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The Lost Treasures of the Santa Margarita
by Carol Tedesco
Inconveniently for mere mortals, serendipity is not concerned with time, so twists of fate often pass unknown, witnessed only by the sun, the wind, and ripples on the sea. For W. Keith Webb and the team of the shipwreck search and discovery company Blue Water Ventures Key West, the quest for the famed treasure galleon Santa Margarita has been as much about discovering her mysteries as in uncovering her treasures.
The saga of the Santa Margarita begins in 1622. Namesake of the patron saint of homeless people, midwives and reformed prostitutes, Santa Margarita was a Spanish galleon of 480 tons, armed with twenty-five cannon, on a mission for the Spanish crown. One of a fleet of 28 ships, she was voyaging to Spain with an enormous cargo of plundered New World treasures. In registered wealth, the Santa Margarita carried 140,478 silver “pieces of eight” treasure coins, more than 550 ingots of silver, and over 9,000 ounces of gold in the form of bars, discs and bits. Additionally, there was contraband – a fortune in “unregistered” treasure having been smuggled on board to avoid paying a 20% tax to the Spanish king. The Santa Margarita also carried riches in the form of copper, silverware, indigo, and personal possessions of officers, passengers, and crew, including medical tools, navigational instruments, gold coins, and precious jewelry of almost unimaginable opulence.
Spain and her creditors awaited the arrival of the fleet anxiously; as its return would refresh the royal coffers, repay loans, and lessen the financial pressures that plagued the kingdom. But when news of the fleet arrived, it wasn’t good. Subsequent to departing the island of Cuba on September 4, the fleet was overtaken by a rapidly developing storm. Within days, the Santa Margarita, along with five other ships in the fleet, were wrecked near the Marqueses Keys in the Florida Straits. Drowned were 550 passengers and crew, 142 from the Santa Margarita. Lost was a king’s ransom in treasure, a serious setback for Spain, whose supremacy in the world was upheld by the wealth of the Indies.
Margarita in Greek means “pearl,” and the first attempt to find and salvage the Santa Margarita and other fleet casualties was undertaken almost immediately by the Spanish mariner Captain Gaspar de Vargas, who, knowing of their skill’s, sent for pearl divers -- from the island of Margarita – to aid in the search.
Then, in 1624, Havana politician Francisco Melian obtained a royal salvage contract for the fleet galleons. This inventive risk-taker manufactured a remarkable piece of equipment that allowed his divers to see and breathe while working underwater. It was a diving bell, and it was this invention that allowed an enslaved diver to locate the first treasure of the Santa Margarita and win his freedom.
Melian continued, with some success, to salvage treasure from the galleon for several years, though his efforts were frequently interrupted by weather and Dutch sea forces. Eventually, however, search and recovery became unfeasible, and ended, and a vast fortune was left buried in the deep shifting sands of the Florida Straits. In time, the Santa Margarita was forgotten, but not forever. Records of Melian’s salvage efforts survived; in fragile worm chewed papers in Spain’s archives.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and the emergence of search and salvage company Blue Water Ventures, founded by entrepreneur W. Keith Webb along with a business associate, John Arnone. The two met over a transaction and soon learned that they shared a fascination with history and sunken shipwrecks. It seemed like a logical next step to form a historic shipwreck search and recovery business.
“Largely the result of research conducted by historian Dr. Eugene Lyon, treasure hunter Mel Fisher’s team discovered a portion of the Santa Margarita in 1980. The rest – multi-millions in treasures and artifacts -- is still out there,” says company CEO and President Webb. “Knowing that remote sensing technology has advanced exponentially since the last significant finds, I contacted Motivation, Inc., the company now run by Fisher’s descendants who hold the federal permit to search the area, and proposed a joint-venture partnership whereby I would bring my own team, vessels, and technology to work.”
The partnership secured, Webb began to recruit a world-class lineup of professionals, including marine archaeologist and project partner Dr. R. Duncan Mathewson III, and historian Lyon, both 1622 Fleet experts. Operations chief and boat captain Dan Porter, bringing several decades of historic shipwreck search and recovery experience, soon joined the team. This combination of knowledge and skills, backed by resources and technology – and the requisite touch of luck -- has resulted in the most successful series of discoveries on the site in more than 20 years.
The value of the treasure recovered from the Santa Margarita by the Blue Water Ventures Key West team (the group also has projects in other waters) has well exceeded $12 million to date. The search is funded by investors who share in the discoveries, receiving their portions each year following a formal legal adjudication and division procedure.
The Santa Margarita broke apart and was scattered in a series of storms. Over time the wood disintegrated and the ship’s remains and cargo became buried in deep sand and mud. By mapping and recording all finds, the team is able to identify scatter patterns which eventually serve as pointers to substantial deposits. Now, working further north than ever before, the trail is heating up, and the crew of the companies primary search vessel, Blue Water Rose, have made some stunning discoveries, including elaborate gold artifacts, chains and jewelry, gold bars and bits, exceptionally rare silver coins, a captivating solid gold grooming tool that merges both toothpick and earwax removal spoon, and one of Santa Margarita’s most serendipitous hidden secrets – a lead box containing 16,184 rare and extremely valuable natural pearls, not listed on the ship’s manifest -- from the island of Margarita.
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