Bell of Columbus, the treasure hunter: “I found that shipwreck in the Archive of the Indies”

I have known Claudio Bonifacio for many years. He is from Trieste, but lives in Seville. It is at the center of a mountain of documents concerning the Via delle Indie, that is to say the route between Spain and its maritime colonies, which later became America (Amerigo Vespucci, who was in the service of Columbus). He has always searched the files and bound books of the Archive of the Indies of Seville, first only paper and now partly digital. Bonifacio, who wrote a book on the subject, “Galleons and submerged treasures” published by Mursia, is also at the center of that slightly dark and dark world that moves around in search of wrecks and submerged treasures. A world made up of researchers, public officials, but also adventurers. He owns film characters, but also listed companies and unscrupulous people as well.

The case of the bell of the Santa Maria claimed by Roberto Mazzara involved him personally. If I had to immerse myself in the Archive of the Indies, I would in fact turn to Bonifacio, who knows where to look. Because it is true that there are catalogs and inventories, that there is a site where you can find the funds that contain thousands of documents, the Portal de Archivos Espanoles (Pares) of the Ministry of Culture, but it is also true that if you do not leave on the right foot you get lost and it could take months to find what you are looking for.

The sinking of the San Salvador

Very brief summary. Mazzara tells (see the two previous articles on lastampa.it/Mare) that he found the bell in the area where the San Salvador, the galleon that transported it, from San Juan of Puerto Rico to Spain, perhaps on a mandate from Luigi, would be shipwrecked. Colon, the grandson of Columbus. The find came to the surface during one of his dives in front of a beach in Figueira da Foz, a small town in Portugal that was once called Buarcos. First question. Why in Portugal? “When returning from America, Spanish ships used to return to their homeland via the Azores. The ships took as a reference the relief on the island of Pico, then proceeded to target cabo San Vincente and then the Sierra de Monchique to then reach Sanlùcar and Seville ”, Bonifacio explains to me.

The Trieste researcher starts from a powerful work, “Seville et l’Atlantique 1504-1650” by Pierre and Huguette Chaunu, which reports in various volumes the cargo registers of the ships that sailed between Spain and the Indies, then crosses the data with another bibliographic source, namely the volumes of “Armada Espanola” and “Nuafragios de la Armada Espanola” by Cesareo Fernandez Duro, which reports the list of shipwrecks and then expands the search with geographical references and communications between Indies and Spain and vice versa by the governors and officers of the Seville Bargaining House. In this way he gets to narrow the lens on three ships that had to carry 288 silver rods to be delivered to the royal officers of the House of Bargaining: they were the ships San Salvador (nothing to do with that of the bell), Regina Coeli and Dona Juana . The fleet sets sail from Havana, encounters a storm at the exit of the Bahama Canal, repairs to San Juan of Puerto Rico. “On April 11, 1555, the House of Bargaining sends Luis de Carvajal with three other ships to recover that silver and bring it back to Spain,” Bonifacio continues.

These new ships are called Santa Catalina, which is the flagship and therefore the remaining both San Salvador. On 18 October 1555 the units set sail for Spain. The first will arrive in Lisbon, the other two will be shipwrecked. One in Carrapateira, in the Algarve and the other in Buarcos in Portugal. “The Bargaining House sent officers to retrieve the cargo, but they certainly weren’t diving at the time. Let’s talk about what could arrive on the beach, it being understood that the local population used to take possession of what came ashore “. There are letters, reports, deeds. “The state was unable to provide money for research, there was a tender to entrust it to private individuals. There were also disputes advanced by the owners of the ships and the part of the private cargo ”.

The submerged world article

In 1990 Bonifacio wrote an article for the magazine Mondo Sommerso in which he reported on the two shipwrecks of Carrapateira and Buarcos (today Figueras da Foz). Subsequently, in 1991, a Portuguese, Vitor Cruz, found the wreck of Carrapateira which was then replaced by the National Center for Nautical and Underwater Archeology, which carried out an excavation activity. Authorities prevented further diving on the site. Where Mazzara also arrived, to no avail. Mazzara, I remember, had read Bonifacio’s article on “Underwater World” and had made up his mind to find the two wrecks of the San Salvador ships. He tried Carrapateira’s, then concentrated on Buarcos’s.

