300 years ago
A hurricane destroyed a fleet of 11 ships laden with riches, killing hundreds and spilling much of the precious cargo along our shores — the rest is Treasure Coast history
BY RICK CRARY
In a single night more than 300 years ago, Spain’s entire fleet of treasure ships suddenly went down, scattering untold millions of dollars worth of silver and gold along our shores. After treasure hunters regularly began to bring up great caches of lost riches in the early 1960s, our region was dubbed the Treasure Coast. But the glitter of that shimmering nickname is only a half-told tale. The storm scattered people, too.
The drama of the 1715 treasure fleet disaster should have become as legendary as the sinking of the Titanic. But the people involved were all twice-doomed. First, they were caught up in one of the worst maritime catastrophes in history, and then their epic struggle was so overlooked it sank into oblivion. Swallowed by water, buried by sand, all traces of that dreadful event were wiped from the world’s collective consciousness. For nearly 2 1/2 centuries, no one even remembered where the great disaster occurred. It was not until treasure hunters caught gold fever that archeologists and historians began to piece together clues and an outline of lost history reappeared.
