 as simply “Treasures from the ‘Isla de Muerto.’” Most of the
Besides a couple of gold ingots and one large silver ingot, the yield coins offered were of low quality and poorly preserved but came with
to date has been modest, mostly low-end silver cobs of Mexico and individually numbered photo-certificates. Later, after the provenance
Potosí, a good amount of the rare 1659 “Star of Lima” silver coinage, had been properly researched and better conservation methods
a couple Bogotá gold cobs, and some rare Cartagena silver cobs. All were used, a Florida syndicate arranged to have ongoing finds from
were sold through various dealers and private transactions. If the hull this wreck permanently encapsulated in hard-plastic holders by the
of the ship is ever found, as the salvagers think it will be, the market authentication and grading firm ANACS, with the wreck provenance
may finally see some of the gold cobs of the “Star of Lima” issue of clearly stated inside the “slab”; more recent offerings have bypassed this
1659. encapsulation. Ongoing salvage efforts have good reason to be hopeful,
as the manifest of the Consolación stated the value of her registered
Unidentified wreck sunk ca. 1671 in Seville Harbor, Spain cargo as 146,000 pesos in silver coins in addition to silver and gold
The city of Seville is situated on the Guadalquivir River, about ingots, plus an even higher sum in contraband, according to custom.
50 miles inland from the ocean port of Cádiz, where treasure from
the New World arrived on sea-going galleons. From there the treasure
sailed upriver by boat to Seville. Sometime in 1671 it is believed one
of these boats sank outside Seville, or at least its treasure was lost there
somehow in the river, for in the mid-1990s a large hoard of obviously
salvaged silver cob 8 and 4 reales of Potosí, none dated later than
1671, and mostly in decent condition, began to emerge from markets
in Spain without provenance but reportedly found in Seville Harbor
during the installation of a fiber-optic cable across the river.
It should be noted that the same type of coins (with
characteristics identical to those from the Seville wreck) have been sold
in recent years as having come from the so-called “Señorita de Santa
Cristina” of 1672 off Cádiz, but we can find no record of this ship or
its salvage.

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