New research into a “legendary” shipwreck reveals evidence of the presence of the Caribbean pirates in their port city and base, Nassau.
H Allen Exploration Company (AllenX) this summer is investigating the traces of the wreck which have been scattered south of where the Spanish galley of 17u century named Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas (“the lady of wonders”) sunk in the northern Bahamas.
The Chronicle of the Shipwreck of the Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas
The 891-ton double-decker ship was equipped with 36 shiny bronze cannons and was made in northern Spain.
Το Maravillas sank on the night of the 4thher January 1656, bound for Cádiz in southwestern Spain, claiming the lives of more than 650 passengers.
The galley, during a storm, was apparently accidentally rammed by her flagship in the Straits of Florida and hit a reef, causing extensive damage.
The ship was filled with treasures, large amounts of loot and items who had been rescued by their supply ship, the JeHis Mary of the Immaculate Conceptionwhich had previously been lost off the coast of Ecuador.
The Maravillas was one of the richest ships ever lost at sea at the time.
“Maravillas is known for the untold riches it carried – at least five million pesos and the same amount in booty. The ill-fated galley ended up a wreck, losing both her own treasures and those of Concepción.” according to James Sinclair, director of archeology at Allen Exploration, as he told Newsweek.
Restrictions on exploring the wreck
Between 1656 and 1679, Spanish rescuers recovered a large part of the wreck from Havana.
At the end of 17u century, the colonial rescuers followed. The findings were rediscovered by Bob Marx in 1972, and rescued by his team and later in the early 1990s, taken over by the Marex company, headed by Herbert Humphries.
The general government of the Bahamas, having problems with the lack of controls on these treasure hunts, drew up a memorandum to limit shipwreck hunting in 1992.
A new phase of studies
«It was only in 2019 that permission was given again to AllenXwhich ushered in a new phase of scientific research with respect to the wreck,” Sinclair said.
“Today, when a storm breaks out, we can retreat to our base, Walker Cay Island, or head south to Grand Bahama.”
368 years ago, when the Maravillas was lost and Spanish boats salvaged its treasures, there was nowhere in the Bahamas to find shelter, repair hulls, or obtain supplies. We wonder: If it’s such a difficult mission for AllenX and its modern technology, how did the rescuers of the 16u and the 17thu century?
AllenX’s team is carrying out surveys offshore, using magnetometers and divers, with its historians studying Spanish and English records to understand how they “fished” the treasures from the wreck in the second half of the 17u century.
Mission of Nassau’s first inhabitants: the hunt for shipwrecks
The team was surprised to discover that the first inhabitants of Nassau, on the island of New Providence – today the most populous in the Bahamas, did not settle to grow sugar and coffee, but to collect shipwreck finds.
“The colonial authorities called his hardliners Wondersanarchic pirates, who soon arrived in the city”.
“They went where there was booty, either sunken or grabbed from traveling ships. We discovered the direct connection between his disappearance Wondersof its treasures and the development of Nassau, which became a base of supply and a lair for pirates,’ explains Allen.
A New Explanation for the Founding of Nassau
Until recently, it was believed that the port city of Nassau, now the capital and largest city of the Bahamas, began in 1715 as a haven for pirates, when a Spanish treasure fleet, one of the richest ships of the time, was wrecked south of Cape Canaveral in Florida .
According to the story, the pirates settled there as it was an ideal launching point for plundering the shipwrecked fleet.
“The ruins attracted desperadoes, who formed a popular pirate legend: The Corsair Henry JenningsBlackbeard, Samuel Bellamy, o Paulsgrave WilliamsCalico Jack and Charles Vane,” explains Sean Kingsley, editor-in-chief of Wreckwatch magazine and author of the Ocean Dispatches report, in Newsweek
In the early 1700s, these infamous sea raiders and other notorious pirates such as the Flying Gang were all based in Nassau.
«Nassau was the most notorious pirate den in the world“explains Michael Pateman, director of the Maritime Museum of the Bahamas and one of the authors of the Ocean Dispatches report in Newsweek.
“Large pirate bases were also established in Madagascar and the US Virgin Islands, but Nassau was the most infamous lair, due to Blackbeard and his gang having their base there.”
The most democratic pirate state in the Western Hemisphere
“The port was not merely a city where plots were hatched, where prizes were won and where booty was shared, but it is said to have been an organized pirate state.
Unlike the rest of the western world, in Nassau, in the ranks of pirates, men and women were equal. Their vote had equal value, they obeyed the same rules, they got the same from their loot. Blacks and whites were the same in Nassau.
The pirate way of life was the most democratic in the entire Western Hemisphere.”
The recent findings about Maravillas challenge the traditional narrative of Nassau’s history, providing new insights into what led to the city’s development as one of the most notorious pirate dens, Kingsley explains.
A map depicts a rough area where the Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas sank, in the shallow waters of the Little Bahama Bank. New research on the Spanish galley reveals the creation of Nassau as a haven for pirates.
New chronological data
«H her new research AllenXshifts back at least three decades the date when Nassau became a pirate port, rewriting the story of its creation. The reason for its creation was a sunken Spanish treasure, the only booty that disappeared in 1656 in Wonders in the Bahamas, not off Florida in 1715,” Kingsley points out.
The Pirates of the Caribbean were about 2,400 men at their peak, who explored the seas in the 1710s and 1720s, from West Africa to Canada and Brazil, in search of sunken riches, Pateman explains.
According to Pateman, “The first pirates to settle in Nassau, however, in the early 1680s, were merchants who evolved into inventive opportunists who dreamed of breaking free and discovering untold treasures on Spanish ships sunk in the Bahamas. First on their list, was the shipwreck Wonders».
Source: www.enikos.gr
