Shipwreck: A Saga of Sea Tragedy and Sunken Treasure

In 1654, Padre Diego Rivadeneira watched the immense Spanish galleon Capitana, "Queen of the South Seas," as she sank off Ecuador carrying treasures worth 10 million pesos. Later he was among 45 survivors when the 900-ton Maravillas sank on the wild shoals of Los Mimbres, Bahamas, burying 600 people as well as 5 million pesos in silver and gold.

Three hundred years later, diver and maritime historian Dave Horner discovered Padre Diego's diary in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville. Twenty-five years of subsequent research led to the discovery and salvage of the Capitana, as well as a diving expedition on the Maravillas shipwreck site. Moreover, Horner has painstakingly forged an authentic historical context for the padre's singular story. The result is an unparalleled account of real-life adventure on the high seas, and a stirring portrait of the riches that drove men across uncharted oceans to a new world, as men are still yet driven in search of treasures long lost at the bottom of the sea.

Our Padre seems unusually unlucky in being shipwrecked twice, and on the way home the fleet is ambushed in sight of Cadiz and he, along with two ships and 4 million pesos (38 cartloads!) are captured in a brilliantly described battle that Hornblower would be proud of.

However, he lives to tell the tale; his memoirs are so detailed that we have a better idea of the actual wealth contained in the treasure fleet than the manifests admit - also the position of the wrecks is so well decribed that Mr.Horner was able to locate the sites and recover valuable artifacts (and of course, silver).

As a bonus, we are treated to a superb description of the daringly successful 1657 British attack on the treasure fleet holed-up in Santa Cruz, in which the whole Spanish fleet was destroyed, with the loss of no ships and only 60 men on the British side. This effectively crippled Spanish hopes of sea-rule and bankrupted Seville.

The final chapter warns us of the perils of dealing with the red-tape and gung-ho journalism that inevitably accompanies any salvage, not to mention the thievery when there is treasure involved.

A very worthwhile read. ****


Shipwreck: A Saga of Sea Tragedy and Sunken Treasure   July 10, 2001
 2 out of 3 found this review helpful

Mr Horner does a good job of describing the attempts of a Spanish monk to get back to his homeland and the ememy attacks that he is forced to endure on his voyage. The descriptions that he gives of his modern day salvage adventures is also very interesting. A good read.


A well researched and historically informative work   October 26, 1999
 14 out of 16 found this review helpful

Set in Virginia, Florida, Ecuador and the Bahamas, there are no clear winners in this story, and Horner aptly entitles one of his chapters "Treasure is Trouble", something befitting the 17th-century Spaniards who met a tragic fate on the waters of Ecuador and the Bahamas, as well as the modern-day treasure hunters whose greed has brought them nothing but "trouble". The exception remains Dave Horner whose goal was clearly the quest for historical truth and the dissemination of valuable historical and archaeological data, something he achieved with eloquence. A captivating book and a lesson to be learned... again