Spanish Naval Commissioner Don Alonso Herrera Barragan stood on the deck of the mighty sixty gun galleon El Rubi, the Capitana of the Nuevo España Flota (New Spain Fleet). Glorious was the scene around him as wind swelled the sails of the 21 other ships in Havana Harbor and they began the first leg of a two-month journey back to Spain. He couldn’t remember when he had last been home. Below his boots was more than five million dollars worth of worked gold, gold coins, copper ingots and chest upon chest of silver “pieces of eight” from Mexico City. It was Friday the 13th, 1733.

Off Cuba, the Flota picked up the warm, calm waters of the Gulf Stream and headed north. Seas were one to three feet, a ripple for the massive Capitana El Rubi.

The first leg of the journey was the most dangerous; from Cuba up past Key West and the Florida Keys on one side, with only 50 miles of water separating them from the Bahamas – right through the notorious Bermuda Triangle. 500 miles to the north lay St. Augustine, where the fleet would turn and head out across the Atlantic. If they could make St. Augustine without being attacked by pirates, an enemy fleet, or a hurricane, they had a pretty good chance of reaching home.

But the fleet would never see St. Augustine.

“The 14th we discovered the land of the Keys of Florida,” Barragan later wrote, his words translated 250 years later by researcher and treasure salvor Jack Haskins. “At 9:00 that night the wind began to rise out of the north. It continued to freshen to the point where we all knew a hurricane was imminent. We found ourselves close to the expressed Keys, with the wind and seas so strong we were unable to govern ourselves, and each new gust came upon us with renewed major force.”

On the 15th, the commander of the fleet, Lieutenant-General Rodrigo de Torres, ordered his captains to turn back to Havana. But it was too late.

The skies churned with black clouds, and as night fell, the seas increased to 15 to 20 feet. Mere hours before, one ship could have come to the aid of another – now, they might as well have been separated by a continent. Each vessel was in a fight for her life.

The sailor steering Capitana lashed himself to the tiller just to keep from being knocked to the deck. A passenger on board Nuestra Senora de Las Angustius later wrote a poem, “The ship saw the silver reef…there was only time to sigh, to ask for grace. Clouds and waves in approaching mountains….”

With waves crashing over the gunwales, Barragan clung to a halyard on the deck of Capitana. He looked up to see two sailors descending precariously from the rigging; for a brief moment, his eyes locked with one of the men – sheer terror stared back at him. Seconds before they reached the safety of the deck a massive wave slammed Barragan across the deck and into a bulkhead. When he looked back up to the men, both sailors had vanished. With no record of their names on the ship’s manifest, it was as if they had never existed.

He clambered back up. Through impending darkness and horizontal rain stinging his face, he could barely make out frothing white caps in the distance.

“REEFS!” he exclaimed, but it was lost in the shrieking wind.

Capitana’s master, Don Balthesar de la Torre, ordered an anchor dropped, and Barragan prayed that it would hold fast. Below decks, the flailing lanterns had long gone out. In the inky darkness, the thunderous crash of waves slamming the hull combined with the putrid stench of screaming, seasick passengers and churning, rat infested bilge waters. To many, the fires of Hell would have been a welcome relief.

Across the pitching deck, Barragan made his way to de la Torre, and they watched the bow buck against the anchor line. Down it would go, and for a second, there was hope it would hold; then back up and the bow would shudder as the line came tight. Again, and again, Capitana slammed against her tether.

Then, there was the sickening BANG! The anchor line had parted!

Barragan’s shaking hand wiped the water from his face, and the knot in his stomach tightened as he and de la Torre watched the bow rise and swing starboard, toward the jagged reefs.

“Santa María Madre de Dios!” exclaimed de la Torre helplessly as he dropped to his knees. His massive, 60-gun galleon was going aground.

At reef’s edge, the bottom quickly rose from 16 fathoms to one fathom (six feet) – nowhere near enough water for a fully loaded, 400-ton Spanish galleon. Even through the wind, Barragan could hear the screams of those below deck as a 20-foot wave effortlessly picked the ship up and slammed it onto the coral bottom. On the gun deck below him, cannons broke free of their tethers and rolled freely, smashing everything in their paths. The sailor lashed to the tiller was crushed when Capitana’s rudder hit bottom.

The storm was now at its apex, and one by one, for nearly 80 miles along the Keys, 17 helpless ships of the Nuevo España Flota were relentlessly driven aground.

Capitana grounded just inside the reef, about four miles northeast of Upper Matecumbe Key. Miraculously, only three souls were lost. But many of those sailing on the other vessels were not so lucky. By daybreak, her survivors began to gather on Upper Matecumbe Key, but around them they could see four more vessels, decks awash and breaking up, including the fleet’s Almirante El Infante, grounded about two miles to the north.

Within days, word reached Havana. Survivors were rescued and the Spanish began to salvage the treasures of their galleons. Ironically, they recovered more than what was recorded on the ships’ manifests – a classic example of those not wishing to pay the “King’s Fifth.”

In the mid 20th Century, modern treasure sailors re-discovered these wrecks and through sheer determination and backbreaking hard work, brought to public display what treasures Spain had left behind. Some of these pieces can be seen at Cannon Beach Treasure Company.

Today the remains of Capitana El Rubi and El Infante can be found in about 20 feet of crystal clear water off the Upper Florida Keys, within the boundaries of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Treasure salvage is no longer permitted.