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The origin of Matanzas's strange name (“Matanzas” literally means “slaughters”) can be traced back to around 1510, when most of the crew of a Spanish vessel that had wrecked at the bay were killed by the locals. In 1628, the site experienced a burst of fame when Piet Heyn, sailing on behalf of the Dutch West India Company, captured the Spanish flota or convoy from New Spain at the harbor, inflicting a disastrous defeat on Spain. The Spanish admiral, Juan de Benavides, was eventually executed for his failure that day.

They gathered in Havana that summer, the seven ships that made up the 1750 Spanish flota. While their schedules and routes to Cuba were individual, they all shared a common purpose: to complete their transatlantic circle by returning promptly to Cádiz, the traditional terminus for most Spanish New World trade. The catalyst for this venture grew out of desire of several merchant captains to take advantage of the protection offered by a warship rotating to Europe, La Galga. The fact that there were so many detained foreigners in Havana becomes important in the story of the flota. All exchanges of wartime prisoners had been completed long before 1750. The Spanish coast guard, composed of small ships and numerous part-time vigilantes, exercised special diligence after the war in searching for illegal trade.

All seven ships of the flota now reached the most dangerous stage of their brief voyage since leaving Havana—trying to reach safety on land. After surviving the pounding dealt out by the hurricane, a majority of the ships proceeded to sink within sight of land. While the struggle against the sea and weather was essentially over for these Spaniards, those who struck the Carolina coast farther south were not so lucky. Both the Salvador and the Soledad experienced a disastrous end to their encounter with the hurricane. The merchant ships hit sandbars about five or six leagues apart north of Cape Lookout. Witnessing the plundering of his helpless vessel, the incredulous and irate Spanish captain, Jose Ventura de Respaldiza, risked the surf to revisit his vessel, setting it on fire and burning it to the waterline.

True to her name, the Galga (greyhound) and her companion prize, the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, raced north far ahead of the rest of the flota. While there is a paucity of information on the Mercedes, the same is not true of the Galga. The final days of the great warship generated numerous commentaries, the most important being the dispatches of her captain, Daniel Huoni. Turning his back on activity that was troubling but probably impossible to prevent, Huoni let the location of the remaining elements of the flota in Norfolk determine his next move. The flota was still under his protection, as reduced as that flota and his protection were at this point. Huoni hired two small sloops to take his shrinking crew to Norfolk. Here he found the San Pedro; the Godos; surprisingly, the Mariana; and finally, incomplete news about the other scattered pieces of his convoy.

Significant portions of the surviving documentation concerning the 1750 flota are financial accounts. In Spanish, the word “account” can carry a narrative as well as a financial meaning. Indeed, these quentas are rich in both. At the end of the day, the financial implications of the story mattered the most to the individuals who were most likely to put pen to paper. As with many events involving natural disasters, closing the books on the flota was gradual, painful, confusing, and unsatisfactory, and are especially so for those who like to see justice and moral triumphs in the historical past. Whatever the chronology might be for the emergence of Spanish women in traditional male fields such as politics and legal rights, the Spanish flota of 1750 shows a much earlier presence in the Atlantic world of commerce.

This chapter examines the final identification of the shipwreck at the Legare Anchorage in Florida. The interpretation of the ceramic and glass assemblages suggested a date between 1740 and 1750 and it was confirmed that the ship functioned as a warship and not as a cargo ship based on the multiple sizes of the guns. Historic record shows that only four relevant wrecks consistent with interpretations of the recovered material culture are documented as being lost in the vicinity of what is now Biscayne National Park. These were the two ships of the 1733 flota and Fowey's prize Judah, which both failed to meet the criteria of the Legare Anchorage site, and the HMS Fowey.