On January 4, 1656, a little after midnight, the fate of the Our Lady of the Maravillas toggle. This colossus of the seas armed with 36 cannons and loaded with riches intended for the Crown of Spain collides with another ship from its own fleet. In thirty minutes, it sank in the waters of the Little Bank of the Bahamas. Of the 650 men on board, 45 survived drowning and sharks. Over the centuries, the wreck became a legend for treasure hunters.
After decades of looting and official excavations, the site was thought to have revealed all it could. This was without counting on Carl Allen, a passionate businessman who, via his company Allen Exploration, resumed the excavations in 2020 and unearthed some priceless treasures. “When we reassembled the oval emerald and gold pendant, my breath caught», he confides with emotion in an article in Popular Mechanics.
Carl Allen not only brought up jewels from the depths, he also discovered that this ship carried a terrible secret. By analyzing the recovered coins and ingots, archaeologists made a stunning discovery. The galleon is said to have been a hub for smuggling.
Officially, the ship was not supposed to carry Mexican goods. However, thousands of coins minted in Mexico have been found. It is a three-century-old crime that is thus revealed: a system of widespread corruption in which Spanish merchants and officers greased the paws of the authorities to hide part of the fortune transported, thus escaping the royal tax.
A precise mapping of the drama
The expedition also found rare items such as a two-meter-long gold chain and pendants from the Order of Santiago, a brotherhood of Christian knights. These objects, which did not appear on any official register, confirm that the Maravillas was carrying a much larger phantom cargo than expected. “The galleon was stuffed with contraband illegally lubricating the markets.ands and Spanish officials“, explains Carl Allen.
To carry out his research, Carl Allen opted for a scientific and technological approach. Instead of picking up everything that glitters indiscriminately, his team used planes to scan huge areas of the seabed. Each object – from the simple nail in the hull to the different barrels loaded on board – has been listed in a georeferenced database. The objective is to understand how the ship broke up and how its contents could have spilled over such a wide area.
This approach makes it possible to transform a simple treasure hunt into an autopsy of a maritime disaster. James Sinclair, marine archaeologist who participated in the project, underlines: “It’s not just forensic archaeology. We are also digging through old excavations to understand what previous rescue teams did.»
The work is still far from finished. Each dive brings its share of surprises and new questions. For the Bahamas, these discoveries are a blessing because all of the pieces will join the Bahamas Maritime Museum to be exhibited to the public.
