No weather satellites or NOAA back then. But, the Spanish Crown was so desperate for the money they kept tempting the fates.
The amount of gold ever mined in history could form a cube that would just about cover a tennis court. About half of that has been mined since about 1960. The Spanish still managed to pull gold out of the ground at a greater rate than any entity in history up to their time, and during their peak centuries of production, probably doubled the total world supply of mined gold, not even including the relatively small amounts they lost to shipwreck. It's staggering to contemplate.