The Book of Buried Treasure Part 20

[1] A cliff which was the key to the position held by the MacLeans.

[2] Divers.

[3] Iona.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LOST PLATE FLEET OF VIGO

No treasure yarn is the real thing unless it glitters with ducats, ingots, and pieces of eight, which means that in the brave days when riches were quickest won with cutla.s.s, boarding pike, and carronade, it was Spain that furnished the best hunting afloat. For three centuries her galleons and treasure fleets were harried and despoiled of wealth that staggers the imagination, and their wreckage littered every ocean.

English sea rovers captured many millions of gold and silver, and pirates took their fat shares in the West Indies, along the coasts of America from the Spanish Main to Lima and Panama, and across the Pacific to Manila. And to-day, the quests of the treasure seekers are mostly inspired by hopes of finding some of the vanished wealth of Spain that was hidden or sunk in the age of the Conquistadores and the Viceroys.

Of all the argosies of Spain, the richest were those plate fleets which each year carried to Cadiz and Seville the cargoes of bullion from the mines of Peru, and Mexico, and the greatest treasure ever lost since the world began was that which filled the holds of the fleet of galleons that sailed from Cartagena, Porto Bello, and Vera Cruz in the year 1702. What distinguishes this treasure story from all others is that it is not befogged in legend and confused by mystery and uncertainty. And while ships' companies are roaming the Seven Seas to find what small pickings the pirates and buccaneers may have lifted in their time, the most marvelous Spanish treasure of them all is no farther away than a harbor on the other side of the Atlantic.

At the bottom of Vigo Bay, on the coast of Spain, lies that fleet of galleons and one hundred millions of dollars in gold ingots and silver bars. This estimate is smaller than the doc.u.mentary evidence vouches for. In fact, twenty-eight million pounds sterling is the accepted amount, but one hundred million dollars has a sufficiently large and impressive sound, and it is wise to be conservative to the verge of caution in dealing with lost treasure which has been made so much more the theme of fiction than a question of veracity. After escaping the perils of buccaneer and privateer and frigate, this treasure fleet went down in a home port, amid smoke and flame and the thunder of guns manned by English and Dutch tars under that doughty admiral of Queen Anne, Sir George Rooke. It was the deadliest blow ever dealt the mighty commerce of Spain during those centuries when her ruthless grasp was squeezing the New World of its riches.

There, indeed, is the prize for the treasure seeker of to-day who dreams of doubloons and pieces of eight. Nor could pirate h.o.a.rd have a more blood-stained, adventurous history than these millions upon millions, lapped by the tides of Vigo Bay, which were won by the sword and lost in battle. During these last two hundred years many efforts have been made to recover the freightage of this fleet, but the bulk of the treasure is still untouched, and it awaits the man with the cash and the ingenuity to evolve the right salvage equipment. At work now in Vigo Bay is the latest of these explorers, an Italian, Pino by name, inventor of a submarine boat, a system of raising wreck, and a wonderful machine called a hydroscope for seeing and working at the bottom of the sea.

With Pino it is a business affair operated by means of a concession from the Spanish government, but he is something more than an inventor.

He is a poet, he has the artistic temperament, and when he talks of his plans it is in words like these:

"I have found means to disclose to human eyes the things hidden in the being of the furious waves of the infinite ocean, and how to recover them. Mine is the simple key with which to open to man the mysterious virgin temples of the nymphs and sirens who, by their sweet singing, draw men to see and to take their endless treasures."

This interesting Pino is no dreamer, however, and he has enlisted ample capital with which to build costly machinery and charter yachts and steamers. With him is a.s.sociated Carlo L. Iberti, and there is an ideal pattern of a treasure seeker for you, a man of immense enthusiasm, of indefatigable industry, dreaming, thinking, living in the story of the galleons of Vigo Bay. It was he who secured the concession from Madrid, it was he who as he says, "was flying from province to province, from country to country, from archives to archives, from library to library, ever studying, copying, and acquiring all doc.u.ments relating to Vigo. I had made up my mind to find out all that was to be known about the treasure. And I believe I have succeeded."

