NASSAU, Bahamas, CMC—New historical research into one of the world’s richest treasure galleons, the Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas, which was wrecked on January 4, 1656, has discovered a link between the wreck and the rise of the notorious pirates of the Caribbean.
The researchers say the link has placed the port town of Nassau on the island of New Providence.
“The Maravillas means different things to many people. To 17th-century Spain, it was a heavy financial hit and personal tragedy. To AllenX, it’s a treasure chest of scientific knowledge. But 300 years ago, to the pirates of the Caribbean, it was a chance for a generation to get rich quickly,” Carl Allen, the director of Allen Exploration, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).
In the 1710s and 1720s, the pirate republic of Nassau was home to Benjamin Hornigold, Blackbeard, Calico Sam Rackham, Stede Bonnet, Black Sam Bellamy, Anny Bonny, Mary Read, and the Flying Gang. Nassau was where pirate expeditions were planned, loot was brought back to, divided among crews, and sold.
Previous studies were convinced that the pirates settled in Nassau to use New Providence as a convenient launchpad to plunder the Spanish treasure fleet wrecked off southeast Florida in 1715.
In the new historical study by Allen Exploration, licensed by the Bahamas government to explore the Maravillas off the western Little Bahama Bank, the team discovered proof that it was the salvors’ need for supplies while diving for treasure on the Maravillas that led to Nassau’s development and the rise of Nassau as a lawless town for pirates.
The AllenX team has examined historical evidence that reveals how in 1682, at least 33 years before the 1715 Spanish fleet sank, Sir Thomas Lynch, the governor of Jamaica, described Nassau as “peopled by men who are intent rather on pillaging Spanish wrecks than planting.”
Nassau’s governor, Robert Clarke, was even arrested in 1682 for selling illegal commissions to pirates to prey on Spanish shipping and settlements.
“Early pioneers to New Providence found the soils rocky and barren,” says Dr Michael Pateman, the Director of The Bahamas Maritime Museum and Ambassador for History, Culture & Museology in The Bahamas.
“Unlike the fertile plantations of Jamaica and Barbados, it wasn’t going to grow profitable sugar, tobacco, or coffee. The answer to making big bucks was the sea. At the heart of a major maritime crossroads between the Americas and Europe, the Bahamas was a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ for the wrecking of ships. And wrecks attracted salvors with dubious intentions,” he added.
By 1684, Spanish authorities knew the people of Nassau as pirates. The British were also familiar with New Providence as “the only settled place by the English where the vessels and the men that come to recover the Spanish wrecks in the Bahamas are refreshed” and recover “a considerable treasure out of the deep in ‘pigs and sows of silver’…”
“Nassau was a sleepy backwater when the Maravillas sank in 1656,” explains James Sinclair, Director of Archaeology for Allen Exploration.
“By the 1680s, the pirates had moved in, lured by a port big enough to take Britain’s naval fleet. Nassau was a safe, natural harbor in striking distance of major colonial shipping crisscrossing between Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean.
“At times of danger, it also had a secret getaway at the port’s east end, deep enough for escaping pirate ships but too shallow for warships to follow,” Sinclair added.
Dr. Sean Kingsley, author of The Pirate King: The Strange Adventures of Henry Avery & Birth of the Golden Age of Piracy. says the sinking of the Spanish fleet off Cape Canaveral in southeast Florida in 1715, which sailed with 15 million pieces of eight, is most often seen as the spark that unleashed the pirates of the Caribbean.
“But a generation before Blackbeard and the Flying Gang made Nassau home, pirates made dodgy deals with corrupt governors to fence stolen goods and lay low. New Providence had a reputation for working outside the law more than 34 years before pirate hunter Woodes Rogers arrived in town in 1718, hanged the troublemakers, and restored British order.”
AllenX’s latest research above the waves proves for the first time that well before pirates plotted horrors from Nassau, salvors planned how to dive on the Maravillas and other Spanish shipwrecks and readied their ships in the town’s port.
“You can draw a direct line between the sinking of the Maravillas and the golden age of piracy,” says Allen.
“AllenX’s latest research shows that the wreck attracted hardcore salvors from the late 1650s who competed to recover its riches. The wreckers needed a bolthole to buy supplies, sell salvaged goods, and party away their loot.
“Nassau on the island of New Providence fitted the bill perfectly. Then, the salvors got greedy. It was a short step from looting wrecks to plundering ships on the high seas. If the Maravillas hadn’t sunk, the pirates of the Caribbean wouldn’t have existed as we know them today,” he added.
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