two ships of Piet Heyn

[cornelis 816]

When Piet Heyn took the whole Spanish treasure fleet at Matanzas Bay in Cuba , he loaded some of the Spanish prize ships with a great portion of treasure. His own ships could not carry all the loot . Two of these ships were lost in a bad storm near Lucayan Beach . They were the Santiago /Santa Anna and the Santa Gertrudes . No salvage has taken place on these ships while plenty of coins have washed up in that area . Is this something to your liking ? Cornelius

[signumops]

The Lucayan Beach treasure was originally salvaged by Jack Slack, Haynie, Johnson and a bunch of other guys. I think Brandon got some too, years later. There is some question that the Lucayan Beach wreck is one of Heyn's booty boats.

[cornelis 816]

Since Piet Heyn put a Dutch prize-crew on board of these two ships there should have been some indication in the items salvaged that these two wrecks were sailed by Dutchmen . Nothing of the kind has been found . So we may assume that the salvage done so far is from different ships . I think the two wrecks are still there . Cornelius

[signumops]

You're not alone. I've heard that elsewhere. Some guys who worked the Lucayan Beach wreck don't think it was one of Heyn's prizes either.

[cornelis 816]

Lets hope someone will find these ships and clarify the history of them . They must be there ! There should be treasure on board . It will take a lot of searching and taking all kind of things ( like currents ) into consideration . But .......they should be there ! Cornelius

[Salvor6]

One problem: there is no treasure hunting allowed around Lucayan Beach.

[Bill]

The Lucayan Beach wreck is a bit of an enigma. It lies in only 12 feet of water between two coral heads. We found about 20,000 silver coins in a relatively small area. Sometimes bringing up 125+ pound clumps. There were no timbers, no rigging, no pottery, very little ballast. We did raise two small iron cannons that had about 1,000 coins stuck to the bottoms. They were directly on top of the main silver deposit. There was one anchor several yards away.
Mendel Petersen, who at that time was Curator of Arms for the Smithsonian thought that the wreck was from Piet Heyn's fleet because of the date on the coins. (no later than 1628) He also thought that we would recover a lot of gold, and mentioned that the wreck should be worth about 30 million dollars at that time. (1965)
The lease on the wreck was owned by a company named SOSCO, and the main partners put up a finders reward of $5,000 to the first diver who recovered a gold coin. No one collected.
My friend Jack Haskins at first thought that the wreck was the Remedios (sp?), and that we got all of the coins that was on her. However, the Remedios sank in 1624. Later Jack told me that we only got about half the coins that was aboard. I don't know where he got that information from.
There had been a lot of nighttime piracy on the site from divers coming over from Florida, but I am quite sure that they did not get anything close to what we recovered.
One of my friends is Joe Hines from Tampa who had a large lease area in the north part of the bank. He thinks that the Gertrude is a short distance north of Memory Rock. When Jim King was searching for the lost section of the Maravillas, he got wind of a wreck near West End that could have coins dated around the same time as our recovery. Also Cal Johnson found a hand drawn map from a private collection in Cartagena that shows a wreck off West End that sank in that time period.
Because of the way that we used the airlifts back then, I know for a fact that there are many more coins left on that site.

[cornelis 816]

Well Bill this is the real stuff . This is the kind I am very interested in and I think quite a few other guys .This is the stuff we should have more of on this Treasure Net . Cornelius

[ivan salis]

as in "our lady of the remendies"-- in english * -- the spanish commonly dual named or even triple named their vessels -- the first was the "relgious name" --which since the owner of a fleet had a "patron saint / or used "our lady of ............" (refering of course to mary) it was quite common to have some vessels within a fleet with the same basic relgious name -- then there was the "offical" or govt name s that often had the vessels type or class in it --like "the NAO San Migual -- often to make matters even more confusing * "nick names" were often used as well --as a sort of 2nd or 3rd name --the "french prize , or the dutch prize (aka La Holandesa / Olandesa --the dutch / dutch )

quite crazy isn't it?

i too believe that hyen lost two vessels maybe more * --there are rumors that say some of the spanish vessels that came out of havana after hyen when word got out that he took the treasure fleet caught up with part of hyen's fleet off of the cape canaveral and that in the ensueing battle that the spanish lost *several vessels and maybe one of hyens treasure vessels was lost as well -- being damaged and unable to keep up she might have been left to her fate *- the ships were all loaded to the gunwales with treasure so no more could be loaded aboard * the dutch if desperate would have lightened ship to survive --riches are no good to you if yer dead. --and the dutch would not have stopped to bury em -- spanish might catch em or dig it up --so toss it into the sea instead of letting the spanish reclaim the goods.

it is well known that the dutch raiders hung out near the cape canaveral area , because of the fresh water sources there and the fact the treasure fleets had to go by there.

[cornelis 816]

Thanks Ivan for your contribution . There are too few of guys like you . A true researcher . We need your posts on this treasurenet . To many posts are not relevant to be of any value of this net . Just my idea though . Cornelius