Jim Bradshaw: Spanish treasure ship gave its name to Cameron locales

As you drive along La. 82 next to the Gulf in Cameron Parish, the name Constance keeps popping up.
Constance Bayou is just west of the Vermilion Parish line, and runs generally north from Big Constance Lake. Little Constance Lake is a bit to its west and nearby you will find Big Constance Bayou, Little Constance Bayou, East Little Constance Bayou, East Constance Bayou and East Constance Lake. Constance Beach is midway between Holly Beach and Johnsons Bayou.
You begin to wonder, “Who the heck was Constance?”
As it turns out, Constance was a ship, El Nuevo Constante (The New Constance), that was driven ashore in 1766. Right after it sank, Spanish officials in Louisiana made a big push to salvage what they could from the wreck, but then the ship slipped into the mists of history. It stayed hidden for two centuries, until November 1979, when shrimper Curtis Blume aboard the Lady Barbara caught his net on something heavy about a mile south of the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge.
When he got the nets untangled, he pulled up three large copper discs, each about 20 inches across. He didn’t know what he’d found, but he made a note of the location, mostly so that he wouldn’t snag his nets again.
When a friend saw the discs and told him they looked like some that were found in Spanish shipwrecks off the Florida coast, Curtis put on diving gear to look a little closer at what he’d snagged. He found some more discs, more exciting ones. These were made of gold and silver.
Curtis thought he’d found one of the Spanish ships that hauled gold and silver from Mexico to the port of Cadiz. That idea also excited historians because it was the first historic shipwreck ever found off the Louisiana coast. Curtis and the salvage experts that backed him were mainly interested in the gold. The scientists were just as interested in the ship and how it came to rest in shallow water almost due south of Big Constance Lake.
They found an “old wreck,” not identified by name, on a chart that used data from 1779. An 1806 map showed a Bayou Constance and also recorded a “carcasse” near the bayou’s mouth. Neither of the old maps connected the shipwreck with the bayou’s name, but investigators combed through old Spanish records and were finally able identify the ship and to piece together its story.
El Nuevo Constante was part of a convoy sailing from Veracruz to Cadiz by way of Havana when it was caught in a storm and driven ashore during the first week of September 1766. The ship weathered three days of hurricane wind and waves and the passengers and crew thought they’d made it through the worst of it. But on September 3 they began to notice water seeping into the ship, and getting worse by the hour. By the next morning the ship’s pumps could not keep up. The pounding seas had loosened the caulking in the hull, and it was beginning to give away altogether. There was nothing to do but head for land.
The chaplain, Father Joseph Buenaventura Morelda, prayed they would reach the coast before sinking. He must have been a pious soul.
About 4:30 p.m. Sept. 5. El Nuevo Constante ran aground “one and a half musket shots from shore.”
When the crew first rowed two boats ashore they found nothing but marsh and mosquitoes, but finally reached a little rise in the marsh.
While one boat hauled people and cargo from the ship, Captain Julian Antonio de Ureullo sent the other boat to get help at the Balize, a little fort at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
A good bit of the boat’s cargo was salvaged right away, but there was still some interesting stuff to find when the scientists sifted through the remains two centuries later —iron cannons, indigo, vanilla beans, dye, hides, ceramics, some hand tools, more copper, a silver coin or two, but no more gold.
Some of the ships that sailed with El Nuevo Constante had been filled with gold and silver, but the New Constance wasn’t one of them.
It was carrying only mundane cargo. The pieces of gold and silver that Curtis found had apparently been hidden among stones used as ballast in the bottom of the boat.
It appears that Captain de Ureullo was trying to smuggle home a little something to put aside for his retirement.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.