Reassessing sixteenth and seventeenth century written accounts of hurricanes in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea

While the North Atlantic’s five‐century hurricane history is among the most complete globally, the earliest centuries are poorly documented in the written record. This study reassesses a subset of sixteenth to seventeenth‐century tropical cyclones (TCs) through a systematic review of archival evidence, mainly from Spain’s colonial archive, the Archivo General de Indias (AGI) and other colonial sources. Thirty‐nine TCs are confirmed between 1509 and 1657, including five newly identified and reclassified events. Thirty‐nine percent (7 of 18) of reassessed previously published hurricanes using AGI sources required corrections. These findings improve the early Atlantic hurricane record and strengthen its reliability.