April 8, 2009 • 10 mins
Originally, Spanish silver was meant to stabilize the Louisiana territory -- but the ship carrying the necessary funds sank in the Gulf of Mexico. Find out more about the El Cazador shipwreck in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Keener, joined by staff writer Jane McGrath. Hey, Jane,
I said, the article we're going to talk about today
(00:22):
is actually one that came to my attention courtesy of
Mr Stuff. You should know Chuck Bryant, because he'd been
doing some research on maritime mysteries and sunken ships and
sunken treasure. And he asked me, have you ever heard
of El Casador? And I said, now, I haven't. And
he said, did you know that this sunken ship and
(00:42):
effect doubled the size of the United States? And it
sounded too unbelievable to be true, But in a roundabout way,
it kind of is. So trying to have a great
article on our slape by our colleague Christin Conger explains
this whole thing, and we're gonna go over a little
bit of bit here. So we talked about the Louisiana
purchased in another cast, but it has a fascinating story
behind us. Candice was saying, has to do with a shipwreck.
(01:04):
What happened with Louisiana a territory back in the age
of exploration. It ended up in French control, and that
was because this really fantastically named Frenchman, Robert Cavalier de
las Sal actually discovered the mouth of the Mississippi back
in sixty two, that's right, and he was the one
who named it Louisiana, after King Louis the fourteenth, I believe,
(01:24):
And there were a couple of Louis that you're gonna
hear about. We'll try to remember other Reman numerals, but
if we don't, you know, Janell, stop me and let
me know. And LaSalle I think, had high hopes that
he was going to establish a settlement there, but it
didn't really take off, and for a couple of reasons.
I think the primary reason for which it didn't really
take off or take hold of the settlement is because
it was so incredibly remote, and also the climate was
(01:48):
something that the French were unaccustomed to, and mosquitoes were
pretty crazy, so he did not succeed. The settlement that
he started didn't last very long, and an official settlement
didn't happen until about seventeen years later, and that was
in sixte nine with Pierre Syr deeper view. And I
really like saying these French names, and I don't know
if I'm getting them exactly right, but I'm sure if
(02:08):
there are any French listeners out there, they will let
us now. So he made a very successful settlement, and
then in seventeen eighteen louis actually established an official colony there,
so here we have New Orleans was the capital city
of this French colony, and it was a very important
trading post at the time. Obviously, the West Indies had
(02:28):
so many commodities that Europe wanted to get his hand
on hands on, and New Orleans was an important part
of that equation. So by the mid eighteenth century, France
was actually wrapped up in uh the Seven Years War.
Although they were in possession of Louisiana territory, including New Orleans,
they wanted to get out of their hands um, but
not so much to not have it anymore, but rather
(02:50):
to keep it out of the British hands because they
were fighting the British and the Seven Years War, and
over here we often called the French and Indian War
because the colonies were involved in it too, But any
the French and the British were enemies and France sort
of saw their indcoming. They saw that they were losing
the war, so they made a treaty with Spain, and
that was known as the Treaty of Fontainebleu, if I'm
(03:10):
pronouncing that right. So they handed over Louisiana territory and
New Orleans was included in that over to Spain's control.
And as as we now know, France did lose. And
when England did ask them for all the handover their
their very valuable land, they didn't have Louisiana to hand over.
They did. And and we should mention that Louis and
(03:30):
the king of Spain, that was King Carlos the second
actually had a relation, a distant blood relation through the
Bourbon side of louis family, so where the political ties
there obviously, So they were more friends with Spain than England.
And I don't think anyone would ever want to, let
you know, Louisiana and especially in New Orleans go, but
if you had to give it away to someone better
your very distant cousin, than mean old England, that's a
(03:53):
good way to put it. So Spain found out pretty
quickly that the Louisiana terrytory was very hard to manage.
Like we said before, it was very far away, and
it was a huge chunk of land. And so they
decided that something had to be done about dealing with
this remoteness and somehow keeping a hand on the crazy
counterfeiting and other uprisings that were going on in that
(04:14):
part of the world. That's where there was a shortage
of currency and this led to counterfeiting, and there's just
just crisis, economic crisis in New Orleans that uh, the
so Spain couldn't pay their own government workers to do
the work. And if you can't pay your government workers
and your soldiers, there's really no way to keep order
in a city. So in order to fix that, they
actually had a lot of silver commission to send over
(04:36):
in a ship known as il Calcador, and it the
ship contained a freshly minted silver and about nineteen tons
of it exactly. It came from very CRUs, Mexico. The
ment there some nineteen tons of silver coins and the
ship set out on January eleventh, seventeen eighty four, and
its mission was clear, take the money to New Orleans
and add some value back into the currency and say
(04:59):
the city. Unfortunately, and never made it now, it sunk.