The meeting between Bonifacio and Mazzara

The researcher from Trieste tells it in his book, “Galleons and submerged treasures”. He writes that he met a mysterious Italian for the first time in 1986, in Seville, who after talking about shipwrecks and galleons told him that he was sent by the Navy to take an interest “in a certain business“. In 1998 Roberto Mazzara reappeared with Bonifacio (“but the first time he didn’t show up with this name”). “Actually, before him in 1998 the engineer Albano Trombetta came forward, who involved me in a project in Cuba and who also proposed me to participate in a reportage for Rai by Puccio Corona on an Italian who had found the wreck of the San Salvador in Buarcos and a bell that he said was from the Santa Maria di Colombo ”, recalls Bonifacio.

Obviously that Italian was Mazzara. The party goes to Buarcos, Bonifacio explains to Mazzara, who claimed the precious origin of the bell, that until then about the shipwrecks of the two San Salvador only the names of the ships and the commanders were known and proven. Mazzara also showed him a document that was perhaps part of a Register Book in which the cargo of the San Salvador of Buarcos was mentioned and where “the signo (bell) of Navidad” was mentioned. Mazzara claimed that the bell belonged to the Santa Maria, Columbus’s caravel, at the time one of the few ships to have a naval bell on board, because it was built in Galicia where they were used to ship them unlike ships built elsewhere; ship, the Santa Maria, which was shipwrecked in Hispanola; his bell ended up kept in the fort-village of Navidad, founded by Columbus also in Hispanola.

From here on, the story goes on two tracks. On the one hand, Mazzara looking for an auction house to sell the bell after having offered it to the Portuguese government and the Spanish crown (“They ignore me”, says the discoverer of the artifact), on the other Bonifacio, who refines the search, behind a fee, agreed with Mazzara himself on a percentage of the sale price of the bell (there is a 2002 contract). What does the researcher from Trieste find? “In the Archive of the Indies I found traces in the accounting records of an exit from the House of Bargaining for 51 pesos, of which 32 pesos for the bell of the Santa Maria and for the ornament of said bell (it is not clear whether for the find itself or if the expense refers to packaging and custody). There was also another document that referred to the gold and silver recovered in Buarcos after the San Salvador shipwreck and delivered to the legitimate private owners (on board there was a royal cargo and one of private individuals), including Juan Ortiz de Uribe, who apparently was a delegate of Luigi Colombo, the nephew of the Navigator ”.

The last step

Luigi Colombo was a trafficker. He had commercial interests in Hispanola and other territories of the Indies. He sold the family documents and objects belonging to his famous grandfather. Mazzara refers to a document “written by Luigi Colombo, who orders his trusted man in San Juan of Puerto Rico, precisely in the period in which the treasure and future cargo of the San Salvador was stored in the fort, to recover objects that belonged to the grandfather “and says:” Coincidence with that precious packaging? “.

Bonifacio admits that 32 pesos for any bell in 1555 was a high sum. “A sailor earned 8 pesos a month”. Furthermore, he points out, as on the replicas of Columbus’s three caravels found in Palos (Huelva) only the Santa Maria has the bell. “I went to ask at the shipyard that built these replicas and they told me they knew it was the only one with a bell”.

I add, on the sidelines, that relations between Bonifacio and Mazzara have deteriorated over time and that their roads, after Mazzara’s attempt to sell the bell at auction in Madrid, failed due to the arrival of the police. (the allegations of theft of the artifact then dropped), they separated. I remember that on 7 December, now in a few days, Mazzara put up for auction the bell that he claims as that of Santa Maria di Colombo in Miami.

Third episode. the story continues.