Shipwrecks with good stories

[ARC]

Red desert, thanks for the link. The 1715 Fleet disaster seems to be the best documented of all shipwreck disasters.
We have to ask ourselves: Why is that?

Is is because many scientific archaeological excavations were made on the remains of the 1715 fleet?
Is it because many scientific articles were published about the 1715 fleet?

Or is it because PRIVATE ENTERPRISE has invested vast quantities of time and money in it?

The above mentioned are definitely factors in the amount of information that is available on the 1715...
But the best accounting and attribution of documentation of these wrecks initially come from...
"The horses mouths" themselves... The people involved at the time of this disaster.

There were survivors to tell the story.
Which mind you... this particular "shipwreck story" you may or may not know... does not "end" with the sinking / wrecking of these vessels.
The story(s) of the survivors "plight" after the wrecks and their struggle to survive and reach Augustine...
would add to the depth of a film IF done right.

This "story" is LONG overdue to be done.

Even I too have a "script idea" and a "nominal" name for a film on this stellar story.

 

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[Red_desert]

Back when Mel Fisher first began hunting galleons (especially the Attocha), he had a lot of help from archaeologist and did a lot of research himself. I'm thinking the Mel Fisher Museum 1715 story page included some other important details.....such as the Queen's jewels, a reason for much of the delays that got them caught in the hurricane. The description of what happened in their version of story (beginning part) my opinion was excellent.

 

[Red_desert]

Jamaica, April 26, 1715

MOST SECRET

FROM: Lord Archibald Hamilton -- Governor of Jamaica

TO: Their Worships, The Lords of Admiralty

My Lords,
"……….By late advices from Havana I
am told the Galleons from Vera Cruz
were daily expected there in order
to join the Spanish Ships of War, one
of which was the Hampton Court, who
are said to have great treasure on
board for Old Spain……………"

"He decided to marry the Duchess of Palma, and she agreed to go through with the ceremony but declined to consummate the marriage until she was decked with the jewels of her choosing. Urgent word had been sent to the new World, and these last minute deliveries held up the golden armada yet again. When they arrived they proved to be as sumptuous a wedding gift as any queen could desire, even if they were also the death warrant of 10 ships and more than 700 of the men who sailed them."

"By noon, on July 29, the fleet was almost becalmed. The sea was running a heavy and strangely silent swell but there was no wind. The clouds were the merest wisps of cirrus way down on the starboard beam, and even the sea birds, which usually swarmed around the ships a mere twenty miles from shore, had vanished. The swell grew stronger, cargo began to roll about, and de Chaves sent men below to secure it. The night passed slowly, the rolling of the ships creating distrust and apprehension among all hands.

The next morning - it was Wednesday and they had been a week at sea -a cheerless one. The sun never seemed to rise at all, "but stay throughout that day as though behind a muslin cloud". By noon the ships of the armada were called to close station; visibility had become so bad that Ubilla signaled that each ship’s poop lantern was to be lit to guide each other. In the afternoon it grew quite dark, the wind came again, first from the southeast, then moving round slowly until at nightfall it was gusting out of the east-north-east at up to 70 knots. The waves rose savagely, the water crashing down on decks, carrying away deck cargo, spars, and cordage. "It was so violent," the chaplain recalled, "that the water flew in the air like arrows, doing injury to those it hit, and seamen who had ventured much said they had never seen the like before."

By nightfall, the wind, not the captains, was in full command – it was gusting now to over 100 knots. Ubilla lost his mizzenmast, and the fleet was wildly scattered, and the noise was deafening. But above the screaming winds was another more awesome and frightening sound, the breakers on the reefs which line the Florida coast. On all the Spanish ships men prayed as they wrestled to try to cut lifeboats free from the debris lettering the decks. All were now resigned to shipwreck, and the priests piping "Hail Mary’s" made little or no impression on either their flocks or the elements."

1715 Fleet History - Mel Fisher's Treasures

 

[grossmusic]

The story(s) of the survivors "plight" after the wrecks and their struggle to survive and reach Augustine...
would add to the depth of a film IF done right.

Still working on that! )

 

[njcommercialdiver]

me and my friends located, excavated and identified a wreck off New Jersey called the Aurora

 

[MPH200]

I have heard a tale, a tale of a fateful trip. She was the SS Minnow I believe. I hear there were survivors. Check it out
may make for good TV.

 

[Mackaydon]

MPH 200,
I heard of a similar story about the fisherman three named Wynken, Blynken, and Nod who one night sailed off in a wooden shoe —Sailed on a river of crystal light,Into a sea of dew. But I fell asleep before hearing the rest of the story.
Don.....