The Fraud of The san lorenzo

The San Lorenzo is mentioned under "Shipwreck survivors?" This exhibit was replaced shortly after this exhibit photo was taken in 1984.

On July 24, 1977, Donald F. Stewart of Baltimore, Maryland wrote a story for the Baltimore Sun entitled, "Assateague Ponies: A New Look."

In his story, he told of doing research in Spain and England where he uncovered  many pages of documentation on a Spanish merchant ship he called the San Lorenzo de Escorial that he claimed wrecked on Assateague in 1820. He said that the he found in Seville, Spain, at the Archivo General de Indias documentation that hundreds of bars of gold and silver, and many thousands of pieces of eight and gold doubloons were on board. He also listed a solid gold statue of the Virgin Mary and a baptistery of solid gold. He said that the San Lorenzo was carrying 110 small horses which had been blinded to work in the mines of South America. It looked like he was the one who had solved the mystery of the origin of the wild ponies on Assateague Island. His story, although fascinating, was untrue, a total fabrication. Stewart had heard about Spanish coins being found on the lower beaches of Ocean City, Maryland dating to 1820. He did not know that Spanish coins were used as common currency in this country until 1857 and cannot, by themselves, be considered as evidence of a Spanish shipwreck. But because of these coins, and the desire of the public for shipwreck stories, he was believed.

Stewart was not new to controversy. He was at the center of turmoil and debate over the USS Constellation in Baltimore Harbor for 20 years and was in close proximity to many unexplained fabricated documents. When the ship arrived in 1954 in drydock from Boston, it was thought that it was the original Constellation built in 1797. In fact, it was built in 1854 in Norfolk, Virginia.

After publication of his San Lorenzo hoax, he gave to the National Park Service eleven pages of typewritten "transcripts" of fictitious historical records in addition to his  Baltimore Sun article. These "transcripts" seemed to corroborate his story about the San Lorenzo and the origin of the wild horses of Assateague Island. Donald Stewart claimed copyright to his fraudulent material. The first of the eleven pages that were numbered two through thirteen contains an account of a survey done by a British Navy vessel called the HBMS Tilbury which, according to his account, surveyed Assateague Island for wildlife in 1774. Stewart listed wild pigs, goats, wild fowl, and other animals. His list did not mention horses. He also said there was no human life on the island. In his own hand, he made the comment "no mention of horses" at the bottom to make it clear to Park Service personnel that what followed would be documentation that the horses first appeared as the result of  his "San Lorenzo" wrecking in 1820. The author found from the records of the British Admiralty in the British Public Record Office, now the National Archives of England, that a navy ship named Tilbury did not exist for that year.

There were eight more pages where, as in the Sun article, Stewart described finding 894 pages of testimony from Pedro Murphy, the navigator, at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain. Stewart claimed he made this discovery in 1949. Within these eight pages is a detailed account of the loss of the ship, and her fantastic treasure of gold and silver. The most outrageous statement was that the San Lorenzo was carrying a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary made of solid gold. What interested the Park Service the most was the statement attributed to the nonexistent Pedro Murphy that "the animals were the blind horses that were being sent to Spain to also work in our mines; there were 95 of the little horses and they were quiet and content until the storm." The author's researcher, Victoria Stapells Johnson, found there are no such records on the San Lorenzo in the Archivo General de Indias and found other port records that showed no such vessel went in and out of Cádiz, Spain, as Stewart had represented. She also found that Stewart had never been to the archive. But there was still more in his eleven pages. There was an account written by a "Henry Lloyd" said to be the surveyor of Dorchester, County, Maryland in 1826. The so-called "Lloyd" supervised a surveying party on Assateague that year and said he observed "45 small horses no larger than a hound, many appear to be blind..." The truth discovered by the author was that the surveyor for Dorchester County in 1826 was a Matthew Smith. Stewart charmed the Park Service with phony documents and a very convincing personality.

Stewart was well aware of La Galga (The Greyhound) and that some people had already attributed the wild horses to that ship. To eliminate that controversy, Stewart included on the last page of his research report this statement, "The old legend of the ponies coming from a rich galleon called the Greyhound is not accurate and there is no record of such a ship in the Archives of Spain." In 1980, the Park Service gave him a credible reference in their Assateague Handbook and credible reference on the sidewalk display (below) at the park service headquarters in Berlin, Maryland. National Geographic magazine cited the story as true in its June, 1980, article entitled  "Chincoteague: Waterman's Island Home." That year, Stewart used these references as proof of his story and seduced investors into his corporation called Subaqueos Exploration and Archaeology, Ltd. (SEA, Ltd.). They went in search of the San Lorenzo, three other nonexistent shipwrecks, and a real Spanish warship called La Galga which he had told investors was carrying millions in treasure when she ran ashore on Assateague Island in 1750.

In 1981, Stewart led SEA, Ltd., and his so-called historical society to file claims in federal court court to the make-believe shipwrecks. Affidavits of discovery were filed when in fact nothing had been found. Investors poured more money into his treasure operation, including the author. The State of Maryland entered the litigation and claimed the shipwrecks for themselves. When the author discovered the fraud he filed motions to intervene with sworn affidavits that these shipwrecks

were a fraud used to entice investors and asked the judge to call an evidentiary hearing. In December 1983, the federal court decided that the "wrecks" were property of the State of Maryland. The author spent nearly two years in appeals to get evidence of the fraud into the court.

The National Park Service had provided Stewarts "research" and correspondence to the author after a Freedom of Information request. The author thoroughly researched all of his reported facts and presented them in a report to Edwin Bearss, the National Park Service Historian on July 9, 1984. Mr. Bearss responded on July 24th acknowledging to the author that they now realized that the San Lorenzo was a hoax.This letter was submitted as evidence to the federal court which was ignored. When Stewart obtained a copy of this letter and the evidence against him, he wrote a letter of intimidation to Mr. Bearss. Stewart said he was appalled at the contents of his letter as he had relied on a report with "two missing pages, both of which contained the sources." Stewart never gave Bearss these two pages. Later, in the investor suit against him, he submitted more fabrications in support of his San Lorenzo hoax. To get the whole story and to hear what Stewart had to tell the court you must read The Hidden Galleon.

Today, all references to the San Lorenzo have been deleted by the National Park Service but unfortunately writers are still relying on old material and referencing the make-believe ship as if it were real. The San Lorenzo hoax survives today. For more on Stewart's deception read The Hidden Galleon.