A legend of the Golden Caravel

According to an unofficial history from the late 19th century, a British officer in the Caribbean told of a legend of a shipwreck called the “Golden Caravel” that disappeared in the Sargasso Sea in the 16th century.

According to the story, there were at least 15 tons of gold on board, destined for the Spanish Crown. One of the surviving crew members is said to have fainted before his death, saying that the ship had “sunk into the grass and sky.”

Its story is linked to that of the Sargasso Sea and to the Bermuda Triangle. The Sargasso Sea was close to major trade and pirate routes in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Spanish galleons laden with gold and silver from the New World regularly sailed across the Atlantic, some of which passed along the shores of the Sargasso Sea. Some of them disappeared without a trace. It is believed that the calm seas and seaweed may have slowed the ships, making them easy prey for pirates—or causing accidents.

Perhaps it was part of a rumor, so historians have not confirmed this story, but there was something in it that spawned a wave of “do-it-yourself” gold, diamond and precious stone treasure hunters in the 1930s and 1940s, who, however, returned empty-handed.

In 2015, a research team studying the Sargassum’s movements using satellites discovered an unusual cluster of underwater objects that matched an archival map of the Spanish fleet’s alleged route from the 1570s. Although this did not trigger a discovery, it has sparked new theories.

This treasure still remains a mystery because the depths of the Sargasso and Bermuda Triangles have not yet been explored.