- on balconies. "Purists feel that a fortress city
should
- be "more like a barracks. "Others sigh, sneer,
roll
- their eyes.
- Everyone agrees on one point-six years ago a
- Jacob ´s ladder of telephone and power lines was final-
- ly buried beneath the streets, "like dentists´ work."
- Now the old city has become a favorite location for
- motion-picture companies.
- Indeed, here the dimming past seems cinematic.
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- "Francis Drake stayed
- in this house. They
- called him sir, but
- he was a common
- pirate, "Don Donaldo
- tells me. He scorns
- the privateer who in
- 1586 took the city and
- and held it for hand-
- some ransom.
- Pirate. Local folk
- use the word to refer
- to all acquisitive
- invaders, including
- Commodore Charles
- Wager, who brought
- his squadron of four
- British ships in 1708 to
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- stalk a Spanish treasure convoy. In a wild sea
- battle fought by dark of night, Wager's guns hit
- the great Spanish galleon San José. The powder
- magazine apparently exploded, and the ship sank, as
- magazine apparently exploded, and the ship sank, as
- one witness said, "in the short time it takes to pray a
- credo." The human loss was calamitous: "no more
- Men saved...than 17 out of 7 or 800," according to
- the official London Gazette, or, as others counted, 11
- out of 600.
-
-
 REASURE was another matter: perhaps
- five million gold pesos, seven million sil-
- ver, and the private wealth and jewelry of
- passengers. The modern value could be three
- bgillion dollars.
- And where is the treasure now? Maybe 30 miles
- outside the Cartagena harbor at a depth of 750 feet.
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- Imposing portal of
- the Palace of the Inquisition
- dwarfs historian Donaldo
- Bossa Herazo (facing
- page). The building-
- Cartagena´s best example
- of colonial baroque archi-
- tecture-housed a tribu-
- nal with power over most
- of Spain´s Caribbean pos-
- sessions. Nearby, a vendor
- sells snacks by the origi-
- nal city wall outside the
- Church of San Pedro
- Claver.
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