Are You Ready to be Rich?

“Spanish Galleon”. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons –

If you read my “WayBack Wednesday” article you read about the Spanish 1715 Treasure Fleet. You also know that there were eleven ships in the 1715 fleet and two of those ships have never been found. Yes, that is right. Hundreds of millions of dollars in gold, silver, and jewels are laying on the bottom somewhere waiting to be found. If you have not had a chance to read the article yet, you may click on that article’s title below and read the article.

Lost Ships of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet (Lost Treasures Part 4)

For more than 300 years now people have been salvaging the treasure from the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet. To review shortly. The 1715 Fleet left Cuba sailed up the east coast of Florida where it was hit by a hurricane sinking on the coast of Florida 9 out of the eleven ships. The last two ships have not been found and are assumed by the experts to lie on the east coast of Florida somewhere.

To understand what happened to the 1715 Fleet and where the two missing ships might be we need to understand the route these fleets used to go from Cuba to Spain. The treasure ships of Spain in the New World would gather in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. Once all the ships were assembled and provisioned for the return to Spain they would sail from Havana. The fleet would follow the Gulf Stream along the coast of Florida between Florida and the Bahamas. Somewhere north of Cape Canaveral the fleet would turn eastward sailing towards the Azores in the eastern Atlantic. Once the Azores were sighted the fleet would turn towards Spain on the last leg of the journey.

The 1715 fleet left Havana heading towards the east coast of Florida. Along the coast of south eastern Florida the sea changed with long slow swells coming into the area, a sign to experienced sailors that a hurricane was on its way. The storm hit while the fleet was along the east coast of Florida. It has been assumed that all eleven ships of the fleet were wrecked along the coast of Florida because none of the ships returned to Spain. To date nine of the ships have been found.

But …

What if …

The missing two ships did not sink on the coast of Florida? What if the two ships were damaged and taking on water, but the ship captains believed their ships could still reach Spain. What would the captains have done?

They would have continued north, then after passing Cape Canaveral they would have changed course to the Azores using the route known to the Spaniards as Carrera de Indias (Highway of the Indies). Once sighting the Azores they would have turned southeast towards Spain. The Azores had already been inhabited for since the 15th century. If the ships reached the Azores and the damage was worse than they thought off the coast of Florida they could have sailed into port in the Azores and repaired their ships.

Carrera de Indias (Highway of the Indies)
The routes of the Spanish treasure fleets.

But the two ships never pulled into the Azores, and were never sighted off the coast of the Azores. So the ships have not been found on the coast of Florida and do not appear to have reached the Azores. So where are the last two ships of the 1715 fleet?

I believe that the last two ships of the 1715 fleet are not lying on the coast of Florida, but on the bottom of the ocean somewhere between Florida and the Azores. The experts will continue to say the two ships sank on the Florida coast. But in 300 years they have never been found on the coast of Florida and they never reached the Azores or Spain. To me it seems logical the only place left is on the bottom of the ocean between Florida and the Azores. If you were to find these two ships today you would not see the actual ships themselves, the wood has long ago rotted away. You would find the ships with a metal detector detecting hundreds of millions of dollars of gold and silver sitting together just under the sandy bottom of the western Atlantic Ocean.

If you do find the ships and the hundreds of millions on them – how about loaning me $100,000. There is a piece of land I have had my eye on for some time.

Thank you and have a wonderful week.