The Spanish Galleon / Being an account of a search for sunken treasure in the Caribbean Sea.

by Charles Sumner Seeley

Just as I came opposite the mouth of the creek, the wind died away, and I hastened to get out my rude poles and row into the harbor. This was a terrible task, and if the wind had not gone down I much doubt whether I could have done it at all until the tide turned. But at last we made the creek and moored the boat safely with its precious cargo. I was too tired that night to do more than unload the tools, blankets, canvas, and cooking utensils, leaving the vegetables on board till morning. That night being oppressively warm, I swung my hammock under the open work-shed, and lulled by the music of the breakers, slept soundly until broad day.

The first work on hand was the care of my cargo of potatoes. These with the beans and peas I carried up to the dark, dry store-room. Some of the potatoes I buried in the dry sand, to test its preservative properties. As a future provision I turned up with the spade a little patch of soil near the creek and planted half a dozen hills of yams and potatoes in a favorable spot, and a row of the beans and peas, guarding the latter from the birds with a layer of brush. This occupied the greater part of the day.

In the afternoon I drew a wire nail out of the chest, with which to make a fish-hook. The back of the axe formed a good anvil, and the shank of the hoe, the wooden handle being removed, did fairly well for a hammer. With these tools I fashioned the red-hot nail into hook form, using for tongs a pair of clam shells. I drew the point out sharp, bent the hook, and cut a barb over the edge of the axe. The head of the nail was left intact to secure the line. As this was my first effort at blacksmithing the hook was not perhaps as elegant as it might have been, but it looked as though it might work satisfactorily. For a line, I unlaid and retwisted some pieces of hempen rope that had formed reef points on the sail of the tent, and coated them well with candle-berry wax. I made a wooden float for a bob and fitted a stone for a sinker, so that by bed-time, my fishing-tackle was finished, together with a good hundred feet of stout line.

That night a rain set in, and it continued steadily for three days without ceasing, varying only between a violent downpour and a fine, driving mist from the northeast. I could not work out of doors in such weather; so, gathering a great quantity of cocoanut husks, I busied myself hour after hour spinning cöir. I wanted to make a good, strong, sounding-line at least a hundred fathoms long, and a line of equal length by which to anchor a buoy as a guide in the submarine search operations. Thus the time was by no means lost, though the confinement was exceedingly irksome. Duke made an occasional dash out into the wet, and once returned carrying in his mouth an armadillo rolled up tight in a ball, which afforded us a variation in diet.

But the sky finally cleared and I hastened out to try my fishing-tackle. Anchoring the boat just beyond the breakers at the mouth of the creek, I baited my hook with a shell-fish and cast it over, letting the line run slowly out as the hook sank toward the bottom, and then hauling it up and repeating the operation. Presently I got a tremendous bite, and drew in a fish that weighed about fifteen pounds. It was a red snapper, and proved most excellent eating. This was fishing enough for once, and I pulled to shore and set about cooking part of my prize. Soon the air was redolent with the odor of fried fish, and both Duke and I regaled ourselves with fish and potatoes, washing them down with pure, sweet water cool from the porous water-jar.

I now set about the construction of an apparatus by the aid of which I hoped to be able to make a reconnaissance of the bottom of the shallow sea, where the sunken galleon was supposed to lie. I went out with my axe to the upland and cut down a fine cedar tree. This I split until I procured four rough but slight slabs, an inch thick and about a foot in width, sawing them to a length of about three feet. I pinned these securely together in the form of a rectangular tube a foot in diameter and three feet long, and in one end of the tube fitted a tight cedar bottom. In this bottom I cut an aperture just large enough to receive one of my glass photograph plates, five inches by seven, and after cleaning off the sensitive gelatine coating securely fitted it in place like a window. With melted pitch I payed freely all the joints and seams, so that the structure was perfectly water-tight, and then blackened the wood on the inside with a mixture of pulverized charcoal and hot wax, so that it would reflect no light.

Before this was finished the rains set in again and continued for a whole week. I concluded that the annual rainy season must now be at hand. For though the sky would occasionally clear for a day or part of a day, the showers were so frequent that the house grew damp and unwholesome, and I was obliged to air it every day with a rousing fire in the fireplace, the heat of which drove me to seek shelter under the work-shed. The weather was so uncertain that I did not dare to venture out in the boat further than a few hundred feet, and then with a line fast to the shore; this I occasionally did for the purpose of fishing, and always with good luck, catching the red snappers, rock cod, and various other varieties, all of which found their way to the larder.

It was on one of these occasions that I tried my new-made contrivance, the water-glass. When the closed end of this was submerged over the side of the boat, by looking in at the open upper end I could plainly see the bottom and the fish swimming about my hook. Of course I was very anxious to try the apparatus in deeper water to ascertain how far the vision could penetrate. But the weather would not render it possible without too great risk. The value of such a device would depend entirely upon the clearness and depth of the water. I knew from written accounts that the sponge fishers use a similar contrivance,—frequently a wooden bucket with a pane of glass in the bottom, which they call a “sponge glass,” and with which they search for sponges and conch shells in the Bermudas, employing it with perfect success, in clear water, even at a considerable depth. The sponge glass enables the operator to overcome the surface agitation and reflection of the water, just as a thin transparent sheet of ice sometimes renders the bottom of a deep pond visible to a skater.

One morning, when there was an almost perfect calm, I noticed on the surface of the sea a long streak extending from a point about half a mile from shore away toward the eastern horizon until it was lost in the distance. This appearance was so curious and inexplicable that after gazing at it for a while, both from the beach and from the top of a palm, I finally rowed the boat out to it, and found that it was muddy water, with leaves, grass, and vegetation floating in it, and a great number of cocoanuts bobbing about among the other fragments and detritus. It looked precisely as though the contents of some slack water lagoon connecting with the sea had been suddenly swept out by a freshet or some extraordinary current. Among the floating matter were innumerable sea beans, as they are called,—a sort of nut or seed that is sometimes used as an ornament for watch chains,—also little scarlet, egg-shaped seeds, like those that are picked up in such quantities on the Florida beaches. But there was no sea-weed with the other detritus. This mass of matter slowly travelled along the surface and by the next day was out of sight. I suppose to a more skilled observer the phenomenon might have proven a valuable aid in determining the set of the currents, or other natural facts worthy of note.

While out on this excursion I several times tried the water-glass, but found the sea so charged with matter and so cloudy and milky that I could see but indistinctly and to no great depth. This, however, did not discourage me, as I knew the water was likely to change in this respect from week to week.