north, the crews of the two ships struggled and sweated 

 and strained to jettison the seventy-odd cannon, each one 

 of which weighed from one to two and a half tons. An- 

 other portion of the crew worked feverishly from the 

 smaller boats, setting anchors to seaward, their lines at- 

 tached to the windlasses of the stranded ship, to assist 

 in kedging her off as her load was lightened. 



By morning more than seventy cannon lay on the bot- 

 tom of the sea in two heaps, one to port and the other to 

 starboard of the ship; lay there in piles like matchsticks, 

 vaguely discernible from the deck in the murky waters be- 

 low. It seemed a heavy sacrifice, but if the ship could be 

 saved it was well worth it. 



It was nearly sunset when at last the galleon floated 

 free once more. Although leaking badly, she was able to 

 get under way toward Havana, leaving behind on the 

 ocean floor to mark the place of her near destruction 

 only two useless masses of cannon barrels and a scattering 

 of ammunition. 



Could these be the same two piles of armament which 

 Bill Thompson had come upon in recent years on the 

 sandy bottom of Delta shoal? Was this why, after many 

 forays upon the spot to find other evidences of the wreck- 

 age of a ship, we had never come upon a single artifact 

 other than cannon barrels and ammunition? Although it 

 seemed quite likely, we realized that, without other ob- 

 jects to identify the ship, we would never know. 



Now, more than two hundred years later, Ed and I 

 hoped to find the locations of some of the wrecked silver 

 fleet. Aboard Sea Diver, highly prized and closely 

 guarded, were two modern charts of the Florida keys, the 

 first from Fowey rocks to Alligator reef, the second from 

 Alhgator reef to Sombrero key. On these charts we had 

 marked the approximate locations of fifteen of the plate 



The Florida Keys 85 



