Cay Lobos, which stands for wolf cay, is a small uninhabited island on the Old Bahama Channel at the south edge of the Great Bahama Bank. This island is located where the channel is at its narrowest. In 1555 it is said to have been the wreck site of a Spanish Galleon named Santa Maria del Camino. Her captain was Alonso Martin Morej on a voyage from Havana to Spain. Her precious cargo is said to have included silver which is said to have spilled “possibly in deep water,” with even the precise proximity to Cayo Lobos unclear, making the report doubtful. Also, its proximity to Cuban salvors and comparatively shallow waters make salvage of this wreck – if it to be believed at all – likely. In other words, if it existed, it’s gone by now.
Then on or about September 28, 1641, an unknown ship under General de Campos, also sailing from Havana to Spain, is said to have wrecked in “the general area of Cayo Lobos. According to one account, a fleet of 31 ships under General Juan de Campos and Admiral Juan de Villavicencio was scattered by a hurricane in the narrow straits off Cayo Romano, Cuba. At least ten ships were lost, some of them on the north side of the channel between Guinchos Cay and the Mucaras Reef area, also along the north shore of the nearly 500-mile-long channel. The diarist of this account adds that “This was the fleet that contained the famous treasure ship.”
Another observer deflates this, however, declaring “now it is known that this incident took place far to the north in the Straits of Florida… closer to Bimini and the Little Bahama Bank.” One final alluring but unsubstantiated tidbit has a Spanish ship which wrecked on Cay Lobos on its way to Spain in 1741. None of these are verified, and if folks have harvested treasure from them, as they are likely to have done if they are real, they probably didn’t tell anyone or record it. For one thing, most of the treasure belonged to the state, and for many decades The Bahamas were the private property of Christopher Columbus and his brother Bartholemew.
The Betsy Ames was salvaged between North Andros and Orange Cays in 1862, while on a voyage from Wells, Maine to Mobile, Alabama under Captain B. C. Bartlett. A slave ship ironically named Guardian of 300 tons and just three years old was abandoned off Andros in 1862, to be salvaged by wreckers. In the Orange Cay area, the 358-ton sailing schooner John M. Richards ran aground and was lost in 1878. Another Maine schooner, the San Cheta, hit the Pears Reef (possibly the Piers Cays north of Harbour Island Eleuthera), in the Bahamas on February 16, 1885. An American-flagged barque named Loretto struck the north end of the Old Bahamas Channel between Cay Lobos and Guinchos Cay with a cargo of salt from Turks Islands to New Orleans under Captain Fish.
The yacht Grey Duck anchored on the Bahama bank on December 15, 1919, with 37 prominent VIPs from Hollywood representing a veritable who’s-who of glamor from L.A. who were wrapping up a film shoot in Miami for the nascent film industry. During a voyage to Nassau a fierce gale sprung up, their engines were overwhelmed, and they were forced to anchor and ride out the weather on the Great Bahama Banks for several days until they fixed the motors and limped towards Nassau and were rescued. In December 1921 the steam tanker F. D. Asche had to be towed from Bahama Banks to the United States; fortunately, Captain McKenzie and the full crew of 20 were saved.
A century ago, was a busy time for wrecks in The Bahamas. In April of 1925 an American brig went ashore with its cargo of lumber lost. A few months later, on July 7, the steamer Naut Gwynaut bound from New York to Cardenas Cuba had to be salvaged by Bahamian wreckers, who the captain paid $7,500. In probably the same storm during May of 1925 a Spanish ship laden with cotton was disabled on the Great Bahama Banks but managed to resume its course. In May of 1925 the British 900-ton ship Duke go aground on the Bahamas Banks, with 900 of 4,000 of the ship’s bales of cotton saved by Bahamian wreckers.
The sailing brigantine Warcaller was on its way south from Riding Rock, Grand Bahama on July 4, 1925, when it grounded at the Orange Cays on the Saint Nicholas Channel. In April 1925 a packet sailing ship from Philadelphia to Mobile in the US Gulf went ashore in Bahamas and was also taken off by wreckers. When the navy coal ship Mars grounded on the Bahamas Bank early in June, 1931, with the result that the US Navy battleship USS Nebraska and two US Navy tugs were ordered to it’s aid and to pull it off. In June of 1929 the Munalbro, an American freighter, grounded at Mucaras Reef, at Diamond Point, east of Cay Lobos, and was freed and towed to Key West the same week.
In 1975 the Panamanian motor ship Mimi, built in 1961 and 499 tons, wrecked at Cay Lobos. In 1990 the motor ship Melinda D. hit Guinchos Cay on the Great Bahama Bank and foundered. Built in 1962, the Honduran diesel cargo ship was 395 tons. We see that along the unpopulated yet massive southern border of The Bahamas, light blue on ‘our’ side, and deep dark blue on the channel side where world trade passes, hardly ruffling The Bahamas between Haiti and the Florida Cays, there have been enough wrecks to stir Cuban salvage activities.
Between the wolf (Lobos) the winch (Guinchos), the laundresses (Labanderas), the pigs (Cochinos Banks), the pottery or the plants (Mucaras), and the oranges (as in the cays), there is little but vast expanses of shallow ocean water. The best-named of the rocks lining this passage, is probably the Magallanes Bank, assuming it pays homage to the Straits of Magellan in South America, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Cay Lobos Light, Bahamas, built 1869. From lighthousedigest.com
Guinchos Cay and Cay Lobos, southern Bahamas.