It funk hard, y'all, and they didn't find it until
two years later, that's right. So it disappeared that they
declared it missing, and uh, New Orleans continued in their
economic crisis, and so basically it made the situation worse.
And uh it was just a problem on their hands.
(05:21):
Even though it was a valuable commodity to have New Orleans,
it was troublesome, it really was. And so enter Napoleon,
that's right. And we should say that France looked a
lot different between the time of the Seven Years War
when they gave it over to Spain and when Napoleon emerged.
If you've listened to our podcast on the French Revolution,
(05:42):
this happened during that time, and uh so France looked
a lot different. And Napoleon was set on rebuilding the
power of his country and so he thought the key
to getting friends powerful again was to start this great
empire in the west. He actually had control over what
is now modern day Haiti and the Dominican Republic and
these lands of these territories, and the work he had
(06:05):
commissioned there provided him with trade of sugar, coffee and
exotic produce. Very valuable things. But he also wanted to
get the Louisiana territory back from Spain, and as we said,
Spain was certainly in a position to give it back
precise thing. So they made um a treaty known as
the Treaty of Sandel Defonso with Spain, which effectively, I think,
(06:25):
with a secret treaty, but anyway, it handed it back
to the power of France. But something happened to muck
up Napoleon's plans, basically for his his vast plans for
a Western Empire, and that happened with as we said,
the modern day Haiti territory. A slave uprising actually occurred
um in this territory, and our colleague Christian Conger talks
(06:46):
about how this is known as the only successful slave
uprising in history, which I found really interesting, and it
was started by those leaders known as Toussaint L'Ouverture, and
uh he led the successful revolt in this sort of
screwed up Napoleon's plans, as I said, at the end,
when he eventually lost control of the of the territory,
(07:08):
having Louisiana territory didn't make much sense to him anymore.
So if he if he lost control of this, of
this essential part of his Western plans, then there was
no point in having Louisiana territory. He didn't really want
it anymore. It was high time to unload it. And
if you have heard our podcast on the Louisiana purchase,
you know how that story went down. Thomas Jefferson decided
(07:29):
that he wanted to get his hands on that very
valuable port, and he is sent over an emissary, James
Monroe to try to negotiate getting New Orleans. That's right, Yeah,
we should emphasize Jefferson only one in New Orleans, only
wanted New Orleans, and he sent those specific budget and
gift with purchase. Napoleon said you want it, you take
(07:50):
the whole Louisiana territory, and like we emphasized before, that
turned out to be a very enormous parcel of land.
And in Jefferson instead it was signed for and it
is signed, sealed and delivered and being bang boom, there
goes the size of the United States. Just double yeah.
And Chuck's right, I mean in this ill Casador shipwreck
(08:11):
really was a key part. And it is interesting that
it was such a valuable territory and trading post in
New Orleans. But at the same time it was so
much trouble, and then it passed through three three countries
hands in a matter of I think three years, and
it's while Yeah, I mean we talked about the great
rivers of the world. You probably think of Amazon or
the Congo because they're so massive and rushing and mighty,
(08:32):
and they you know, neander and have so many different
types of wildlife and flora and fauna surrounding them. But
if you think about the truly powerful economics versus of water,
I mean, the Mississippi River was such a huge boon
to the United States and it's fledgling condition, and really
it helped build up a lot of controversy and secured
(08:53):
a whole bunch of land for our very young nations. Uh.
Back in there is a fisherman named Jerry Urphy and
he was just out one day by the Gulf of
Mexico fishing and his nets pulled up some really heavy
stuff and as it turned out, it was a bunch
of slover coins and they were kind of molded together.
Is that right? Yeah, It's the longer things stay under water,
(09:14):
the more different types of I guess bacteria and algae
and things grow on them, and so they fused together
and they formed like this big masive coil of coins,
and he thought, well, that's interesting, and he was on
his toes. He called his lawyer to see if he
could get rights to the sunken booty, and he was
granted rights, and he found the treasurer called in some
underwater archaeologists and they determined, oh, yeah, we remember this ship,
(09:35):
the El Casador. It went down back in the late
seventeen hundreds and Spain's been looking forward for quite some time.
And ironically the ship that Jerry Murphy was sailing in
that day was called the Mistake. But he didn't make
a mistake. He made a huge discovery. So it's a
good story, good story for everyone. Yeah, everyone involves. Thank god,
it's mystery solved. Jerry Murphy got some I guess, a
(09:57):
valuable find, and we had some thing else to talk about.
