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

by Charles Sumner Seeley

Little by little the great pile of calabashes near the shed diminished until it was nearly gone. We had attached literally thousands of the gourds to the framework which grasped the wreck, until now when we looked through the water-glass the hull was no longer visible, by reason of the mass of caged gourds sunk far under water, each one of course pulling upwards to the full extent of its buoyancy. Still we kept on. I began to think that I should have to make another trip to the calabash trees. But it was not to be so.

One morning we arrived at the galleon with a huge load in both boats which we had got ready during the two preceding days. We had not pulled half of them down when I felt the hauling-line slacken in my hand. Now I had fully expected this very thing sometime to take place; but when it did occur I thought for the moment that the line had frayed and parted, and did not realize that the hull was rising. Then as suddenly I understood, and shouted to Mr. Millward to cast off his boat from the buoy, as the wreck was rising, and suiting the action to the word did the same for my boat. We had no sooner cast loose than slowly the gourds lifted their heads in a confused mass to the surface, rattling and knocking together in the swell. The water all about became dark with ooze and sand and fragments of weed stirred up from the ocean’s bed. I felt sure that the old hull was floating beneath in the frame, because, though I could not see it on account of the condition of the water, I knew that had the framework let go, its beams would have floated up and would now be in view among the floating gourds.

At the sight Mr. Millward jumped upon the gunwale of his little schooner and waving his hat began a cheer, in which we all joined. The old hulk floated at last! Its long rest was broken and a new voyage begun.

By a piece of sheer good-luck it so happened that the tide was coming in and nearly at the flood, the swell was setting to the land, and moreover the little breeze there was came from the right quarter to drift the wreck in to the point of rocks. Everything was favorable to success in beaching the galleon there.

In the greatest imaginable excitement we hastened to get the hauling-line on board the schooner, and securing both boats to it made all sail and endeavored thus to help the old hulk along by towing. It was sluggish business. The boats would rise and fall with the swell and lean down to the breeze, then come up, the sails empty, and then down again, and so on. But we moved, and in the right direction, though slowly, very slowly at first, and then a little faster as the rattling mass of gourds and the heavy load beneath it got fairly under way.

I never saw Mr. Millward so wrought up with excitement as at this time. And indeed we were all in something of the same condition. For here was the result of long labor culminating before our eyes. Small wonder, then, that there should be much hilarity. The galleon was afloat, and our ship was coming in! Halfway to the beach Mr. Millward, in a sweet and powerful voice, rolled out that good old hymn, “We are going home,” and back from the rocks came the echo of the last word, “to-morrow.” We all joined heartily in the chorus, with the best of good-will.

In about an hour, and as near as could be at high tide the Spanish galleon grounded between two rocks on a sandy bottom just at the north cape of the island, and we beached my boat near by in a sheltered place to the southwest of the cape. The other boat we sailed down to the creek, got something to eat, put the axe and some other things on board, and came back to the cape, where we anchored to await the falling of the tide.

As we sat in the boat lifted by the swell, and watched each wave wash through between the rocks where lay the galleon, I began to realize that Mr. Millward’s spirited song about “going home to-morrow” was not very likely to come true for a good many to-morrows. There was a regular tide-way through this passage, and I began to doubt whether the sea had not played us a sad trick in bringing the galleon to such a port.

That the situation of affairs may be better understood, it will be necessary to describe precisely the lay of the land. The two rocks were separated from each other by a narrow passage about thirty feet in width at the end where the galleon entered, and narrowed to perhaps ten feet at the other end in a length of a hundred and fifty feet. Through this passage the swell washed with great force. Indeed, the galleon and its supporting mass of gourds had been carried in on the heave of the swell and the hull dropped there with a crash on the bottom. The frame-work and cages had been at once torn loose, and the spars and gourds lay jammed in the narrow exit beyond, the water churned to foam by the obstruction they offered, dashing continually against them and tearing them one by one loose from one another until the sea all beyond was littered with the fragments.

Even as we watched, this débris little by little washed out and away. The hull of the galleon, it is true, lying on the bottom and well under water where at high tide it was full five and twenty feet in depth, would suffer no such damage probably in the present state of the weather. But on the other hand the fall of the tide would most likely not be great enough to leave her above water, and there was no telling what might happen if a gale of wind should come along, especially with a low tide. Indeed I speedily made up my mind that there was not only going to be great danger of the wreck breaking up and getting away from us entirely by washing piecemeal out through the exit into the sea, but also, if this dire misfortune should be long delayed, that we should not be able to get at the cargo for the racing of the water, even when at its lowest. I must confess that when this fully dawned on me I felt greatly discouraged.