Lost 1584 - Small Iberian (Spanish-empire) ship, possibly a patache or courier vessel
Treasure hunters came upon this wreck on the Western Ledge reefs in 1964, and Ivor Noel Hume credits its discovery to the Bermudian diver Donald Canton. What survived was the lower hull of a small ship, perhaps 15 m from stem to stern, lying among the remains of several later wrecks. Over the next two decades it was salvaged on and off, and Teddy Tucker and Mendel Peterson disturbed the hull in the 1970s.
In 1988 an East Carolina University team surveying for the Bermuda Maritime Museum recognised the timbers, and Texas A&M University and ECU excavated and recorded them between 1988 and 1991. In 1991 the hull timbers were raised and went to the museum, where more than 125 timbers - keel, keelson with its mast step, floors, futtocks, planking and the whole stern assembly - are kept in protected tanks. For tropical waters the timbers are remarkably well preserved: apart from the bow, almost the whole bottom of the ship survives.
Her identity has long been argued over. She was first taken for the storeship La Viga (1639), then linked to the Santa Lucia, a Spanish courier wrecked on 11 January 1584. In 1995 Noel Hume was sceptical of an early date and of Spanish building: Tucker's wood samples suggested eastern European oak, the long mast-step slot recalled Mediterranean lateen craft, and the only datable finds from the first wreck were coins of Philip III (1598-1621), the rest being mixed up with much later material.
Later study by Piotr Bojakowski, whose 2012 Texas A&M doctorate reconstructed the ship from the timbers, treats her as an Iberian vessel of the late 16th or early 17th century built in the Spanish shipbuilding tradition. The Santa Lucia identification remains possible but unproven.
This is not a recreational dive site. Her surviving hull was lifted in 1991 and is held at the National Museum of Bermuda (formerly the Bermuda Maritime Museum) at Dockyard; little beyond ballast is believed to remain on the reef. Any remains are protected under the Historic Wrecks Act 2001.