The 1622 Tierra Firme Fleet In Dry Tortugas National Park

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Primary source documents suggest that a hurricane wrecked seven to nine Spanish vessels of the Tierra Firme Fleet in the lower Florida Keys on 5 September 1622. Over the past 400 years, only treasure hunters have located three of the doomed fleet. Documents point to another three vessels wrecking in modern Dry Tortugas National Park. The discovery of an assemblage of Spanish artifacts from the 16th to 17th centuries led U.S. National Park Service archaeologists in the 1970s to interpret their find as the site of the treasure galleon, Nuestra Señora del Rosario. This paper will situate the fleet’s disaster, contemporary salvage attempts, and previous archaeological investigations into context to narrow down the current search for the galleon, Nuestra Señora del Rosario, an unidentified patache, and a Portuguese fragata slaver also named Nuestra Señora del Rosario.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2023 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow