The Wreck of the Rosario

On September 2, 1705, Antonio de Landeche brought the Rosario into Pensacola Bay. Juan López, the sailing master of Pensacola's felucca (a lateen rigged vessel with an auxiliary bank of oars on both sides), ferried Agustín Antonio, the Senior Master of Ships Carpentry for the Windward Fleet who had been supervising efforts to secure pine poles for ship masts in the nearby forests, to the Rosario. Agustín Antonio directed Admiral Landeche to position his ship at the location he had designated for loading the pine poles. The admiral prepared his ship to receive the poles (López, 1705; Agustín, 1705). He first threw out five anchors to stabilize the ship: "two anchors to the northeast and a kedge anchor (anclotte) to the northwest and an anchor by the southeast and another by the southwest." He then, "placed two great poles for the gangplank (planchas) to make the lightering in order to receive the poles [which] were nevertheless still to be found hewed out (octavados) in the woods" (Landeche, 1705b).

The admiral sent the Rosario's small launch west to the French settlement on Dauphin Island to secure corn and, thereby, stretch the dwindling food supplies at the presidio. Landeche ordered some soldiers from the presidio, who had been constructing a warehouse on Santa Rosa Island, to offload equipment from the Rosario. Perhaps Landeche was aware of an approaching storm because he took measures to secure supplies in the cabin of the ship while he prepared to take on the pine poles (Landeche, 1705b, 1706b). Before he could load the poles, however, that storm arrived.

For two days, the storm pounded the Rosario. On September 4, "a hurricane entered from the northeast, so furious that it broke up the two poles that I had for the gangway" (Landeche, 1705b). As winds and waves pounded the Rosario, "the anchors began to grab, causing the head of the ship to turn, making for the two anchors which were not sufficient for the force being received. They were maintained all day by the force of the men's arms until at last, the ship was overcome by the rigors of the hurricane and the great seas that it spawned" (Landeche, 1705b). Crewmen had cut down the ship's mainmast and the foremast in an attempt to lighten and stabilize the ship, but that was to no avail (Joseph, 1705; Landeche, 1705b; López, 1705; Pérez Gómez, 1705; Rodríguez, 1705).

On the night of September 5, the last of the Rosario's anchors were forced from their moorings and the ship surged toward the western end of Santa Rosa Island. Grounding off submerged Punta de Sigüenza, the Rosario began to break apart, its rotting timbers torn apart by the pounding of the surf: "the ship was split with such force that in an instant, we found the hold full of water and the frigate parted into various pieces" (Landeche, 1705b).

The presidio's small felucca remained afloat longer than the larger Rosario. Juan López, the sailing master also sought the protection of the barrier island, securing his small vessel with two kedge anchors (grapnels) off its protected northern shore. The smaller vessel survived the Rosario, but by only one day, wrecking on September 6. The felucca lost its mainmast, 15 oars (each 22 palmos in length), new sails, a breech-loading boarding piece with six chambers, its flag and everything else aboard (López, 1705). Surprisingly, the hull of the felucca remained intact. Admiral Landeche employed journeyman carpenters, caulkers and the sailing master, López, who sewed sails from those salvaged from the Rosario, to refurbish the felucca for a voyage to Havana: "since the storm had beaten it to pieces such that it was necessary to rebuild it, it appeared appropriate to me to run its deck [by] leaving a walkway (crujia) in the middle as on the galleys so that it could be rowed with ease" (Landeche, 1706b; Misc., 1706).

Crewman salvaged more than just the sails from the Rosario, however. Its launch, which had been in the Mobile area when the storm hit, was saved, as were a number of smaller items aboard. The crew salvaged what they could, according to Admiral Landeche: "rigging, sails, cables, hawsers, balls, cartridges, molds (bazios), gun carriages and barrels (piperia)" (Landeche, 1706b). They brought up the ship's consecrated bell, which Landeche gave to Juan Antonio de Hessain, the paymaster of Santa María de Galve, for use at the presidio. Initially, Landeche intended, "to break up the greater part of the hull to get out the nails and spikes and bolts" (Landeche, 1706b). He soon found, however, that the area in which the ship had run aground was "very unstable and shifting and the frigate was so greatly rotten that half of it broke off and remained in the depths in such a fashion that it was buried in sand up to the beams" (Landeche, 1706b). According to Angel Pérez, the only thing that the crewmen saved from the hold was "a little hardtack, salt pork and dried vegetables" (Pérez Gómez, 1705). Sebastián Hernández was more specific, remarking, "they had pulled out about fifty petates (canvas covered wicker chests) of hardtack and some meat and dried vegetables and they had continued the labor in saving the referred to military materiel and that they had saved the greater part of it" (Hernández, 1705). The gunpowder was lost, as were eight cannon, which were left in the hull, at least temporarily: "When what happened occurred, I immediately put to work to save the artillery. There are eight six-pounder cannons of those remaining [in the wreck], the rest are on land as well as the…Only all of the powder was lost and some few things of each type" (Landeche, 1706b).

Figure 2

<<click image for larger view>>

The fate of some items is unknown. When Antonio de Landeche first arrived to Pensacola from Veracruz (Figure 2) on or about June 1, three months prior to the storm, he carried orders to return approximately 170 matchlock musket barrels and gunlocks damaged in the November 1704 fire. He also had orders to return fire-damaged bronze breech-loading boarding pieces, along with their chambers, flintlock muskets and hand weapons (Misc., 1705b). Although the weight of such items would have added ballast to the ship after the supplies were offloaded at Pensacola in early June, steadying the Rosario for subsequent voyages it made to Apalachee, Havana and the Bahama Channel before it returned to Pensacola on September 2. However, there is no evidence that these items were aboard the ship when it returned on that date or when it wrecked three days later on September 5 (Kerrigan, 1951:374).

The storm, which finally relented on September 6, caused heavy damage for miles in every direction, littering Santa Rosa Island with trees uprooted from the mainland, stripping the island of its trees and flooding locations three miles inland. An ensign stationed at Pensacola, Francisco Uberuagua, an individual who had lived on the Gulf Coast for 29 years and weathered many hurricanes, concluded this was the worst storm he had ever seen and was surprised that anyone had survived it (Hernández, 1705; Uberuagua, 1705).

Some people survived in the least likely of places. Julian de Cendoya, a soldier stationed aboard the Rosario huddled with Joseph Vorges in the large timber shed (galeria) built on Santa Rosa Island, near the shore, to hold the poles. The shed lost its roof, but both men survived. An artilleryman stationed on the Rosario aboard remained below deck, ill but alive, for the duration of the storm (Llanes Caveza, 1705; López, 1705; Vorges, 1705).

On November 6, 1705, almost two months to the day of the wrecking of the Rosario, the Viceroy of Mexico, Francisco Fernández de la Cueva Enríquez, the Duke of Albuquerque, 1701-1711, launched an investigation into Admiral Antonio de Landeche's actions. The General of the Windward Fleet, Andrés de Pez, and the Governor of Pensacola, Joseph de Guzmán, conducted more than two-dozen interviews with ship pilots, sailors and soldiers who had first or second-hand knowledge of the September 5 incident at Pensacola Bay. Although no charges resulted from the investigation, Landeche did not escape unscathed (Agustín, 1705; Chateâugue, 1705b, 1705c; Espinosa, 1706a; Guzmán, 1705b, 1705c; Hernández, 1705; Joseph, 1705; Laval, 1705; Leon, 1705; López, 1705; Misc., 1705b; Pérez Gómez, 1705; Pez, 1705a, 1705b; Rodríguez Casquizes, 1705; Rodríguez, 1705).

The owner of the Santo Christo de Maracaibo, a frigate that the Rosario had escorted from Veracruz to the Bahama Channel--via Pensacola, Apalachee and Havana-and one that had sank shortly after unloading its cargo at its final destination, the Atlantic presidio, St. Augustine, blamed the admiral for the loss of his ship. The Maracaibo's owner argued that his ship's wreck,

had been due to said Admiral delaying them in such a way that when the frigate arrived to Florida, it was already a dangerous time. From this it follows that if he had budgeted the time of the delay properly, he would have been finished with the operation and the voyage of the Rosario and would have returned and been in Veracruz when the hurricane happened and the said merchantman (nao) would not have been lost (Espinosa, 1706a; Misc., 1707d).

The Governor of Florida, Joseph de Zuñiga y Zerda, blamed the admiral not only for the loss of the Maracaibo but also for the loss of its cargo, which had been offloaded at St. Augustine but not yet secured when the September storm hit:

The ship named the Santo Christo de Maracaibo having been the first to finish discharging its cargo [at St. Augustine], did not appear to want to wait for its companion and departed to continue its voyage. At a short distance, a storm hit it from the east and it was lost on this coast eight leagues to the south of this Presidio… At the same time, three bands of enemies invaded…Your Excellency sees how I have found myself with the enemies and the supplies [offloaded from the Maracaibo] outside and with a storm. If they would have arrived twenty days earlier, the discharge could have been made in good weather and with the same, they could have continued their voyage. They complained greatly about the delays and the long demurrage that Don Antonio de Landeche made them make in Panzacola, Apalachee and Havana. Here they had none because they were only delayed eleven days on the discharge and some more which was because of the storms (Zuñiga, 1705).

On March 9, 1706, the Viceroy sent word to Admiral Landeche, who was in Veracruz at the time preparing to depart on another vessel, that he should secure an attorney who was authorized to practice before the Audiencia of Mexico and defend his actions (Pez, 1706). General Andrés de Pez, the conduit, relayed the order to the admiral via a notary in Veracruz, Miguel de Horrue, on March 14. A day later, on March 15, the admiral appeared before the notary and denied that he was culpable for the loss of any ships. He gave his testimony to the notary, detailing the events of the long voyage that culminated in the loss of his flagship in Pensacola Bay, and commissioned Captain Juan Miguel de Vertíz, who lived in Mexico City, as his proxy in the case, with powers of attorney to act on his behalf. On April 10, Vertíz transferred that authority to an attorney in Mexico City, Joseph de Ledezma, who was authorized to practice before the Audiencia (Ledezma, 1706b; Vertíz, 1706) (Appendix D).

Ledezma filed his case sometime prior to May 10, suggesting that the testimonies of pilots, soldiers and sailors who had witnessed the wreck, or heard about it second-hand, exonerated his client. The attorney argued that "an act of God," manifested in the powers of the wind, weather and the sea, had sunk the Rosario. As no individual could be held liable under the law for events that occurred due to "the superior force of nature," Ledezma argued that Admiral Landeche could not be held responsible for this unfortunate event. Addressing the charges of the Marcaibo's owner and those of the Florida governor, the attorney argued that the delays at Pensacola and Apalachee were justified, as were the 12 days spent in Havana to repair "the damage from a lightening strike that had torn apart the main topgallant, main topmast and some of the top of the mainmast." Landeche, far from culpable, had acted heroically, argued the lawyer. The admiral had tried to save his ship through a number of measures and salvaged what he could in the way of supplies and military materiel. Furthermore he had followed the orders he had been given by the Viceroy and neither unnecessarily delayed nor extended the voyage (Ledezma, 1706c). The Audiencia exonerated the admiral on July 21, 1706 forwarding its decision to the Crown (Albuquerque, 1706; Espinosa, 1706b; Ledezma, 1706d; Valenzuela Venegas, 1706). Official word came on December 2, 1706 when the Junta of War of the Indies weighed in from across the Atlantic:

With the motive of the wreck of the ship Nuestra Señora del Rosario, the Fiscal asked for what he found appropriate for its investigation and that having then finished all the necessary reports from the General of the Fleet, the Sergeant Major of Santa María de Galve and the examinations of the military personnel of the fleet and the Frenchmen that came in the vessel from Mobile, the Viceroy decided this point with the opinion of the Auditor General, declaring that the Admiral Landeche had complied exactly with his duty, owing to his experiences, zeal and correct conduct that the men, supplies and military materiel were saved. Further, that he had executed all the orders that the Viceroy gave him with great punctuality and zeal of the greatest service to His Majesty. The Viceroy concluded by saying that the Admiral Don Antonio Landeche, not only for these reasons but also because of his great merits, was found to be a meritorious person, deserving the pious attention of Your Majesty for his advancement (Misc., 1707a).

Admiral Antonio de Landeche's career, unlike his flagship, weathered the storm of September 1705.

Bibliography