TREASURE COAST BOATING
LIVING HISTORY
JAMES FLOOD
The Spanish fleet sails out of Havana Harbor late in July 1715. Nuestra
Señora del Carmen leads while several yachts sail to see them off. The
weather was fine at the time.
Capt. Gen. Don Antonio de Echeverz y Zubiza was the
commander of the Tierra Firme fleet. In the winter of 1714, he
was delayed in Cartagena, waiting for silver and gold being
delivered by llamas over the Andes Mountains from Bogota.
Echeverz departed Cartagena, riding low in the water,
and sailed heavily back to Cuba. He arrived in Havana in
mid-March and waited for the Plate Fleet, which had more
treasures and was still in Mexico. Chests filled with uncut
Colombian emeralds arrived from the Muzo mines and were
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America and the West Indies and disrupting the flow of business
between continents.
There was no GPS, no iPhone, no weather radar service
out of Miami, only a compass and a sextant to determine the
angle of a glaring sun or twinkling stars and the horizon in
front of them. And one must appreciate the tenacity in sailing
to a location where X marked the spot. What gutsy, insane
men these were just hanging on to the sides of their ships.
These remarkable navigators sailed thousands of miles over
the open ocean through unknown territories.
MAGNIFICENT 1715 FLEET
In the eighteenth century, the nation-states of Spain,
England and France had insatiable appetites for New World
riches. The New World spanned South America through the
Caribbean and into northern Florida. Geographically, it was
known as the Spanish Main. After loading their New World
riches, the Spanish galleons would meet in Havana, Cuba,
before sailing for Europe. The threat of pirate attack was real,
so there was safety in numbers. The fleet sailed from Havana
through the Bahamian channel and eventually along the coast
of Florida. As a matter of course, and fortunate for historians,
the king and queen’s cargo was detailed on the ship’s manifests.
The gold of the Aztecs, the silver of the Incas and the
gems of the Mayan were in great demand in Europe.
Every year, Spain commissioned two fleets to sail to the
New World. One, the Galeones de Tierra Firme, or the Ships
of the Mainland Fleet, sailed to Cartagena at New Granada
— modern Colombia, South America — where the galleons
took delivery of gold, emeralds, pearls and silver from Peru’s
fabled mines in Potosi. >>
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