Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, 1641

Country: Dominican Republic

Place: North Hispaniola, near Puerto Plata, on a reef in the Silver Bank (Plate Bank)

Type: 600-ton nao, built to be armed and fitted as a galleon; served as Capitana and later as Almiranta of the fleet

Identified: Nuestra Señora de la Pura y Limpia Concepción

Dated: 1641

History of the shipwreck

Nuestra Señora de la Pura y Limpia Concepción was a 600-ton nao built in La Habana, but fitted and armed as a galleon in Spain. Concepción was built in 1620 as a merchant ship and was later refitted, reinforcing the decks and adding the fore and aft castles and 40 bronze cannons. On April 24, 1641, she sailed from Cádiz as Capitana of the New Spain Fleet. She carried onboard the new Viceroy for Mexico, the Duke of Escalona, who carried with him holy relics as protection for the voyage, including a thorn of Christ's crown and a finger of St. Andrew (Peterson 1980). She arrived safely at Veracruz, where she stayed a year, suffering some damage while at anchor. She was not yet repaired when Philip IV required funds to support the war against the Dutch and the French. According to Peterson (1980), the vessel was in fact repaired, but this was done in a rush; she then sailed as Almiranta, overloaded with half of the king's treasure as well as unknown quantities of private goods.

Reaching La Habana, her captain, Juan de Villavicencio, pleaded for time to repair the vessel, but it was already September, and the admiral denied the permit. After some days at sea she was about to sink; some authors assert she returned to La Habana for fast repairs before setting sail again and being hit by the sea near St. Augustine, where a storm developed and a wave reached the height of her poop lantern. Water entered through the portholes, and after many successive waves she began to spit the caulking of the stern. According to Walker (1987), while the sailors worked the pumps, the passengers prayed to a statue of the Virgin attached to the poop deck, which broke loose and was lost at sea, causing the people onboard to lose hope of survival. The main and fore masts were broken, and two anchors, three boats, various merchandise, and some people were lost at sea (Borrell 1980).

The fleet was dispersed, and at least three ships sank. The position of Concepción was not clear to the pilots, but after rigging a jury sail on the damaged foremast (or the mizzenmast, depending on the source), Villavicencio and the pilots Bartolomé Guillén and Mathias Destevan Arte decided to sail south in search of Puerto Rico or the Bahamas; instead, they struck a reef about 60 miles north of Hispaniola. Some artillery pieces and cargo were thrown overboard in an attempt to lighten the vessel, but the reef ripped the bottom apart, and the stern became trapped between two coral heads. A single longboat carrying 32 important passengers and high-ranking officers, including Vice Admiral Villavicencio, was saved; the boat sailed four days south until it sighted the coast west of Puerto Plata, then continued along the coast to Montecristi. From there the survivors were taken to Santiago and then to Santo Domingo (Borrell 1980, 391).

The rest of the people onboard took to the sea on eight rafts built from ship timbers. The two largest rafts, following the pilots' directions in an attempt to reach Puerto Rico, are said to have wrecked at La Anegada. The remaining six rafts sailed south, and some reached the north coast of Hispaniola. Twenty-five men remained aboard the stern castle and unloaded part of the gold and silver, placing it on top of the reef to make its later recovery easier. Once the vessel fully broke apart, these 25 men built a raft of their own, but only one of them reached dry land (Borrell 1980). Walker (1987, 102) states that nothing more was heard from more than half of the 490 men who had sailed from La Habana, while Borrell (1980) asserts that 194 of the 532 people onboard were saved.

After many unsuccessful Spanish attempts to recover the treasure, Captain William Phips and his associates, financially backed by the Duke of Albemarle, recovered more than 25 tons of silver and some gold from the wreck 45 years after it sank. According to Walker (1987), Phips had made a previous attempt with the support of King George II of England [as stated in the source; note that this appears chronologically inconsistent, since Phips died in 1695 and George II did not become king until 1727], but found nothing and was accused of misusing a Royal Navy vessel; he nonetheless avoided condemnation and persisted until he found the shipwreck, despite the new monarch, James II, denying him support. Four divers worked the wreck for forty days, using only breath-hold diving during the first two weeks; two additional sloops then arrived from Bermuda carrying more divers and a diving "tub." The silver recovered by Phips arrived in England aboard a vessel named James and Mary. Encouraged by his success, Phips returned to the site the following year and found the site being exploited by many small vessels. After the Duke of Albemarle died, a lawsuit broke out between his heirs and other investors. Phips, who was born in Maine, New England, became the first American to be granted knighthood (Borrell 1980); he was also appointed governor of Massachusetts in 1692, during the first French and Indian War. He died in prison in London, however, at the age of 44, after many misfortunes.

Since then, the wreck has been the target of many treasure hunters from the Americas and the Caribbean, though the aft portion of the wreck has apparently not been found. In more recent times it was first mentioned in a French publication by Korganoff, who searched for it unsuccessfully in 1952, followed by Ed Link in 1958 and Jacques Cousteau in 1968. It was not relocated until 1978, after several attempts, by a team of treasure hunters from Seaquest International Inc. led by Burt Webber and Jack Haskins. This team reached an agreement with the Dominican government granting them an exclusive license to exploit the shipwrecks of the Silver Bank; thirteen additional shipwrecks were found and looted in the process of locating the Concepción.

Concepción was ultimately relocated thanks to archival research by Peter Earle, who was independently preparing a book on the subject and found the logbook of the sloop Henry, aboard which the Concepción had first been found by Phips's crew. Combined with the detailed information in the logbook, Webber commissioned a map of the north reef of the Silver Bank (Plate Bank) using aerial photography, and his team developed a Varian hand-held cesium magnetometer that could be used underwater. Webber and his team located the remains of the treasure in two areas separated by 150 m (Stenuit 1983). The Seaquest International Inc. treasure hunt was conducted from the Samana, a minesweeper refitted as a luxury pleasure yacht; as the vessel could not enter the reef, the salvage work was carried out from rubber boats. In the first stage of the salvage, only hydraulic jacks and saws were used to break the coral; explosives were employed later.

Description of the site

The wreck lies on a reef in the Silver Bank (Plate Bank), about 60 miles north of Hispaniola, where the ship's stern became trapped between two coral heads. Salvors reported the remains split across at least two areas, separated by about 150 m (Stenuit 1983).

Cargo

To our knowledge, there is no complete inventory of all the artifacts raised, sold, lost, conserved, or currently held in museums.

Navigation Instruments

Three astrolabes were found on this site, numbered 40, 41, and 42 in the astrolabe inventory. Several pairs of dividers were also recovered from the shipwreck.

Health and Sanitation

Recovered artifacts include a wooden goblet, a silver gilt perfume vial, a bronze mortar and pestle, a silver basin (for shaving and washing), and a wooden comb.

Food-Related Goods

Recovered artifacts include a glazed earthenware food jar, a metate for grinding corn, wheat, and cassava, animal bones (cow, fish, pig, fowl, turtle, and manatee), a square glass bottle with a pewter screw top in a wooden case, silver serving spoons and forks, earthenware and silverware (including a small pitcher, a sugar lid, and salt and pepper containers), olive jars, a chocolate service, and a round box for storing sugar and spices.

Numismatic

Coins of reales dating from 1600 to 1641 were recovered, including pieces of eight, four, and two coined in Cartagena, Santa Fé, Mexico, and Potosí; 76% of the coins were minted between 1639 and 1641. Forty copper maravedís coined in Spain were also found. Some of the coins minted in 1621 and 1622 in Cartagena and Santa Fé are very rare, as it was previously thought that these mints did not begin coining until 1623.

Fun and Games

Recovered artifacts include a finger cymbal, a wooden game counter (a "poker chip"), and clay pipes.

Other

Other recovered artifacts include the seal of a church officer (depicting goats standing against trees, facing each other), a small silver bell, a jet higa, silver in coins, bulk, and worked form, jewelry, a smuggler's chest with a false bottom, a silver base for a coconut goblet, tobacco sticks, cochineal, Ming porcelain (a set of cups identified as Ch'en Hua ware), indigo, candlesnuffers, a candelabra, an ivory statue, and Puebla polychrome ceramics with fruit decorations.

Hull Remains

Phips's crew reported having cleaned all timbers from the bow to the main mast. Timbers were also reported by Webber and, later still, by the team of treasure hunters led by Tracy Bowden.

Caulking

Not described in the source text.

Ballast

Phips's crew reported having cleaned all the ballast from the bow to the main mast. The presence of ballast stones was still reported in scattered locations on November 27, 1978, by Webber's "Phips II" expedition. No further description has been found.

Guns

Recovered weapons and related items include wired musket shot, bar shot, lead musket and pistol shots, and the hilt of a rapier.

Size and scantlings

The ship is described only as a 600-ton nao; no further scantling measurements are given in the source text.

Wood

Not described in the source text.

References

Borrell, Pedro. April 1980. "El Rescate del galeón Concepción en aguas dominicanas." GeoMundo.

Bowden, Tracy. July 1996. "Gleaning Treasure from the Silver Bank." NGM 190(1): 90-105.

Earle, Peter. 1979. The Wreck of the Almiranta. Book Club Associates.

Peterson, Mendel. 1980. Treasure of the Concepcion. Boston: New England Aquarium.

Stenuit, Robert. 1983. "Recent Views of The Wreck of the Almiranta." IJNA 12(1): 75-80.

Walker, Bryce S. 1987. Tales of Sunken Gold and Hunters of the Depths. Smithsonian.