Saint John's Bahamas Wreck (Santa Clara?), 1564

Country: Bahamas

Place: Western edge of the Little Bahama Bank, near Memory Rock (the 16th-century "Los Mimeres")

Type: 300-ton nao or galeón, square-rigged

Identified: Santa Clara, almiranta of the 1563-1564 Tierra Firme fleet (Malcom 2017)

Dated: 6 October 1564

History of the shipwreck

Santa Clara was one of three ships owned by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Captain-General of the Indies fleets and later founder of Spanish Florida, who used them as merchant vessels in the Carrera de Indias. It appears in the registers as both a nao and a galeón of 300 tons. In 1563 the three ships, the 900-ton San Pelayo (capitana), Santa Clara (almiranta) and the 250-ton Magdalena, were organised as a small fleet to carry the licentiate Lope García de Castro, the new interim viceroy of Peru, to Tierra Firme. They left Cádiz on 16 November 1563 but were scattered by a series of storms and forced back to port for repairs. Among the passengers on Santa Clara was the notary Pedro de Castañeda, travelling to Peru with his wife, seven children, a niece and three enslaved Africans (Malcom 2017, 347-357).

Under the command of Esteban de Las Alas, Menéndez's lieutenant, the fleet sailed again in March 1564, crossed from the Canaries, called at Santa Marta and Cartagena, and reached Nombre de Dios on 1 June. There the European cargo sold well and García de Castro was landed. On the return the Magdalena was damaged and went back to port, and Santa Clara and San Pelayo left Cartagena on 20 September with passengers that included the conquistadors Juan Vázquez de Coronado and Diego Hernández de Serpa and the Peruvian landowner Antonio Vaca de Castro. Bad weather kept them out of Havana, and they ran north with the Gulf Stream through the Bahama Channel (Malcom 2017, 357-364).

At about four in the morning on 6 October 1564, the current set the ships to the east side of the channel and Santa Clara struck a shoal at the place called "El Mime" or "Los Mimeres", near the exit of the channel. It fired a gun and lit a lantern to signal the capitana. During the day the crew, passengers and cargo of 735 bars of silver, seventeen parcels of gold and seventeen boxes of plata corriente, worth some 204,000 pesos, were transferred to San Pelayo; a last box of silver bars was reportedly left under water. The ship was abandoned with its artillery, munitions and equipment. San Pelayo reached Cádiz in early December 1564 (Las Alas 1564, cited in Malcom 2017, 364-368).

The wreck was found in 1980-1981 by Expeditions Unlimited, working under a salvage lease held by Eco-Tech, who dug into the ballast and recovered a hooped wrought-iron gun and three pieces of crude cast silver. It was rediscovered in 1991 by St. John's Expeditions, a Florida salvage company, which entrusted it to the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society (MFMHS). Six excavation seasons were carried out between 1992 and 1999 under the direction of Corey Malcom, with David D. Moore. The collection is kept as a single collection in Key West and the Bahamas. Earlier publications called it the St. John's Bahamas Wreck and dated it to the first half of the 16th century; the identification as Santa Clara rests on the dating evidence, the ship's size, links to Tierra Firme, the absence of treasure and human remains, and the eyewitness accounts placing "Los Mimeres" at the northern end of the Bahama Channel (Malcom 2017, 70-72; 323-346).

Description of the site

The wreck lies in about 4.5 m of water behind a shallow reef (the "Dry Bar") on the western edge of the Little Bahama Bank, 37 km north-northwest of West End, Grand Bahama, and some 5.5 km from Memory Rock; the drop-off to the Gulf Stream is 250 m to the west. The remains were buried up to 2 m deep in coral rubble and silty carbonate sand. The ship rolled onto its starboard side; the port side decayed and the starboard side was covered and preserved under the slumped ballast. The site is about 29 m long, with ballast covering 25.3 m. Some 1,500 artefacts were recovered, along with many olive jar sherds, iron fasteners and barrel hoop fragments (Malcom 2017, 52-75).

Figure 1. St. John's Bahamas Shipwreck Site (Malcom 2017).

The artillery lay amidships along the ship's axis, in storage below decks, arranged in three balanced groups. The row of chain-plates lay just south of the guns, suggesting the bow pointed north. Spare breech chambers were in the stern, the copper cauldron towards the bow, and the hand weapons together in an "arms locker" in the upper stern. A single verso lay well forward, possibly the gun fired as a distress signal. An iron anchor of 16th-century type (3.28 m shank, 76 cm arms) lies on hard bottom about 0.75 km north-northwest of the site (Malcom 2017, 73-75; 98-99; 341).

Cargo

No significant treasure was found: four silver coins, two copper maravedí coins and three pieces of plata corriente from Potosí. The Mexican coins, struck under the assayer Bernardo de Oñate, give a terminus post quem of about 1555-1562. There were no human remains, jewellery, clothing hardware or religious objects (Malcom 2017, 279-289; 324).

