A Tortugas Tyger
Most Americans are well aware of the majesty that is Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, a quick charter boat or seaplane ride from Key West.
Capable of holding an amazing 450 cannon in its massive six-sided, double-tiered walls (although never more than halfway armed), Fort Jefferson required 16 million bricks to complete over 15 years and is the largest masonry structure in the Americas.
Three centuries before the first brick was laid for Fort Jefferson, Juan Ponce de León visited the islands and gave them their name.
Fast forward to 1742, and, while on patrol in the War of Jenkins Ear between Britain and Spain, the 50-gun fourth-rate frigate HMS Tyger, under Captain Edward Herbert, wrecked on the uninhabited Spanish island, with her marooned crew living roughly on the site of the current fort for 66 days from where they constructed a barricade and fought a cannon duel with a Spanish sloop before setting out on an epic 700-mile voyage for Jamaica– carefully skirting Spanish Cuba– in several of the frigate’s remaining small boats and vessels constructed from her timbers.
Tyger had seen lots of campaigning over her nearly 100 years in RN service. Here, a depiction by a Dutch painter of HMS Tyger taking the Dutch ship Shackerloo in Cadiz harbor in 1674
An 18th-century map showing the route in green of the Tyger’s surviving crew’s return to Port Royal, Jamaica. Before arriving in Jamaica, the crew sailed in several makeshift small boats for 56 days.
The National Park Service has recently confirmed the wreck’s location, which was first thought to be located in 1993.
A National Park Service diver documents one of five coral-encrusted cannons found during a recent archeological survey in Dry Tortugas National Park. NPS Photo by Brett Seymour.
From the NPS presser:
Using leads from historical research, archeologists from Dry Tortugas National Park, the Submerged Resources Center, and the Southeast Archeological Center surveyed the site in 2021 and found five cannons approximately 500 yards from the main wreck site. Buried in the margins of the old logbooks was a reference that described how the crew “lightened her forward” after initially running aground, briefly refloating the vessel and then sinking in shallow water.
Based on their size, features and location, the guns were determined to be British six and nine-pound cannons thrown overboard when HMS Tyger first ran aground. This discovery and reevaluation of the site led archeologists to make a sound argument that the wreck first located in 1993 was in fact the remains of HMS Tyger. The findings were recently published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.
“Archeological finds are exciting, but connecting those finds to the historical record helps us tell the stories of the people that came before us and the events they experienced,” said Park Manager James Crutchfield. “This particular story is one of perseverance and survival. National parks help to protect these untold stories as they come to light.”
More on Tyger, here.