Never was there such a prospectus as Iberti wrote to awaken the interest of investors in the undertaking of Pino. It was a historical work bristling with data, authorities, references, from French, Spanish, and English sources. It was convincing, final, positively superb. One blinked at reading it, as if dazzled by the sight of mountains of gold, and moreover every word of it was true. As a text for this narrative, his summary, the peroration, so to speak, fairly hits one between the eyes:

"As the total quant.i.ty of treasure which arrived at Vigo in 1702 amounted to 126,470,600 pesos, or 27,493,609, there is not the least doubt that the treasure in gold and silver still lying in the galleons of Vigo Bay amounts to as much as 113,396,085 pieces of eight, or 24,651,323, after deducting the treasure unloaded before the battle, the booty taken by the victors, and that recovered by explorers. That would have been the value of the treasure two hundred years ago.

To-day, its value would be greater, at a moderate estimate of 28,000,000. Such is the sum which we who are interested in the recovery of the treasure have set our hearts on winning from the sea."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir George Rooke, commanding the British fleet at the battle of Vigo Bay.]

After this, the h.o.a.rds of the most notorious and hard-working pirates seem picayune, trifling, shabby, the small change of the age of buried treasure. Why Signor Iberti is so c.o.c.k-sure of his figures, and how that wondrous treasure fleet was lost in Vigo Bay is a story worth telling if there be any merit in high adventures, hard fighting, and the tang of salty seas in the days when the world was young. No more than nine years after the first voyage of Columbus, galleons laden with treasure were winging it from the West Indies to Spain, and this golden stream was flowing year by year until the time of the American Revolution. The total was to be counted not in millions but in billions, and this prodigious looting of the New World gave to Spain such wealth and power that her centuries of greatness were literally builded upon foundations of ingots and silver bars.

Before Sir Francis Drake sailed into the Caribbean, the Dutch and English had been playing at the great game of galleon hunting, but their exploits had been no more than vexations, and the security of the plate fleets was not seriously menaced until "El Draque" spread terror and destruction down one coast of the Americas and up the other, from Nombre de Dios to Panama. Heaven alone knows how many great galleons he shattered and plundered, but from the _San Felipe_ and the _Cacafuego_ he took two million dollars in treasure, and he numbered his other prizes by the score. Martin Frobisher carried the huge East India galleon _Madre de Dios_ by boarding in the face of tremendous odds, the blood running from her scuppers, and was rewarded with $1,250,000 worth of precious stones, ebony, ivory, and Turkish carpets.

During the period of the English Commonwealth, Admiral Stayner pounded to pieces a West Indian treasure fleet of eight sail, and from one of them took two millions in silver, while Blake fought his way into the harbor of Teneriffe and destroyed another splendid argosy under the guns of the forts. It is recorded that thirty-eight wagons were required to carry the gold and jewels thus obtained from Portsmouth to London. The records of the British Admiralty have preserved a memorandum of the prize money distributed to the officers and men of the _Active_ and _Favorite_ from the treasures taken in the _Hermione_ galleon off Cadiz in 1762, and it is a doc.u.ment to make a modern mariner sigh for the days of his forefathers. Here is treasure finding as it used to flourish:

The Admiral and the Commander of the Fleet.... $324,815 The Captain of the _Active_................... 332,265 Each of three Commissioned Officers........... 65,000 " " Eight Warrant Officers................ 21,600 " " Twenty Officers....................... 9,030 " " 150 Seamen and Marines................ 2,425 The Captain of the _Favorite_................. 324,360 Each of 2 Commissioned Officers............... 64,870 " " 77 Warrant Officers................... 30,268 " " 15 Petty Officers..................... 9,000 " " 100 Seamen and Marines................ 2,420

In 1702 it happened that no treasure fleet had returned to Spain for three years, and the gold and silver and costly merchandise were piling up at Cartagena and Porto Bello and Vera Cruz waiting for shipment.

Spain was torn with strife over the royal succession, and inasmuch as the king claimed as his own one-fifth of all the treasure coming from the New World, the West India Company and the officials of the treasury kept the galleons away until it should be known who had the better right to the cargoes. Moreover, the high seas were perilous for the pa.s.sage of treasure ships, what with the havoc wrought by the cursed English men-of-war and privateers, not to mention the buccaneers of San Domingo and the Windward Islands who had a trick of storming aboard a galleon from any crazy little craft that would float a handful of them.

Timidly the galleons delayed until a fleet of French men-of-war was sent out to convey them home, and at length this richest argosy that ever furrowed blue water, freighted with three years' treasure from the mines, made its leisurely way into mid-ocean by way of the Azores, bound to the home port of Cadiz. There were forty sail in all, seventeen of the plate fleet, under Don Manuel de Velasco, and twenty-three French ships-of-the-line and frigates obeying the Admiral's pennant of the Count of Chateaurenaud.

