La Galga ran shore on Assateague Island, Virginia, on September 5, 1750

A lot has happened since the Spanish warship La Galga ran ashore on Assateague Island, Virginia in 1750. Immediately, the inlet it wrecked in closed up. Soon the locals noted small beach horses running around. They were attributed to the Spanish galleon’s loss. This event became a legend that was kept closely by some of the local residents of Chincoteague, Assateague, and the mainland. La Galga is the most significant shipwreck on Assateague Island, known worldwide for recent events.

Centuries after the wreck, the legend reached a woman named Marguerite Henry, who wrote a charming children’s story about the ponies and their shipwreck origin. Then a movie was made. Misty of Chincoteague made the ponies world famous and a popular tourist attraction. The 1970s and 80s brought numerous tales of Spanish treasure being recovered in the United States. La Galga generated considerable interest among wreck hunters because the ship wrecked far from the galleon routes that drove them onto Florida reefs. La Galga was different. It could easily be found, as the captain left a precise clue on how to find his ship. Months after the wreck, he wrote to Maryland’s governor and described the location of La Galga as in Maryland “within two ship lengths” of the Maryland-Virginia border. This secret was stored in the Maryland Archives until the early 1900s when it was made public. In 1980, it caught the attention of a desperate con man out of Baltimore and John Amrhein, a wannabe treasure hunter from Richmond, Virginia. These two adventurers soon met, with the con man leading Amrhein and a group of suckers on a misguided treasure hunt.

Donald Stewart,  the con man, was noted for his exaggerations and dubious schemes. He was the former director of the USS Constellation in Baltimore. During his tenure, it was discovered that documents he claimed to have found in the National Archives, which he said proved the construction date of the Constellation was 1797, were fraudulent. The ship was actually built in 1854 in Norfolk, Virginia. He had conned the City of Baltimore, the State of Maryland, and the federal government with this hoax. He later left the Constellation and formed an historical society to further his frauds.

To enhance his image and facilitate his fundraising, the con man invented a Spanish merchant ship he called the San Lorenzo, claiming he had documented it with many pages from Spanish archives that proved the legendary Assateague Island horses were descended from the San Lorenzo, which he said was wrecked in 1820 at the south end of Ocean City, Maryland. His first victim was the National Park Service, followed by the general public and the investors in his treasure-hunting operation called SEA, Ltd.

Amrhein soon realized that La Galga was not easily found because it was buried in a former inlet, just as some locals had remembered over the centuries. But Amrhein found a survey in the Accomack County courthouse that would not only document the 1750 boundary line but also prove that the beach had built out in this area and encapsulated the wreck, hiding it in the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. NOAA recognized the value of this discovery and recorded it in their shipwreck database so anyone interested could read it online. This information was shared with federal authorities in 1983 in hopes that the shipwreck would be pinpointed, excavated, and displayed in a museum.

In 1998, Sea Hunt, Inc. claimed in federal court that it had found La Galga in the ocean in the same location, inspired by the con man, although he had been dead for two years. Sea Hunt was well aware of the 1943 federal survey that placed their wreck a mile north of the historically documented boundary line. The wreck they found was an American merchant ship, the Sunbeam, which wrecked in 1852. The federal government notified Spain and lured it into the litigation, promising Spain free representation by the Department of Justice even though NOAA's website recognized the author's research. The DOJ also ignored the major newspaper articles about this published in 1983. The litigation ended with an award of the Sunbeam to Spain, without the court being presented with any evidence of La Galga’s alleged discovery.

What the federal government and Spain won was a legal precedent for future cases of treasure discovery. In 2010, Spain used it effectively to recover 17 tons of silver from Odyssey Marine Exploration, which had been discovered in a Spanish warship that had been sunk off Portugal in 1802. The Sea Hunt precedent is presently being used to bolster Spain’s claim to the San José, the richest shipwreck ever found.

In 2007, the author published The Hidden Galleon: The true story of a lost Spanish ship and the wild horses of Assateague Island.

In 2008, the author hired professional archaeologists to pinpoint the location of La Galga within the Refuge. The government refused to address the application for six years, while it ran to the Spanish Embassy for help to block the author’s permit application. With the help of an attorney, Amrhein later filed a new application pinpointing the wreck in a mound of sand located within 200 feet of the colonial boundary between Maryland and Virginia and sitting in the closed inlet. The Deep State says that the author must admit that La Galga is Spanish property and obtain written permission from Spain before a permit will be issued. Spain had abandoned La Galga by a treaty with Great Britain in 1763.

Are the wild horses of today descended from the shipwreck of La Galga? In 1990, the National Park Service sponsored a scientific study of the horses published in 1991, which proved that the present horses have traces of the Paso Fino,  a Spanish breed.

In 2022, a research scientist found a horse tooth in a centuries-old Spanish town in Haiti whose DNA was linked to the Assateague horses. It was big news then, but it hasn't been repeated on the Department of the Interior's website.

In 2026, the author published The Con Man and the Deep State Galleon

Finding La Galga in the Refuge will destroy the ill-gotten precedent found in Sea Hunt, and while the prospect of treasure is dim, the author proves by a preponderance of the evidence that not only did the world-famous Assateague ponies come from La Galga, but La Galga was escorting the galleon Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, whose treasure was stolen at Ocracoke, North Carolina by Owen Lloyd and his one-legged brother, John. They were soon captured, and the buried treasure recovered from Treasure Island. This well-known event in the Caribbean inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Centuries later, one fleet and one fateful hurricane would inspire two children’s classics.

The Books

Left is Norman Island in the British Virgin Islands, where 50 chests of silver pieces of eight were buried on November 13, 1750.  On this day, exactly one hundred years later, Robert Louis Stevenson was born. Below is a 1750 piece of eight which was buried by Long John Silver and Owen Lloyd in 1750. One of these is likely to be found in La Galga's wreckage.

The Movies

Pirates of the Caribbean owes its existence to Robert Louis Stevenson and Treasure Island. We owe Owen Lloyd and his one-legged brother, John, for Treasure Island.

     Saint Rosalia

She saved La Galga