The Hurricane and the 1715 Treasure Fleet

Coffee and History Guy in the morning. Today is coming up aces

I spent a summer diving on a treasure salvage boat in Sebastian FL in 2020. It was hard work pulling rope between dives, but the experience was totally worth it.

We live on the Space Coast and spent Monday at Sebastian Inlet State Park, where I told our visiting daughter and her husband about the Treasure Coast and the Spanish Treasure Fleet that sunk there. After every storm treasure hunters descend upon the beaches to hunt for that treasure. Once we get our power back on, I will join them!

Thank you for posting this history of a ferocious storm that occurred before the Industrial Revolution. In your assessment of the cost of the treasure fleet's loss, you omitted one cost - the lives of the natives who labored under the Spanish yoke to mine the gold and silver.

I am from Fort Myers, Florida. My family is still there. If you want a testament to the raw power of a hurricane look at the topographic before and after photos from the storm that has just passed. I have worked on Pine Island. I have lounged on Sanibel. I have lived in Cape Coral. The destruction is unimaginable. In all my life no storm has delivered such devastation to my home town, and I pray no such storm ever visits what remains of those shores again.

I live in St Augustine and have driven down to Sebastian Inlet where there is a Mel Fisher treasure museum there that has some artifacts from the 1715 fleet. The Florida coast there isn't rocky like depicted in the paintings. The ancient reefs along that stretch are mostly underwater so you don't see any of them unless it is low tide. The Coquina outcrops at low tide is probably what is being referred as "rocky". Every once in a while, usually after a storm some items from the wrecks washes ashore and are found. There is still one ship of that fleet that has yet to be found according to the display at the Treasure Museum. It is thought that is sank in much deeper water. Maybe one day us Pirates will find that lost ship and plunder it like a good pirate would! Shifarrr!!!🏴‍☠

Bow Tie The History Guy > Bill Nye The Science Guy Thank you for these lessons, free of the virtue signaling. And a HUGE thank you to all those "treasure hunters" in Florida right now, seeking for our greatest treasure, human lives. 🙏

You are an amazing youtube historian, and I can't believe the timing of this video because last week my wife found her father's copies of Bob Weller's books about sunken galleons and she told me about how her Dad knew Bob Weller and went diving with him Florida in the 60s/70s. My father-in-law was a diver and marine biologist who had a cannon from one of those sunken ships in their front yard that he had retrieved. My wife just took it for granted as a child that they had a several-hundred-years-old cannon in their front yard! I was riveted listening to this story of the ships that were destroyed by a hurricane in 1715.

You had me at "a disater that is more remembered for the treasure then for those people that deserved to be remembered" thank you for all the hard work that you do to remember those who haved lived before us!

Good morning, fellow students!

Boy where to start back in the 50's and early 60's there were Floridians that would walk the lonely beaches and skip stones back into the water. They where reported as great skipping stones as they were nice and flat. These stones where colored black, but in the mid to late 60's someone figured out that these black stones where actually silver pieces of eight. Imagine skipping silver coins (silver oxidizes in salt water, turns them black. Gold does not , it remains gold looking in color) skipping them coins back into the ocean. Those ships are still producing treasure today , the atocha especially, the mother load she was carrying hasn't been found yet. The treasure was scattered over miles of ocean bottom, it has been reported that these ships would carry their reported treasure and the would carry the unreported treasure. Sometimes as much as twice their reported cargo. These crews were a bit on the shiesty side.. Worth noting is that there were two treasure fleets that ran around off the Florida keys. The 1715 fleet that was obliterated by the wave. And the 1733 fleet that was more intact and more treasure was recovered.

Man has been fighting hurricanes, typhoon, and cyclones since time immemorial but it has been less than a hundred years that technology has advanced enough to minimize the lives lost to them.

Yet another great presentation, HG! I had the misfortune to experience a hurricane at sea in a 450' cargo ship in the 60s, so I can relate to the emotions experienced by the doomed Spanish sailors. My only other direct experience with a hurricane was hurricane Ida late August 2021 in Louisiana. I had to go to New Bern, NC, to work for 8 weeks until I was able to return home. My heart goes out to the folks on the West coast of Florida. All I can say to them is , "you will recover."

As someone who learned a lot of Spanish Main geography from playing Sid Meier's Pirates!, I really appreciate the antique maps you used in this video and the history of which fleet went where, particularly Puerto Bello and the overland route the treasure took from the Pacific. As a former Navy sailor who once steamed through the Panama Canal and up through the Carribean, I definitely appreciate being on the water in rough seas.

I'm in St Lucie county. Mel was, Mel. Many of locals have found stuff from the wrecks. they are quiet about it because the state and Fed govts want a big share

My daughter and I interviewed Mel Fisher. Around is neck he wore a gold chain. He said he knew were more treasure was but didn’t want to share it with governments

A very timely video, considering Hurricane Ian's march across Florida. We up here in North Florida dodged this one, but send prayers and aid southward. The centuries of storms down here have also constantly churned the sand under the shallow waters, ever changing the topography, and moving and burying the many shipwrecks.

Greetings from Cayo Hueso, the "Island of Bones". (Nowadays, it's known as Key West.) It is common to see locals wearing Escudo and Reale coins from Spanish treasure wrecks as pendants around their necks. They're known as "Key West dog tags". Many were given by the treasure hunter Mel Fisher to crew as payment in lieu of cash, which he was forever short of. Best regards, Capt. Blackheart Charlie s/v Aurora, Cayo Hueso, Conch Republic

Ive been casually reading up on Hurricanes and how they had an effect on the American Revolution and its been fascinating to say the least

I first like to point out that this wrecks were discovered by Kip Wagner, a local beachcomber and later treasure salvor. He along with Dr. Kelso did the research to establish this as the 1715 wreck site. They had to to convince the archeologists in Florida and at the Smithsonian Institute that the Vero Beach and Ft.Pierce sites were where the 1715 fleet sank. These archeologists had the wreck site somewhere near Key Largo. (according to Burgess's book). The other thing I would like to point out is that" Queens Dowery as depicted in many books and documentaries is a fable at best. Most of the ships where loaded and ready to go at the time of the first queens death in February 1714 . The time table for this would have been impossible. However it did make for a good story line in the movie "The Deep" which fictionalized the escape of one of the ships from the 1715 fleet.By the way Jackeline Bissett was great in that film. One of my favorites