Name/Title
1553 Maravedi [Coin]Context
On November 4, 1552, fifty-four vessels under Captain-General Bartolomé Carreño set sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain. The fleet had been preparing since the previous February and included an armada of six vessels, well armed and carrying 360 soldiers. The armada plus eighteen other vessels were bound for tierra firme (the mainland). There were also ten ships headed to Santo Domingo, four to various other destinations in the Indies, and sixteen for San Juan de Ulúa (Veracruz) in Mexico. These sixteen included the San Esteban (Francisco del Huerto, master), the Espíritu Santo (Damián Martín, master), the Santa María de Yciar (Alonso Ojos, master, and Miguel de Jáuregui, owner, captain, and pilot), and the San Andrés (Antonio Corzo, master). Of the sixteen ships bound for New Spain, these four and one other were the only ones scheduled to make the round trip; the rest were to be scrapped upon arrival in the New World. This was a common practice since the outbound cargo was much more bulky than the cargo to be returned to Spain, which consisted largely of precious metals that occupied very little space. Of the tierra firme contingent only seven of twenty-four were slated for return. On the outbound trip the fleet was cursed with foul weather, corsairs, and disaster. For instance, the capitana (the ship carrying the captain-general) burned and sank in mid-ocean, leaving over 300 dead and only twenty survivors, among them the captain-general himself. The fleet was scattered before the journey was well begun, and in all, eight ships were lost on the outbound voyage. None of the ships bound for Mexico was among those eight, and arrivals at San Juan de Ulúa occurred between early February and late March 1553. Upon arrival the mariners found a port still devastated from a hurricane in September 1552. Repairs were slow, which resulted in delays in unloading and prevented all but one of the five returning vessels from being ready to depart in time to meet Carreño in Havana for the return voyage. The San Pedro, one of the first to arrive on February 2, was ready to sail again on May 15 and departed with four ships which had come with a previous fleet. The remaining four ships waited in San Juan de Ulúa for more than a year, hoping to return with the next fleet. However, on April 9, 1554, they sailed independently with Antonio Corzo as captain-general, only about three weeks before the arrival of the New Spain contingent of the next fleet, that of Captain-General Farfán. The combined cargoes of the four ships had an estimated value of a little over two million pesos or more than $9.8 million (1975 values).
Twenty days later, on April 29, three of the four vessels were lost in a storm on Padre Island. Only the San Andrés escaped, reaching Havana in such bad condition that it had to be scrapped and its cargo transferred to other vessels for the return to Spain. Approximately 300 people were on the three wrecked vessels. Perhaps one-half to two-thirds drowned before reaching the beach. A small contingent, including the most skillful mariners, probably departed immediately for Mexico in one of the small ship's boats to inform officials of the disaster and organize a relief expedition. The second and larger group of survivors who remained ashore undertook what they mistakenly thought was a short journey back to Mexico along the beach. They ran afoul of the local Indians, and the trek turned into a death march with only one of the survivors, Fray Marcos de Mena, reaching Pánuco. Upon learning of the disaster officials in Mexico promptly organized a salvage expedition, which arrived at the wreck sites within two months of the loss of the vessels. One of the three ships was still visible above the waves, and free-diving salvage workers began recovery operations. The other two wrecks were located by dragging. The expedition raised somewhat less than half of the approximately 1,000,000 ducats lost in the three ships. About 41 percent of its cargo was recovered.