A Royal Navy wreck, and a Spanish treasure that never turned up
On 25 May 1798 the Royal Navy ship DeBraak was coming in to anchor at Lewes when a squall caught her off Cape Henlopen; Commander James Drew had overruled the pilot’s warning to take in sail, and she went down with Drew and 46 others. She had recently taken a Spanish prize, and the story of Spanish gold aboard sent treasure hunters after her from the 1880s on. Salvors found her with side-scan sonar in the mid-1980s and tore the wreck apart; the treasure was never found, the company went bankrupt, and the damage helped bring in state and federal laws protecting underwater sites. Delaware bought the surviving piece of hull and about 20,000 artifacts. The hull is kept in a curatorial facility at Cape Henlopen State Park, and the Zwaanendael Museum in Lewes holds her story and a monument to the dead. PUBLIC museum.
Lewes and Cape Henlopen, Sussex County, Delaware
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Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