So another day in the life. And if you want
to read more about the shipwreck that doubled the size
of the United States, be sure to check the article
out on how Stuff Works dot com. And while you're there,
take a look at our blogs that we've started called
the Stuff You Missed in History Class, and Cannis and
I write on that What's a day? And maybe we'll
talk about another Louis. I know now we'll have to
(10:20):
say so. Be sure to check out the blog and
the article at half stuff works dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how
stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com,
and be sure to check out the Stuff you Missed
in History Class blog on the how stuff works dot
com home page
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Keener, joined by staff writer Jane McGrath. Hey, Jane,
I said, the article we're going to talk about today
(00:22):
is actually one that came to my attention courtesy of
Mr Stuff. You should know Chuck Bryant, because he'd been
doing some research on maritime mysteries and sunken ships and
sunken treasure. And he asked me, have you ever heard
of El Casador? And I said, now, I haven't. And
he said, did you know that this sunken ship and
(00:42):
effect doubled the size of the United States? And it
sounded too unbelievable to be true, But in a roundabout way,
it kind of is. So trying to have a great
article on our slape by our colleague Christin Conger explains
this whole thing, and we're gonna go over a little
bit of bit here. So we talked about the Louisiana
purchased in another cast, but it has a fascinating story
behind us. Candice was saying, has to do with a shipwreck.
(01:04):
What happened with Louisiana a territory back in the age
of exploration. It ended up in French control, and that
was because this really fantastically named Frenchman, Robert Cavalier de
las Sal actually discovered the mouth of the Mississippi back
in sixty two, that's right, and he was the one
who named it Louisiana, after King Louis the fourteenth, I believe,
(01:24):
And there were a couple of Louis that you're gonna
hear about. We'll try to remember other Reman numerals, but
if we don't, you know, Janell, stop me and let
me know. And LaSalle I think, had high hopes that
he was going to establish a settlement there, but it
didn't really take off, and for a couple of reasons.
I think the primary reason for which it didn't really
take off or take hold of the settlement is because
it was so incredibly remote, and also the climate was
(01:48):
something that the French were unaccustomed to, and mosquitoes were
pretty crazy, so he did not succeed. The settlement that
he started didn't last very long, and an official settlement
didn't happen until about seventeen years later, and that was
in sixte nine with Pierre Syr deeper view. And I
really like saying these French names, and I don't know
if I'm getting them exactly right, but I'm sure if
(02:08):
there are any French listeners out there, they will let
us now. So he made a very successful settlement, and
then in seventeen eighteen louis actually established an official colony there,
so here we have New Orleans was the capital city
of this French colony, and it was a very important
trading post at the time. Obviously, the West Indies had
(02:28):
so many commodities that Europe wanted to get his hand
on hands on, and New Orleans was an important part
of that equation. So by the mid eighteenth century, France
was actually wrapped up in uh the Seven Years War.
Although they were in possession of Louisiana territory, including New Orleans,
they wanted to get out of their hands um, but
not so much to not have it anymore, but rather
(02:50):
to keep it out of the British hands because they
were fighting the British and the Seven Years War, and
over here we often called the French and Indian War
because the colonies were involved in it too, But any
the French and the British were enemies and France sort
of saw their indcoming. They saw that they were losing
the war, so they made a treaty with Spain, and
that was known as the Treaty of Fontainebleu, if I'm
(03:10):
pronouncing that right. So they handed over Louisiana territory and
New Orleans was included in that over to Spain's control.
And as as we now know, France did lose. And
when England did ask them for all the handover their
their very valuable land, they didn't have Louisiana to hand over.
They did. And and we should mention that Louis and
(03:30):
the king of Spain, that was King Carlos the second
actually had a relation, a distant blood relation through the
Bourbon side of louis family, so where the political ties
there obviously, So they were more friends with Spain than England.
And I don't think anyone would ever want to, let
you know, Louisiana and especially in New Orleans go, but
if you had to give it away to someone better
your very distant cousin, than mean old England, that's a
(03:53):
good way to put it. So Spain found out pretty
quickly that the Louisiana terrytory was very hard to manage.
Like we said before, it was very far away, and
it was a huge chunk of land. And so they
decided that something had to be done about dealing with
this remoteness and somehow keeping a hand on the crazy
counterfeiting and other uprisings that were going on in that
(04:14):
part of the world. That's where there was a shortage
of currency and this led to counterfeiting, and there's just
just crisis, economic crisis in New Orleans that uh, the
so Spain couldn't pay their own government workers to do
the work. And if you can't pay your government workers
and your soldiers, there's really no way to keep order
in a city. So in order to fix that, they
actually had a lot of silver commission to send over
(04:36):
in a ship known as il Calcador, and it the
ship contained a freshly minted silver and about nineteen tons
of it exactly. It came from very CRUs, Mexico. The
ment there some nineteen tons of silver coins and the
ship set out on January eleventh, seventeen eighty four, and
its mission was clear, take the money to New Orleans
and add some value back into the currency and say
(04:59):
the city. Unfortunately, and never made it now, it sunk.
It funk hard, y'all, and they didn't find it until
two years later, that's right. So it disappeared that they
declared it missing, and uh, New Orleans continued in their
economic crisis, and so basically it made the situation worse.
