The Truth Behind the Fiction: Excerpts of The Pirates Caesar pt. 1.

(Author’s note: The last two blogs are fictional excerpts about the history of the 1622 Spanish Tierre Firme treasure fleet, and specifically, a pirate named Horacio Caesar, and his ship the Nuestra Senora de Magdalene. I hope that you had fun reading them. Now it’s time to break down the truth, as well as the fiction.)

A brief summary, (If you read the last two blogs, you can skip.)

Our narrator, William T. Howard, writes of discovering a letter addressed to Gaspar de Vargas in 1623, requesting his assistance in the salvage of a ship, the Magdalene from the Tortugas, (now Dry Tortugas National Park.) The salvage promises to be profitable, but carries the risk of the men who commit it being branded Pyrates. It is signed by a H. Caesar.

Researching the letter leads James Howard, and his team, to the conclusion that a there was a plot to smuggle treasure within the 1622 treasure fleet. A ship named the Magdalene, captained by a Horacio Ceasar, was stricken from the records soon after it was constructed in Havana, Cuba. Even so, several records from later in the year make note that treasure was loaded aboard the Magdelene, and that she was assigned to the Tierre Firme’s rearguard.

Records of negotiations in Venice, Italy, suggest that the plan was to smuggle her hold full of treasure past Spain, and sell it in Italy instead, avoiding taxes and making the conspirators rich. These plans were dashed against the rocks, when the Magdelene was sunken like many of the other ship in that treasure fleet. James T. Howard is left to believe that 400 years later, her wreckage, and her treasure, might still be buried, sunken within the boundary of Dry Tortugas National Park.

End summary

The question: Is any of this real?

This is the easiest of this 3 part series. The answer is a quick and obvious: No.

I made up Horacio Caesar, and the Magdalene. for Treasure off the Coast. The first Junior Rangers Investigative Club Novel. Horacio Caesar, is a name I chose for links to future Caesars we will see in other books, (and the rest of this series of excerpts,) and the only place in Spain named Magdalene does not have a Basilica, church, or saint, (which ships like the Nuestra Senora de Atocha were often named after.)

So where did the inspiration come from?

The actual history:

In September of 1622, the Tierre Firme Fleet left Havana, Cuba for Spain, Holds laden with treasure headed for Spain. However they were months late, and it was Hurricane season. Days after they left, a hurricane hit, scattering the fleet, and blowing several of the ships into the rocks. At least 6 ships, including the Nuestra Senora de Rosario, the Nuestra Senora de la Conception, and the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, were sunken. (There is enough discrepancy in the records to add a fictional ship or two.)

Gaspar de Vargas did lead the salvage and rescue operations for some of these ships. Some sailors were rescued from Loggerhead key in the Dry Tortugas. Salvage operations took years, and came at a high cost of life, mostly to enslaved workers forced to enter diving bells, descend to the bottom of the sea, and swim out into the ocean to scavenge as much treasure as they could with each breath of air. This recovered a fraction of the vast treasure claimed by the storm, but ships like the Atocha were considered complete losses. (Gaspar would have been the person with the tools, resources, and expertise to salvage treasure, if you knew the location of a secret treasure wreck.)

Archeologists working for the National Park Service surveyed two wrecks near Loggerhead Key in the Dry Tortugas which might have belonged to the 1622 treasure fleet. Both seem to have come from the correct time, and the correct place. (The Nuestra Senora de Rosario was one of the wrecks Gaspar de Vargas salvaged from Loggerhead.) They found a swivel cannon, some coins, and other artifacts associated with the wreck. Despite the fact that the Tortugas have been known to amateur treasure hunters for centuries, there were still notable things to find. (So it’s possible that there could be a hidden wreck out there. But don’t go looking for it, laws have changed, and it’s best that we leave any wrecks to the professionalsy.)

The 1622 Treasure Fleet left some open ended questions, and room for a story like this. Why did they leave so late? (apparently because it took longer to tally and load treasure than expected. Why did so many ships sink? (there are notes that the ships, constructed in the new world, were of poor quality, so it’s easy enough to imagine 1 or 2 struck from the fleet for being too un-seaworthy.) Would there have been reason to smuggle treasure? (Yes. Actually, some of the treasure found in the various wrecks is estimated to be caches of treasure sailors and captains were hiding aboard their ships, hoping to avoid the 20% tax by the Spanish Crown.) Is there enough treasure out there to make the sabotage and deception of Treasure off the Coast worth it?

Well, that depends on what you mean by worth it. I would argue, like Dr. Carmen Benitez, that the value of these shipwrecks is as much in the legacy, and the history they can share with us as it is with any material value taken off of them. In addition, I would warn would-be treasure hunters that the laws have changed, and there are state, national, and international laws which protect these wrecks and must be respected. But estimates range over the value of wrecks like the Atocha, where the value of salvage is estimated to be more than $400 million dollars. Other ships, still out there might be worth more. (It should be noted, however, that salvaging that much treasure from these wrecks takes years if not decades, and will inevitably come to light.)

The same goes for back in 1622. There was a lot of treasure being shipped through the new world from Asia, and being plundered out of mines in Central and South America. The new world was a wild enough place for Europeans. So it may have been possible to organize a large treasure smuggling operation, and a hold full of treasure may well have been worth the effort. (But I imagine that the risks would have been great too, as the brand of Pyrate wasn’t exactly easy to live with.)

Basically, there is enough room within the real story of the 1622 Treasure Fleet that a plan as hinted of in the Excerpts of The Pirates Caesar pt 1 is possible. But all of the events surrounding it in this blog, and in the book Treasure off the Coast are entirely fictional.

Horacio Caesar (at least character in these two stories) is entirely fictional.