Urca de Lima

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Urca de Lima
National Register of Historic Places
Urca de Lima (Florida)
Paris plan pointer b jms.svg
location north of Fort Pierce , St. Lucie County , Florida
Coordinates 27 ° 30 '19 "  N , 80 ° 17' 57"  W Coordinates: 27 ° 30 '19 "  N , 80 ° 17' 57"  W.
NRHP number 01000529
The NRHP added May 31, 2001

The Urca de Lima was a ship of the Spanish silver fleet from 1715 that got into a hurricane in the summer of 1715 and ran aground on the Atlantic coast of Florida near today's Fort Pierce . Your wreck is now one of the protected archaeological underwater sites in Florida and is part of the so-called Museums in the Sea and the National Register of Historic Places of the United States.

Description and sinking

The original name of the ship was Santisima Trinidad . Their nickname Urca de Lima is derived from the type of ship Urca and the name of its owner and later captain Miguel de Lima y Melo . Another name used for her in historical sources is Nao de Refuerzo , which may indicate that her hull was subsequently strengthened for sailing the Atlantic routes . She was a 305-ton ship and was used to transport goods on the Atlantic route between Spain and the viceroyalty of New Spain in the New World .

In 1712 she was part of a fleet of eight ships under the command of Juan Esteban de Ubilla , which sailed from Spain to Veracruz , from there to receive goods and precious metals from the New World and to transport them back to Spain. The fleet reached Veracruz in December 1712 and stayed there until the spring of 1715. In January 1715, Miguel de Lima was appointed captain of the Santisima Trinidad . As part of the preparations for the upcoming Atlantic crossing, it received new masts and its outer shell was cleaned. On May 4th of the same year, the fleet now consisting of only four ships ( Nuestra Senora de la Regla (Capitana) , Almiranta , San Cristobal de Havana , Santisima Trinidad ) finally left for Havana , where it arrived at the beginning of July after a difficult crossing .

From there, Ubilla's ships, along with six other ships under the command of Antonio de Echeverez and the French ship El Grifon, sailed on towards Spain on July 24th. The cargo of the fleet of eleven ships consisted of trade goods, a large number of gold bars and 14 million pesos in silver coins. However, the Santisima Trinidad itself did not transport any part of the gold and silver freight for the Spanish royal family, but rather commercial goods such as cowhides, chocolate, vanilla , sassafras and inzens , as well as some sacks of private silver coins. A few days later, the fleet was suddenly caught in a hurricane , which drove the entire fleet to the coast of Florida and destroyed it except for one ship, the El Grifon . More than half of the 2,000 crew members, including Ubilla and Echeverez themselves, perished in the storm, the rest were able to save themselves on the beach. The Santisima Trinidad ran aground in an estuary near Fort Pierce, but, unlike the other ships, remained largely undamaged, so that cargo and provisions were not lost and the survivors were able to feed until the end of August ships from Havana arrived for salvage. The Santisima Trinidad was the first wreck that the ships reached from Havana. After the salvage, the wreck was burned to the surface to hide its position from pirates and privateers of other nations. De Lima later described the events in a letter.

The survivors on the beach were organized by Admiral Francisco Salmon. A small group reached St. Augustine in northern Florida after a week with an undamaged dinghy , from where Havana was informed of the sinking of the silver fleet. Admiral Salmon stayed on site even after the arrival of the Spanish ships from Havana and directed the salvage work, which was to last until April of the next year. In early January he was ambushed by pirates Henry Jennings , Charles Vane and John Wills, who forced him to surrender gold and silver worth £ 87,000. The pirates had previously attacked a Spanish mail ship from St. Augustine and learned the location of the Urca de Lima and the Spanish salvage camp from it.

Discovery story of the wreck

The wreck of the Urca de Lima was rediscovered in 1928 by William J. Beach on the coast off Fort Piece, although the estuary in which it ran aground no longer existed at that time due to coastal changes in the past. The Fort Pierce city government issued the first permit to recover valuables from the wreck in 1932, the last such permits were issued in 1983 and 1984. The yield of these rescue operations was low, as the Spaniards had already brought the cargo of the Urca de Lima to safety in 1715. A total of one silver bar, two silver wedges and five iron cannons were found. In 1985 the city had the wreck measured by archaeologists with the aim of establishing an archaeological underwater protection area, which was opened in 1987. It was the first of its kind, which was later to be followed by others, which are now collectively referred to as Florida's Museums in the Sea . On May 31, 2001, the Urca de Lima was added as a site to the United States' National Register of Historic Places .

Cultural reception

The Urca de Lima plays a decisive role in the television series Black Sails , which tells a fictional prelude to Robert Louis Stevenson's famous adventure novel Treasure Island . She stands there on behalf of the entire silver fleet and is hunted by a pirate team under the leadership of Captain Flint . Part of their cargo ultimately becomes the pirate booty buried by Captain Flint on Treasure Island.

literature

  • Lowell W. Newton: Juan Esteban de Ubilla and the Flota of 1715 . The Americas, Vol. 33, No. 2, Oct. 1976, pp. 267-281 ( JSTOR 980786 )
  • Colin Woodard : The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008, ISBN 9780547415758 , pp. 103–112 ( excerpt (Google) )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Urca de Lima - Brochure - Brochure of the Museums in the Sea of the State of Florida (accessed April 25, 2014).
  2. ↑ Urca de Lima - Website of the Museums in the Sea of the State of Florida (accessed April 25, 2014).
  3. ↑ a b c Lowell W. Newton: Juan Esteban de Ubilla and the Flota of 1715 . The Americas, Vol. 33, No. 2, Oct. 1976, pp. 269, 277-280 ( JSTOR 980786 ).
  4. ↑ According to Woodard, more than half of the 2,000 men perished in the storm and more died of injuries, starvation and disease after they had first saved themselves on the beach. However, Lowell only speaks of 225 people who perished in the storm.
  5. ^ Colin Woodard : The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008, ISBN 9780547415758 , pp. 103–112 ( excerpt (Google) )
  6. ↑ Urca de Lima in the National Register Information System . National Park Service , accessed May 13, 2016.