Spanish 1733 Fleet

The final voyage

The New Spain fleet under Lieutenant-General Rodrigo de Torres left Havana on Friday 13 July 1733, bound for Spain with the combined treasure of the Mexican and Central American trade. Accounts of the fleet's size vary slightly between sources — commonly 21 or 22 vessels, including armed navíos and merchant naos — but agree that within a day a hurricane forced Torres to order the fleet back toward Havana. It was too late: by 15 July, most of the ships had been driven onto reefs and shoals across roughly eighty miles of the Florida Keys.

Casualty figures are inconsistently reported across popular and institutional sources, ranging from accounts of comparatively low loss of life — because many vessels grounded in shallow water within reach of the Keys — to markers describing hundreds of deaths; this report does not adopt a single figure without a primary tally to cite. What is well documented is the scale of the subsequent Spanish salvage effort: shore camps were established at the wreck sites, and crown salvors recovered the great majority of the registered silver and goods over the following years, a rare instance of a treasure-fleet disaster being substantially made good by the salvors of the day.

What was aboard

No single surviving manifest covers the whole fleet; documentation instead comes from Spanish colonial registers for individual ships (where they survive), from 20th-century salvage and archaeological reports, and from NOAA and Florida state heritage records for specific wreck sites such as San Pedro.

Registered silver and gold: Individual ships carried registered coin from the Mexican mints; the San Pedro alone is documented as carrying 16,000 pesos in Mexican silver.

Chinese porcelain and Asian goods: Some vessels, including San Pedro, carried crates of Chinese porcelain brought across the Pacific via the Manila trade and transshipped through New Spain.

Colonial produce: Hides, dyewoods, and other colonial produce are documented as part of the fleet's general cargo.

The ships and their people: Twenty-one to twenty-two vessels and their combined companies; individual casualty and survivor counts for the fleet are not consistently reported across sources.

How to collect

Match the coin to a specific 1733-fleet ship where possible: Because multiple ships wrecked together, credible attributions cite the individual vessel (e.g., San Pedro, San Felipe) and its documented recovery history, not just '1733 fleet.'

Expect heavy Spanish-era salvage, not an intact cargo: The bulk of registered treasure was recovered by Spain within a few years; surviving material is largely what crown salvors missed or discarded.

Look for state preserve or permit documentation: Sites such as San Pedro are protected; legitimate post-1960s recoveries should carry Florida state permitting and reporting records.

Treat exact casualty and value figures with caution: Published figures for deaths and total treasure recovered vary between sources; a seller citing an unusually precise total should be asked for their primary citation.