On my twenty-first birthday, now only a few weeks past, I sailed from New York in one of the steamers plying to the Windward Islands, bound for Martinique and thence by country sloop to Key Seven, for the purpose of finding a Spanish galleon that sank in the open sea near that island, July 9, 1665, after a bloody battle with two vessels commanded by the buccaneer Welshman, Captain Henry Morgan. This galleon contained pieces of eight, gold and silver in bars and plate, and jewels, to the value of over three hundred thousand dollars. It had lain thus at the bottom of the sea, as I believed, for more than two hundred years. To find this sunken wreck and secure the treasure was the object of my expedition. How I succeeded in such a wild undertaking will appear hereafter.
Several years before, while I was at college, a desultory course of reading had awakened in me a deep interest in the early printed accounts of the lawless buccaneers and maroons who infested the waters and coasts of the Caribbean Sea, besieged and sacked the Spanish forts and cities, crossed the isthmus of Darien, and followed down the coast of South America, capturing the vessels and laying waste the towns of the Spaniards. Bartholomew Portuges, Brasiliano, John Davis, Francis Lolonois, and Henry Morgan, the brother of my ancestor, were noted leaders of these buccaneering crews and armies. Perhaps the last-named adventurer, who led the desperate expedition across the isthmus and captured the fortified city of Panama, was the most noted of all, as he was also not the least cruel, blood-thirsty, and avaricious. Fragmentary accounts by various authors, some of whom were actors in the scenes described, have been published in Dutch, French, Spanish, and English. So far as I could do so I had sought and studied these accounts. A translation into English, made more than a hundred years ago, of the most considerable Dutch and French accounts had enabled me to absorb them, and the numerous original reports of Spanish officials made to their government, and which are still preserved in the archives at Madrid, were rendered accessible to me by a fortunate circumstance.
Many years ago most of the documents bearing upon the history of America, from the time of Columbus down to the present century, had been collected and transcribed through the efforts of an American author whose charming histories have delighted all English readers. This mass of material had since its transcription been made use of by many others, and being in the charge of the college librarian, I obtained access to it. My enthusiasm may be imagined, when I say that in order to consult these transcriptions I actually learned to read Spanish. It was in one of these papers that I found the report of Don Josef Isabel del Velo y Campo, admiral of the Spanish fleet and at the time in command of the Spanish galleon La Magdalen. The admiral gave a full account of the loss of this galleon, of the desperate battle, of the tremendous bravery of the Spaniards under his command, and of his own escape with two others by swimming to the island of Trebucino near by. The vessel sank about a mile from the northern extremity of the island, bearing a little east of north from the point of rocks. The report was accompanied by an account of the cargo on board, as nearly correct as his memory and knowledge could serve him to give, and by a like statement of the money and treasure lost, concluding with a pious congratulation that if lost to Spain it at least had not fallen into the hands of Morgan and his murderous _hereticos_.