In December, 1904, A. H. Meuly claims to have found the ship and marked the spot. When he returned, his markers were gone. He reported he found a deposit of gold, worth an estimated million dollars, in the skeleton of an old galleon thirty-five miles from Corpus Christi Pass. He believed the hull to be the remains of Cortez’s vessel.
Devil’s elbow, a strange curve in Padre Island’s shore-line which faces the Gulf, is so-named because as early as the sixteenth century it had become the grounding point for many an ill-fated, floundering vessel. These ships often carried large amounts of money, in the form of gold and silver coins. When the wooden kegs carrying the coins rotted, the money was washed ashore. (It is an intriguing point—and undeniable fact—that due to the prevailing water currents sunken objects in the Gulf have a tendency to wash ashore on Padre Island.)
In 1811, a Spanish ship with half a million dollars in its stronghold was sunk by Lafitte. In 1873, the steamer S. L. Lee sank off Brazos Santiago Pass with a hundred thousand dollars aboard. The following year the Little Fleeta carried twenty thousand dollars down with her. In 1875, at least three vessels, the Texas Ranger, Ida Lewis, and Reine des Mers, were lost off Padre with almost half a million known to have been in their holds. The Clara Woodhouse carried eighty thousand dollars to the bottom with her, while the Maria Theresa foundered off Padre Island with a hundred thousand dollars in the Captain’s cabin.
Waiting for some lucky finder, the bulk of this treasure still lies imprisoned in sand dunes and the purple depths of the island’s coast.
The Nicaragua, which went aground on Padre, never to be budged again, forty miles north of Padre Beach on the night of October 16, 1912, is still clearly visible.
It is generally agreed there are still many large caches buried on the island. Some were secretly stashed away by pirates, smugglers and other outlaws who used the island as a rendezvous and safe hiding place. Padre was distinguished as a pirates’ summer hangout. Pirates’ earrings and noserings have been recovered from the sand.
Lafitte is said to have buried a fortune in gold, here on Padre, beneath a millstone with the inscribed command “Dig Deeper!” Several years ago a treasure hunting party, with a chart pinpointing a Spanish dagger plant and three brass spikes, began their search for the Lafitte treasure. Spanish dagger plants they found by the thousands but no brass spikes, and hence the cache is still waiting to be uncovered.
Lafitte dug Port Isabel’s first water well to replenish his ships with sweet water. He, too, had discovered that fresh water could be found under the sand hills around Laguna Madre. The Lafitte wells are now an interesting tourist attraction.
Old English and Spanish gold and silver coins, dating back as far as the 1600’s, have been unearthed, as have stacks of dollars in rusty cans, and jewelry consisting of rings, brooches, earscrews, bracelets and necklaces. Many of these treasures have been purchased by museums.
Respectable people, as well as robbers of the sea, often used Mother Earth as a safe hiding place. The owner of a buried cache often met death at the hands of Indians without having revealed to anyone the location of his valuables.