San Martín

The final voyage

San Martín, known in period documents as the Almiranta de Honduras, was a Vizcayan-built galleon armed at Seville that carried cargo loaded chiefly at Trujillo. She sailed from Havana bound for Cádiz in September 1618 as part of a convoy that also carried the fleet's Capitana. [2](https://www.shipwrecks.es/shipwrecks/all/atlantic-coast/florida/san-martin/) Two days out, a hurricane struck the convoy; only a few ships, including the Capitana, made it back across the Atlantic, while most were wrecked on the Bahama reefs or along the Florida coast. [2](https://www.shipwrecks.es/shipwrecks/all/atlantic-coast/florida/san-martin/)

The wreck's remains were located by the Real Eight Company in the 1960s while that firm was searching for 1715-fleet material, and researcher Eugene Lions tentatively linked the coin dates and a cannon dated 1594 from the 'Green Cabin' wreck site near Cape Canaveral to the San Martín. [1](https://www.shiplib.org/shipwrecks/green_cabin) That identification remains an attribution rather than a certainty; the Texas-and-Caribbean framing sometimes attached to this ship's loss (with Cartagena, Santa Marta, or Portobelo as its final loading ports) is not supported — her documented cargo was loaded at Trujillo, and she was wrecked off Florida, not the Spanish Main. [2](https://www.shipwrecks.es/shipwrecks/all/atlantic-coast/florida/san-martin/)

What was aboard

No surviving cargo register for this specific ship has been located in the sources reviewed. The items below reflect what has been recovered and published from the site tentatively identified as this wreck, not a verified manifest.

Recovered coinage: Coins recovered from the site with no dates later than 1618, part of the evidence used to date and tentatively identify the wreck.

Ordnance: Bronze cannon recovered from the site, including one example bearing the cast date 1594.

Navigational equipment: An astrolabe recovered from the wreck and later published in the archaeological record.

Personal items: A gold ring and other small artifacts noted among early recoveries from the general wreck area.

How to collect

Correct the geography before anything else: This ship was lost off Florida on the Havana–Cádiz run, not in the Caribbean near Santa Marta or Cartagena. Any listing placing the wreck on the Spanish Main misstates the documented loss location.

Understand the attribution is provisional: The San Martín identification rests on coin dates and a single dated cannon, not documentary confirmation. Treat 'San Martín' labeling on coins as an inference, not a certainty.

Distinguish from other 1618-dated cobs: Philip III cob eights from Potosí and Mexico City circulate from many wrecks of this decade; date alone does not establish San Martín provenance.

Ask for the salvage-era chain of custody: Material genuinely from the Green Cabin site should trace to the 1960s–1980s salvage and Moore's published excavation, not to an undocumented recent find.