The armament comprised three wrought-iron tube guns (bombardetas) with their breech chambers, eight wrought-iron versos and large and small shot; matchlock harquebuses; at least nine crossbows; five bills and a pike; two espada ropera swords; and two helmets and two breastplates. There were also carpenter's and caulker's tools (hammers, axe, adzes, rave hooks, a maul, a grindstone), a riveted copper cauldron, an oil lamp, wick trimmers, a syringe, dividers, locks, pewter, a roll of sheet lead and an iron bar (Malcom 2017, 110-234; 300-322).

Ceramics were the largest category, mostly thousands of sherds of early-to-middle style olive jars (botijas), with Columbia Plain and Italian-style majolica, lead-glazed wares, melado, and Mesoamerican and other Native American or possibly African wares. There were at least seven small glass vials or bottles. Horseshoes and lead cloth seals point to goods carried for sale in the colonies. Organic remains include pig teeth, cattle bone, olives, raisins (grape seeds), hazelnuts, cockroaches and beetles, and the bone of a juvenile caiman, a species native to Tierra Firme (Malcom 2017, 235-299).

Hull Remains

The in situ hull covered 19.55 m by 7.4 m. It is a section of the starboard side, from near the keel to just above the overlap of the first and second futtocks, flattened by decay and with no curvature. Some 21 strakes of carvel planking survived, with about 41 framing timbers, most of them recognisable only from lines of fastener holes. The bow and stern ends, keelson, mast step, ceiling, decks and castles did not survive. The hull was recorded by drawing, photography and video and reburied on site (Malcom 2017, 76-77; 107-109).

Planks were fastened to the frames with square iron spikes (shanks 1.5-1.8 cm) near the plank edges and treenails (2.5-3.0 cm) between them: two spikes and one or two treenails towards the ends, up to three spikes and two treenails amidships, and three spikes and two treenails at butt ends. The treenails were driven flush on the outside and wedged with a chisel cut. Two nails driven transversely through futtocks were noted. One plank fragment had a slightly charred outer face, probably from heat-bending (Malcom 2017, 78; 82; 104).

A badly eroded centreline timber, 3 m long, lay in place at the western (lowest) edge of the hull. A second, displaced centreline timber, 1.86 m long, was rabbeted on both sides for the garboards and scarphed (scarph 54 cm long) with iron spikes and U-shaped staples, with a vertical bolt hole of 4 cm diameter; it is probably a scarphed end of the keel. A row of eight shroud chains for the mainmast (forelock bolt, three elongated links and a deadeye strop, about 133 cm overall) lay along the eastern edge with a possible chain-wale fragment 13 cm thick. Three coaks from rigging blocks were also recovered (Malcom 2017, 82-86; 92-98).

Caulking

Caulking was not preserved. Pitch or resin coated the inner face of the planking at plank-frame intersections in at least two places. Sheet-lead patches (one at least 20 x 60 cm) were tacked over plank seams on the outer face in at least two places, with tack holes every 3-4 cm. There was no full lead sheathing (Malcom 2017, 87-89).

Ballast

Stone ballast, from 75 kg to a few grams per stone, covered most of the site and was partly fused by concretion. The excavation removed 30.93 m³, about 54.85 tonnes at a measured density of 1,773 kg/m³. The original ballast load was probably under 100 tonnes. No lithological study has yet been made (Malcom 2017, 99-102; 373).

Size and scantlings

Planks: 25-36.5 cm wide (widest amidships), 4.7-7.5 cm thick, most commonly 5.8 cm. Floors: 22 cm sided. Futtocks: 20.3-21 cm sided. Moulded dimensions of the frames could not be measured because of erosion. Room-and-space: 43 cm. Keel (displaced centreline timber): 27 cm sided, 27 cm moulded. Comparison with other Spanish Indies wrecks suggests a square-rigged ship of 250-400 tons, consistent with the 300 tons recorded for Santa Clara (Malcom 2017, 79-81; 105-109).

Wood

Wood species not reported.

References

Malcom, Corey. 2017. "Solving a Sunken Mystery: The Investigation and Identification of a Sixteenth-Century Shipwreck." PhD thesis, University of Huddersfield.

Malcom, Corey. 1997. "St. John's Bahamas Wreck." In Encyclopedia of Underwater and Maritime Archaeology, edited by James P. Delgado, 351-352. London: British Museum Press; New Haven: Yale University Press.

Malcom, Corey. 1996. "The St. John's Bahamas Wreck: Interim Report 1: The Excavation and Artifacts 1991-1995." Astrolabe: Journal of the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society 9 (1).

Malcom, Corey. 1992. "The St. John's Bahamas Wreck Research and Excavation Plan." Report on file, Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society, Key West, Florida.