![]() A second hurricane in October of that year made attempts at salvage even more difficult by scattering the wreckage of the sunken ship still further. Nuestra Señora de Atocha had sunk in approximately 17 meters (56 ft) of water, making it difficult for divers to retrieve any of the cargo or guns from the ship. All of her treasure sank with the ship, approximately 30 leagues (140 km) from Havana.Īfter the surviving ships brought the news of the disaster back to Havana, Spanish authorities dispatched another five ships to salvage Nuestra Señora de Atocha and Santa Margarita, which had run aground nearby. Among the sailors killed in the disaster was Bartolomé García de Nodal, explorer of the Straits of Magellan surrounding Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. Nuestra Señora de Atocha had lost all of her 265 crew and passengers except for three sailors and two slaves, who survived by clinging to the mizzen mast. After a hurricane struck on 5 Septermber, the crippled ship finally sank. After still more delays in Havana, what was ultimately a 28-ship convoy did not manage to depart for Spain until 4 September 1622, six weeks late. The treasure, which arrived by mule in Panama City, was so immense that it took two months to record and load it onto the Atocha. Nuestra Señora de Atocha had been delayed in Veracruz before she could rendezvous in Havana with the vessels of the Tierra Firme (Mainland) Fleet. Following a lengthy court battle against the State of Florida, the finders were ultimately awarded sole ownership of the rights to the treasure. Much of the wreck of Nuestra Señora de Atocha was famously recovered by an American commercial treasure hunting expedition in 1985. ![]() ![]() The ship was named for the parish of Atocha in Madrid. At the time of her sinking, Nuestra Señora de Atocha was heavily laden with copper, silver, gold, tobacco, gems, and indigo from Spanish ports at Cartagena and Porto Bello in New Granada (present-day Colombia and Panama, respectively) and Havana, bound for Spain. Was a Spanish treasure galleon and the most widely-known vessel of a fleet of ships that sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. Nuestra Señora de Atocha ( Spanish: Our Lady of Atocha)
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