El Cazador — Spanish Treasure Brig Model, Handcrafted Wood | Captain Line

The ship whose sinking quietly redrew the map of North America.

Hand-built in hardwood using traditional methods, rigged and finished before it ships. Fully assembled.

Details

• Hand-built hull with the compact, deep lines of an 18th-century Spanish brig
• Two masts with hand-knotted standing and running rigging
• Hand-stitched linen sails
• Deck fittings, ship's boat, wheel and rails
• Metal anchors and wooden rudder
• Solid wood base with engraved brass nameplate

History

El Cazador — "The Hunter" — sailed from Veracruz in January 1784 carrying roughly 450,000 silver reales to New Orleans. Spain had taken Louisiana from France two decades earlier and the colony's paper currency was collapsing; the silver was meant to stabilise it. The ship never arrived. She was lost with all hands somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, and the failed currency was one of the reasons Spain eventually returned Louisiana to France — which promptly sold it to Thomas Jefferson in 1803.

The wreck was found by accident in 1993, when a fishing trawler working 50 miles off the Louisiana coast hauled up a net full of Spanish silver coins.