No one survived these four wrecks, and Spanish marine salvage teams traversed the western Caribbean Sea but failed to locate them and recover their lost 8 million pesos.
Arriving Bishop of Puerto Rico, Pedro de Solier y Vargas (OSA) experiences the storm, and it damaged Cathedral of San Juan Bautista.
[citation needed] A presentment to His Majesty Philip III of Spain, king of Iberian Union, tells of the storm when Captain General Felipe de Beaumont y Navarra served as Governor of Puerto Rico.
The storm hit the countryside with similar damage with some deaths and injuries to persons; it isolated and destroyed cassava and sugarcane.
Spanish marine salvage operations began within a week and found the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, rescuing her five survivors.
Because she sank in water too deep for common salvage operations, however, they recovered little treasure, and 2 fathoms (12 ft; 3.7 m) of sand reportedly buried her remains within a few months.
Treasure hunters from Tampa in 1989 identified probable remains of Nuestra Señora de la Merced and recovered a bell and numerous gold bars.
Marx in one account[32] labels the storm a "norther," which could refer either to an especially ferocious cold front or to the western semicircle of a hurricane.
Captain general (or admiral) Juan de Campos commanded the Spanish treasure fleet from Havana through Old Bahama Channel (or the northern extension of Straits of Florida) for Spain.
During the Eighty Years' War, es:Armada de Barlovento protected Spanish ships returning from the Caribbean.
[38] Burt Webber circa 1979 nevertheless found more valuable cargo: more than 95,000 silver coins, Ming Dynasty ceramics, gold chains, and other artifacts.
[41][34][39] Father Pierre Pelleprat at Saint Kitts related that the hurricane destroyed four or five loaded merchant vessels at Sandy Point Town.
José Carlos Millás suggests that a slow-moving hurricane battered islands from Martinique through Puerto Rico and parts of Hispaniola with the center passing just south of Saint Martin.
Cardinal Mazarin bought the ships and stores; Prince Rupert split the limited profit spoils with exiled Charles II of England.
It destroyed most houses, killed all domestic animals, laid waste all plantations, wrecked every vessel at anchor in the roadstead, and drowned most of their crews.