In June 2002 the Maritime and Yachting Museum started an ambitious program to work with students to restore an antique sailing dinghy and wooden motorboat.

We'll be updating our online slide show and progress report for this program regularly.

Urca de Lima : A Treasure Coast treasure
- Buffy Turner

For almost 300 years the haunting remains of Urca de Lima have lain in the shallow waters off Fort Pierce (just an hour north of the Maritime & Yachting Museum of Florida, Inc.), silent markers for a story of silver and gold, death, piracy and mosquitoes swashbuckling enough to rival Treasure Island. Now a state Underwater Archaeological Preserve, Urca de Lima provides a dramatic chapter in Florida's maritime history.

On July 24th, 1715 a fleet of Spanish ships set sail from Havana, Cuba, intending to make its way north along the Florida peninsula before heading east across the Atlantic. Urca de Lima, owned by Miguel de Lima y Melo, was one of five ships in the Nueva Espaņa merchant convoy (or flota) commanded by Captain-General Don Juan Esteban de Ubilla. The capitana Regala, almiranta San Roman, balandrita Maria Galante and patache Nieves sailed with her.

Ubilla's flota was joined by the six Tierra Firme fleet ships returning from South America under General Don Antonio de Echeverez y Zubiza. The twelfth vessel in this unlucky assembly was the French frigate Grifon, commanded by Captain Antoine Dare (Dare was either allowed - or compelled - to sail with the Spanish ships, so as not leave earlier and risk capture by enemy warships that would be very interested to know that the treasure fleet was preparing to depart).

Urca de Lima carried a lucrative cargo of uncured cowhides, chocolate, vanilla, sassafras, and incense, exotic products that would fetch good prices in Europe. Ubilla's Maria Galante carried tobacco and sugar, but many of the other ships in the flota were laden with treasure: silver and gold coins and bars, plus pearls, emeralds and valuable K'ang-Hsi Chinese porcelain transported via Manila and Mexico.

Less than a week into their voyage, on July 30th, the fateful flota was devastated by a fierce hurricane. By late that afternoon the winds had exceeded 30 knots and the waves reached 20 feet. Around 4 o'clock the following morning the hurricane reached its peak and drove the hapless ships onto Florida's jagged reefs and shallow shoals, from Cape Kennedy south to what was to become the Treasure Coast (two ships are believed to have gone down farther off shore). More than 700 people, including Ubilla, lost their lives.

Some claim that the Grifon, having tacked to the northeast, escaped the storm and arrived safely in Brest, France, but this may only be rumor. The only ship known to have survived the storm's ravages - if only for a brief time - was the Urca de Lima. Driven aground on a shallow reef near what is now Fort Pierce, Urca de Lima's stout hull remained intact. Attempting to prevent her from capsizing in the storm-swelled waves, Lima ordered the crew to cut her masts down. Hampered by the violent conditions, they were unable to cut away all of the rigging and the sturdy Urca de Lima eventually joined her sister ships on the ocean floor.

Her topside structure remained above water, however, and survivors were able to salvage most of the ship's provisions. On October 19th, 1715 Lima wrote in a letter to the Viceroy of Mexico that "at the time of the disaster I was able to recover not only enough victuals for the men of my ship, but also to sustain all the people who escaped from the Patache which wrecked two leagues from my ship."

Without these supplies, their situation would have been even more dire, but as it was things were substantially bleak. "On these deserted beaches, which were very barren and dry," wrote Lima of his experience, "God permitted us to find sweet water, enough to drink, by making wells the height of a man, which were called 'casimbas.' However, all of the survivors were not able to survive the temperament of those shores, the heat of the sun was insufferable, and the number of mosquitoes were probably greater than the plague."

On August 6th, Nicolas de India (Ubilla's pilot) and eighteen men were sent in a launch to take word of the wrecks to Cuba and the governor, the Marques de Casatorres. Ships loaded with supplies, salvage equipment, officials and soldiers were dispatched from Havana to succor the survivors and salvage the treasure, and were eventually joined by further assistance from St. Augustine. Sloops dragged the sea floor, recovering chests of coins and jewelry. This low-tech salvage was so successful that the governor was soon asked for 25 soldiers and ammunition to guard the king's treasure.

Pirates, privateers and freebooters - including Henry Jennings aboard Barsheba and John Wills aboard Eagle (both commissioned by Governor Hamilton of Jamaica) - were drawn to the wrecks. Jennings and Wills, in fact, attacked the Spanish salvage camp at Palmar de Ais (named for the region's feared Ais Indians, near today's Sebastian) in January 1716. Urca de Lima - first grounded, then sunk, met an ignominious end when she was ordered burned to the waterline to conceal her position from the marauding English.

Early salvage efforts continued into 1718. Nearly 50 years later, the British sent marine surveyor Bernard Romans to map Florida's coastline, where he claims to have discovered shipwreck remains - from the 1715 flota - inshore of sandbars at the inlet near Palmar de Ais. His men, it is said, found Spanish coins on the beaches, and subsisted on turtle eggs and bear meat while they mapped the little-known shore.

Urca de Lima's story captured a new generation of hearts and minds when adventurer William J. Beach came to Fort Pierce in 1928 and found her ballast pile using hard-hat diving gear and a metal detector. In the 1960's, salvor Kip Wagner located El Capitana and brought historic silver pieces, gold doubloons, Chinese porcelain and everyday objects from 1715 to the surface and the modern world. Eventually, present-day treasure hunters did much to complete the task that salvors first undertook hundreds of years earlier.

In her most recent incarnation, Urca de Lima serves as a window to the past for historians, archaeologists and the public. Her remaining hull has been carefully mapped and recorded, and she became Florida's first Underwater Archaeological Preserve in 1987, paving the way for a popular statewide program. The wreck lies on the first offshore reef in 15 feet of water, some 200 yards from the beach adjacent to Pepper Park north of the Fort Pierce Inlet. Urca de Lima is also part of the Florida Department of State's Cuban Heritage Trail which highlights significant places, people, and events that illuminate the history shared by Florida and Cuba. And last year the wreck was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Exhibits, including artifacts from the 1715 treasure fleet, can be seen at the St. Lucie County Historical Museum (414 Seaway Drive, Ft. Pierce, FL, 772/462-1795, Tues-Sat 10-4, Sun noon-4); the McLarty Treasure Museum (Sebastian Inlet State Recreation Area, 9700 South A1A, Melbourne Beach, FL, 772/589-2147, 10-4:30 daily); and the Museum of Florida History (500 South Bronough Street, Tallahassee, FL, 850/245-6400, M-F 9-4:30, Sat 10-4:30 and Sun noon-4:30).

For more information about Urca de Lima, please visit http://dhr.dos.state.fl.us/bar/uap/uwurca.html.

Special thanks to Drs. Roger Smith and Della Scott of the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research for their invaluable assistance.