SHIPWRECK (AND HOARD) HISTORIES Throughout this catalog we offer coins and artifacts from dozens of different shipwrecks and hoards—“treasure” in the truest sense. While we did not want to break up the flow of the catalog in the listings, we do want to offer a bit of history behind each wreck concerned, so we present the histories on the next several pages in chronological order. Note that this time there are a number of “unidentified” wrecks in the catalog for which we simply have no further information. Please feel free to contact us for more information about any of these wrecks or about shipwrecks or treasure in general.
Flor do Mar, sunk in 1511 off Sumatra, Indonesia
“Golden Fleece wreck,” sunk ca. 1550 in the northern Caribbean
In 1511 the Portuguese Viceroy Afonso de Albuquerque was sent to the strategic town of Malacca (in modern-day Malaysia) to claim it for Portugal—which he did—but on the return voyage to India, his ship Flor do Mar was wrecked in a storm, sending spoils from the victory (including a reported 60 tons of gold) to the seabed. Modern searches for the wreck (which sank to a depth of over 100 feet) have been unsuccessful, with the exception of some finds by Robert Marx, like the jade artifacts in this sale.
This wreck was nicknamed for a royal stamping (“Golden Fleece”) on several of the gold “finger” bars (ingots) it yielded. Except for a handful of extremely rare Santo Domingo pieces, all the coins from this wreck were Mexican Carlos-Juana silver coins (all assayers prior to S), including several rarities, the most important being three specimens of the Rincón “Early Series” 8 reales of 1538, the very first 8 reales ever struck in the New World (the best of which achieved a record in 2006 for the highest amount ever paid at auction for a Spanish colonial coin: $373,750!). To date the finders of the wreck have not identified the wreck or disclosed its exact location, but they have gone on record stating it was in international waters in the northern Caribbean. Though it was a relatively small find (a few thousand coins at most), it has been the primary source for Mexican Carlos-Juana coins on the market since the mid-1990s. Perhaps more impressive than the coins from this wreck are the few dozen gold and silver ingots it has yielded, all of which have entered the market exclusively through Daniel Frank Sedwick. The varying purities of these bars are reminiscent of the “tumbaga” bars (see above), although the later gold ingots seem to have been cast in somewhat standard shapes (“fingers”) and sizes. The silver ingots from this wreck, popularly known as “splashes,” were simply poured onto the ground, leaving a round, flat mound of silver that was subsequently stamped with a tax stamp (in the form of a crowned C for King Charles I) and/or a fineness in the usual block Roman numerals in parts per 2400, much like the karat system we use today. The gold ingots also show a fineness marking (but no tax stamps or other markings) in parts per 24, with a dot being a quarter karat. Silver or gold, many of the ingots from this wreck were cut into two or more parts, presumably to divide into separate accounts. We believe these “Golden Fleece wreck” ingots are the only known examples made in the colonies between the “tumbaga” period of the 1520s and the specimens found on the 1554 Fleet at Padre Island, Texas. (Note: the few gold bars recovered from the Texas wrecks were marked with the same punches as some of the gold bars from this slightly later wreck.)
“Tumbaga wreck,” sunk ca. 1528 off Grand Bahama Island Before there were coins, before there were Spanish Treasure Fleets, and even before there were any kind of colonies on the Spanish Main, the conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men discovered treasure in the form of Native-American gold and silver artifacts. While it is a shame these artifacts no longer exist, at least their one-time presence is confirmed by what have become known as “tumbaga” bars: a group of more than 200 silver and gold ingots discovered in the remains of an unidentified ca.-1528 shipwreck off Grand Bahama Island. The artifacts that comprised these bars were apparently lumped together in two piles—one for gold-colored artifacts and the other for silver-colored artifacts—with great amounts of impurities (predominantly copper) in each pile. The piles were then melted as much as possible (not thoroughly) and poured into crude molds that in some cases were no more than depressions in the sand. The resulting ingots, called “tumbaga” bars, were then stamped with four types of markings: 1. Assayer, most in the form of BV with “~” over the B and “o” over the V, but others include MS and INo /DeCBA, whose names are still unknown (also note that some bars that do not bear any of these assayer markings may have assayer-marks incorporated into their fineness or serial marks). 2. Fineness, marked in Roman numerals (but in various forms) as a percentage of 2400. 3. Serial number, usually in the form of the letter R followed by Roman numerals (some possibly incorporated into the fineness markings, as for assayers above). 4. Tax stamp, part of a circular seal whose legend (pieced together) reads CAROLVS QVINTVS IMPERATOR for Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. Each bar is described in detail in the 1993 book Tumbaga Silver for Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, by Douglas Armstrong, a professional conservator hired by the salvage company to clean and preserve all the silver “tumbaga” bars. A new publication in the works by Agustín García-Barneche should soon shed more light on the history and manufacture of these ingots.
Spanish 1554 Fleet sunk off Padre Island, Texas The 1554 Fleet consisted of four caravels, the San Andrés, the Santa María de Yciar, the San Estéban, and the Espíritu Santo, all but the first of which foundered off what is now Padre Island in a violent storm. There were many immediate survivors, but natives killed nearly all of them. Much of the treasure was salvaged soon afterward by the Spanish. In the 1960s two of the ships were rediscovered and salvaged by an out-of-state company, causing
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