And uh it was just a problem on their hands.
(05:21):
Even though it was a valuable commodity to have New Orleans,
it was troublesome, it really was. And so enter Napoleon,
that's right. And we should say that France looked a
lot different between the time of the Seven Years War
when they gave it over to Spain and when Napoleon emerged.
If you've listened to our podcast on the French Revolution,
(05:42):
this happened during that time, and uh so France looked
a lot different. And Napoleon was set on rebuilding the
power of his country and so he thought the key
to getting friends powerful again was to start this great
empire in the west. He actually had control over what
is now modern day Haiti and the Dominican Republic and
these lands of these territories, and the work he had
(06:05):
commissioned there provided him with trade of sugar, coffee and
exotic produce. Very valuable things. But he also wanted to
get the Louisiana territory back from Spain, and as we said,
Spain was certainly in a position to give it back
precise thing. So they made um a treaty known as
the Treaty of Sandel Defonso with Spain, which effectively, I think,
(06:25):
with a secret treaty, but anyway, it handed it back
to the power of France. But something happened to muck
up Napoleon's plans, basically for his his vast plans for
a Western Empire, and that happened with as we said,
the modern day Haiti territory. A slave uprising actually occurred
um in this territory, and our colleague Christian Conger talks
(06:46):
about how this is known as the only successful slave
uprising in history, which I found really interesting, and it
was started by those leaders known as Toussaint L'Ouverture, and
uh he led the successful revolt in this sort of
screwed up Napoleon's plans, as I said, at the end,
when he eventually lost control of the of the territory,
(07:08):
having Louisiana territory didn't make much sense to him anymore.
So if he if he lost control of this, of
this essential part of his Western plans, then there was
no point in having Louisiana territory. He didn't really want
it anymore. It was high time to unload it. And
if you have heard our podcast on the Louisiana purchase,
you know how that story went down. Thomas Jefferson decided
(07:29):
that he wanted to get his hands on that very
valuable port, and he is sent over an emissary, James
Monroe to try to negotiate getting New Orleans. That's right, Yeah,
we should emphasize Jefferson only one in New Orleans, only
wanted New Orleans, and he sent those specific budget and
gift with purchase. Napoleon said you want it, you take
(07:50):
the whole Louisiana territory, and like we emphasized before, that
turned out to be a very enormous parcel of land.
And in Jefferson instead it was signed for and it
is signed, sealed and delivered and being bang boom, there
goes the size of the United States. Just double yeah.
And Chuck's right, I mean in this ill Casador shipwreck
(08:11):
really was a key part. And it is interesting that
it was such a valuable territory and trading post in
New Orleans. But at the same time it was so
much trouble, and then it passed through three three countries
hands in a matter of I think three years, and
it's while Yeah, I mean we talked about the great
rivers of the world. You probably think of Amazon or
the Congo because they're so massive and rushing and mighty,
(08:32):
and they you know, neander and have so many different
types of wildlife and flora and fauna surrounding them. But
if you think about the truly powerful economics versus of water,
I mean, the Mississippi River was such a huge boon
to the United States and it's fledgling condition, and really
it helped build up a lot of controversy and secured
(08:53):
a whole bunch of land for our very young nations. Uh.
Back in there is a fisherman named Jerry Urphy and
he was just out one day by the Gulf of
Mexico fishing and his nets pulled up some really heavy
stuff and as it turned out, it was a bunch
of slover coins and they were kind of molded together.
Is that right? Yeah, It's the longer things stay under water,
(09:14):
the more different types of I guess bacteria and algae
and things grow on them, and so they fused together
and they formed like this big masive coil of coins,
and he thought, well, that's interesting, and he was on
his toes. He called his lawyer to see if he
could get rights to the sunken booty, and he was
granted rights, and he found the treasurer called in some
underwater archaeologists and they determined, oh, yeah, we remember this ship,
(09:35):
the El Casador. It went down back in the late
seventeen hundreds and Spain's been looking forward for quite some time.
And ironically the ship that Jerry Murphy was sailing in
that day was called the Mistake. But he didn't make
a mistake. He made a huge discovery. So it's a
good story, good story for everyone. Yeah, everyone involves. Thank god,
it's mystery solved. Jerry Murphy got some I guess, a
(09:57):
valuable find, and we had some thing else to talk about.
So another day in the life. And if you want
to read more about the shipwreck that doubled the size
of the United States, be sure to check the article
out on how Stuff Works dot com. And while you're there,
take a look at our blogs that we've started called
the Stuff You Missed in History Class, and Cannis and
I write on that What's a day? And maybe we'll
talk about another Louis. I know now we'll have to
(10:20):
say so. Be sure to check out the blog and
the article at half stuff works dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how
stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com,
and be sure to check out the Stuff you Missed
in History Class blog on the how stuff works dot
com home page
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