San Antonio

History

The San Antonio was a Portuguese-owned merchantman of about 300 tons, sailing from Cartagena for Spain in company with the Spanish silver fleet. Her cargo was the produce of the Spanish Main - hides, tobacco, indigo, brazilwood and sarsaparilla - and her passengers carried gold and silver; the Spanish ambassador later valued what was lost at more than 60,000 crowns. At sunset on 12 September 1621, in the same storm that kept that year's supply ship from making harbour, she struck the reefs about ten miles off Bermuda's western end. Some twenty sailors took the ship's boat and what money they could grab, leaving the captain, the master and everyone else behind. The rest clung to the wreck overnight and the next afternoon reached Somerset on a raft - among them a pregnant gentlewoman who stood waist-deep on it all the way and gave birth to a boy three days later - while a fourteen-year-old boy who had missed the boat drifted for two days on a chest before being picked up on the far side of the island. About seventy people were saved. The governor's own account says that 'never had ship a more sudden death'.

Governor Nathaniel Butler made the deserting sailors give up about £140 for the castaways' common purse, kept the leading survivors at his own table for nine or ten weeks and billeted the rest on the inhabitants at four shillings a week. In return, he said, the Spaniards made him a deed of gift of whatever could be recovered from the wreck. His proclamation declared the wreck's goods the Company's, with the usual reward to finders; in his letters he told the salvage gangs they could keep what they found except coin, plate, bullion, the guns and the best cordage, which were to be accounted for to him. Between September 1621 and October 1622 Sergeant Major William Seymour of Somerset and his men made 23 trips to the wreck, sometimes staying out ten or twelve days at a time. The principal diver, William Coxson, slung ten iron guns, three anchors and four 'murderers' (small swivel guns) out of her; the haul also included another anchor, a new cable, a silver platter, ewer, salt and basin and a bag of 150 pieces of eight, while a gold ingot and a gold chain went to Butler himself. The tobacco, ruined by salt water, was thrown away 'as nothing worth', and Butler wrote asking who in Somerset had taken the ship's pump.

In February 1622 the Spanish ambassador in London, Count Gondomar, complained that the islanders had taken the survivors' boat, kept them from the wreck, stripped them even of their clothes and held five of them captive. The Company replied that the governor had recovered nothing of value but two small guns. Statements taken in London from men home from Bermuda describe a purse of gold wedges taken from a Spanish lady, a Spanish gown fished from the wreck and a bag of 100 dollars, though the purse and other items were returned on Butler's orders, and several witnesses swore that the Spaniards had been well treated. By July 1622 the ambassador was thanking the Company for its 'speedy Justice', and the Privy Council arranged for commissioners to go out and examine the matter. They sailed with Butler's successor, Captain John Bernard, but Butler, whose commission was expiring, left for Virginia and England about 25 October 1622 without waiting to be relieved - eight days before they arrived - taking four anchors and five murderers from the wreck with him. The Company told the Privy Council he had 'secretly departed'.

The wreck was very probably found on 12 August 1959 (other accounts say 1958 or 1960) by Teddy Tucker and his partners Donald and Robert Canton, working from Robert Canton's 52-ft boat Ruby. That September the Royal Gazette reported their 'large Spanish freight ship' in 16 ft of water 'to the west of the reefs' - Tucker then thought she was the Vigo of 1637, but her coins dated the loss to between 1621 and 1644. The finds included a 40-inch gold chain of 486 tiny links, and some 90 ft of her keel survived; the 43 best coins went to the American Numismatic Society. By July 1962, when a Smithsonian team under Mendel Peterson explored the site, she was being called the San Antonio. Tucker recovered what the 17th-century divers had missed: gold chain links, rings and earrings mixing Peruvian and European styles, an emerald ring, navigational dividers, a Wan Li Chinese porcelain jar, and mahogany boxes of indigo. Many of the finds went to the Bermuda Maritime Museum, now the National Museum of Bermuda.

Diving the wreck today

Little survives to see in any case - the ship broke up quickly, was heavily salvaged in 1621-22 and was worked again by Teddy Tucker - so the San Antonio is best seen through her finds, some of which are on display at the National Museum of Bermuda in Dockyard.