The news came to Queen Anne that this fleet had departed from the Spanish Main, and a squadron of twenty-seven British war vessels, commanded by the famous Sir Cloudesley Shovel, was fitted out to intercept and attack it. The manoeuvres of the hunted galleons and their convoy wear an aspect grimly humorous as pictured in the letters and narratives of that time. One of these explains that "the fleet was performing its voyage always with the fear that the enemy was lying in wait for it; the King of France also was in continual anxiety on the same account, and urged by these forebodings he sent dispatches in different vessels so that the fleet might avoid the threatened danger.

One of the dispatch boats met it on the open sea, and gave it notice of the enemy's armada being over against Cadiz, upon which warning the commander called a council of war in the ship _Capitana_ to consider and fix upon the port which they ought to make for. At this meeting various views were expressed, for the French held that the fleet would be more secure in the ports of France, and especially in that of Roch.e.l.le. Of the same opinion were many of the Spaniards, who were looking not to the interests of individuals, but to the public good.

"And yet there were also seen the ill-consequences that might arise from the treasure not being conveyed to its proper destination and the possibility of the Most Christian King's finding some pretext which would endanger its safety."

Which is to say that if "His Most Christian Majesty," Louis XIV of France, who was safe-guarding the treasure, should once entice it into one of his own ports, he was likely to keep it there. And so the courteous Spanish captains and the equally polite French captains eyed one another suspiciously in the cabin of the galleon and held council until it was decided to seek refuge in Vigo Bay on the coast of Gallicia, thereby both dodging the English and remaining at a sufficient distance from France to spoil any designs which might be prompted by the greed of "His Most Christian Majesty."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Royal Sovereign, one of Admiral Sir George Rooke's line-of-battle ships, engaged at Vigo Bay.]

Without mishap, the treasure fleet and the convoy anch.o.r.ed in the sheltered, narrow stretch of Vigo harbor, and preparations for standing off an English attack were begun at once. The forts were manned, the militia called out, and a great chain boom stretched across the entrance of the inner roadstead. This was all very well in its way, but so incredible a comedy of blundering, stupid delay ensued that although for one whole month the galleons lay unmolested, the treasure was not unloaded and carried to safety ash.o.r.e. In a letter from Brussels, printed in the _London Postman_ of November 10, 1702, the grave results of this Spanish procrastination were indicated in these words:

"The last advices from Spain and Paris have caused great consternation here. The treasure and other goods brought by the said fleet are of such consequence to Spain, and in particular to this province, that most of our traders are ruined if this fleet is taken and destroyed."

While the English and their allies, the Dutch, were making ready to take this treasure fleet bottled up in Vigo Bay, the officials of Spain were so entangled in red tape that there seemed to be no way of unloading the galleons. A Spanish writer of that era thus describes the lamentable state of affairs:

"The commerce of Cadiz maintained that nothing could be disembarked in Gallicia,--that to unload the fleet was their privilege, and that the ships ought to be kept safe in the harbor of Vigo, without discharging their cargoes, till the enemies were gone away. In addition to this, the settlement of the matter in the Council of the Indies was not so speedy as the emergency demanded,--both through the slowness and prudence natural to the Spaniard, and through the diversity of opinions on the subject."

Don Modesto Lafuento, a later Spanish historian, gravely explains that "as the arrival of the fleet at this port was unexpected and contrary to the usual custom, there was no officer to be found who could examine merchandise for the payment of duties, without which no disembarkation could be lawfully made. When notice of this was at length sent to the Court, much discussion arose there as to who should be sent. They fixed upon Don Juan de Larrea, but this councillor was in no hurry about setting out on his journey, and spent a long time in making it, and when he arrived he occupied himself with discussion about the disposition of the goods that had come in the fleet. This gave the opportunity for the Anglo-Dutch fleet, which had notice of everything, to set out and arrive in the waters of Vigo before the disembarkation was effected."

Surely never was so much treasure so foolishly endangered, and although a small part of it was taken ash.o.r.e, notwithstanding the asinine proceedings of the government and Don Juan de Larrea, the English _Post_ newspaper of November 2, a.s.serted that "the Spaniards, being informed that the enemy's fleet was returned home, sent aboard a great quant.i.ty of their plate which they had carried to land for fear of them."

Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel had missed finding the treasure fleet at sea, but a lucky chance favored another sterling English commander, Sir George Rooke. He was homeward bound from a disastrous attempt to take Cadiz, in which affair the Duke of Ormond had led the troops engaged.

One of his ships, the _Pembroke_, was detached from the fleet and while calling at Lagos Bay for water, the chaplain became friendly with a gentleman of the port who pa.s.sed him word that the galleons and the French fleet were safe at Vigo. This talkative informant proved to be a messenger from Lisbon, sent by the German minister with dispatches for the treasure fleet which he had first sought in vain at Cadiz.

The chaplain carried the rare tidings to Captain Hardy of the _Pembroke_ who instantly made sail to find Sir George Rooke and the English fleet, which was jogging along toward England. The admiral was "extream glad," says an old account, and "imparted the same immediately to the Dutch Admiral, declaring it his opinion that they should go directly to Vigo." The Dutchman and his tars joyfully agreed, and Dalrymple, in his memoirs, relates that "at the sound of treasure from the South Seas, dejection and animosity ceased, and those who a few days before would not speak when they met, now embraced and felicitated each other, etc. All the difficulties that had appeared to be mountainous at Cadiz, dwindled into mole-hills at Vigo.

"The gunners agreed that their bombs would reach the town and the shipping; the engineers, that lodgments and works could easily be made; the soldiers, that there was no danger in landing; the seamen that the pa.s.sage of the Narrows could easily be forced, notwithstanding all the defenses and obstructions; and the pilots, that the depth of water was everywhere sufficient, and the anchorage safe. Rooke's gout incommoded him no longer; he went from ship to ship, even in the night time, and became civil,--and the Duke of Ormond, with his father's generosity, his brother's and his own, forgot all that was past."

These were the sentiments of men who had no more rations left aboard ship than two biscuits per day, whose fleet was leaky, battered, and unseaworthy after the hard fighting at Cadiz, and who were going to attack a powerful array of French vessels, protected by numerous forts and obstructions, and supported by the seventeen galleons which in armament and crews were as formidable as men-of-war. At a council of flag officers called by Sir George Rooke, it was resolved:

"That, considering the attempting and destroying these ships would be of the greatest advantage and honor to her Majesty and her allies, and very much tend to the reducing of the power of France, the fleet should make the best of its way to the port of Vigo, and insult them immediately with the whole line in case there was room enough for it, and if not, by such detachment as might render the attack most effective."

In naval history no swifter and more deadly "insult" was ever administered than that which befell when Sir George Rooke, his gout forgotten, appeared before Vigo and lost no time in coming to close quarters. He called a council of the general land and sea officers who concluded that "in regard the whole fleet could not without being in danger of being in a huddle, attempt the ships and galleons where they were, a detachment of fifteen English and ten Dutch ships of the line of battle with all the fire ships should be sent to use their best endeavors to take or destroy the aforesaid ships of the enemy, and the frigates and bomb vessels should follow the rear of the fleet, and the great ships move after them to go in if there should be occasion."

Next morning the Duke of Ormond landed two thousand British infantry to take the forts and destroy the landward end of the boom, made of chain cables and spars which blocked the channel. These errands were accomplished with so much spirit and determination that the Grenadiers fairly chased the Spanish garrisons out of their works. Rooke did not wait for the finish of this task, but flew the signal to get under way, Vice Admiral Hopson leading in the _Torbay_. British and Dutch together, the wind blowing half a gale behind them, surged toward the inner harbor, stopped not for the boom but cut a way through it, and became engaged with the French men-of-war at close range. The hostile fleets were so jammed together that it was not a battle of broadsides.

A Spanish chronicler related that "they fought with fires of inhuman contrivance, hand grenades, fire-b.a.l.l.s, and lumps of burning pitch."

Within one-half hour after the English and Dutch had gained entrance to the bay, its surface was an inferno of blazing galleons and men-of-war.

Some of the French ships were carried with the cutla.s.s and boarding pike, but fire was the chief weapon used by both sides. The flaming vessels drifted against each other, some of them set purposely alight and filled with explosives. When the galleons tried to move further up the bay, British troops on sh.o.r.e raked them with musketry, and prevented the attempts to put some of the treasure on land. The lofty treasure ships, their huge citadels rising fore and aft, and gay with carving and gilt, burned like so much tinder.