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$1 million in gold from Spanish boats that shipwrecked 300 years ago
TopographicOceans
Posts: 6,535 ✭✭✭✭
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TopographicOceans
Posts: 6,535 ✭✭✭✭
TopographicOceans
Posts: 6,535 ✭✭✭✭
TopographicOceans
Posts: 6,535 ✭✭✭✭
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The diving video is a little scary, watching the guy wipe the coins with his finger...
<< <i>A Florida family who has hunted treasure for years found more than $1 million worth of gold artifacts this summer from the wreckage of a 1715 Spanish fleet that sank in the Atlantic, according to a salvage company’s estimate.
The find included 51 gold coins of various denominations and 40 feet (12 meters) of ornate gold chain, said Brent Brisben, whose company, 1715 Fleet – Queens Jewels LLC, owns the rights to the wreckage.
The Schmitt family - parents Rick and Lisa and their two children and daughter-in-law - who hunt for treasure off their salvage vessel Aarrr Booty, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Brisben said Rick and Lisa's 27-year-old son, Eric, found and recovered the pieces in June.
Brisben said he timed the announcement to coincide with Friday’s 300th anniversary of the sinking of 11 galleons brought down by a hurricane off the coast of Florida as the convoy was sailing from Havana to Spain.
Eric Schmitt found the artifacts in 15 feet (4-1/2 meters) of water off Fort Pierce, approximately 130 miles (210 km) north of Miami.
The Spanish convoy’s manifests indicated the ships carried cargo valued today at about $400 million, of which $175 million has been recovered, Brisben said.
His company bought the rights to the site in 2010 from heirs of the legendary treasure hunter Mel Fisher and the firm allows others, including the Schmitts, to search under subcontract agreements.
The centerpiece of the Schmitt’s latest find is a perfect specimen of a coin called a royal made for Spain's King Phillip V and dated 1715. Only a few royals were known to exist, according to a news release from Brisben’s company.
The gold chains are made of small, handcrafted, two-sided links of six-petaled olive blossoms. They were called money chains and are believed to have been used as a tax-free coinage, the news release said.
Under federal and state law, Florida will take possession of up to 20 percent of the find for display in a state museum. Brisben’s company and the Schmitt family will split the reminder, Brisben said. >>
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/27/us-usa-florida-treasure-idUSKCN0Q128720150727
<< <i>What a thrill such a find must be..... what kid never dreamed of finding buried treasure? Some of us still seek the proverbial 'pot of gold'...Cheers, RickO >>
+1 Ricko.
Cool!
and then they likely have to pay a boat load of taxes on the rest...and then considering the money they had to pay for the rights
to salvage(subcontract agreements), all of the expenses associated with the discovery and recovery...I wonder how much they REALLY end up with.
Almost seems sad in a way.
Looking for Top Pop Mercury Dime Varieties & High Grade Mercury Dime Toners.
Thanks for sharing!
15 feet of water no less!
Happy, humble, honored and proud recipient of the “You Suck” award 10/22/2014
Kind of funny listening to him yell "Alright! Oh yeah!" underwater.
Check out my iPhone app SlabReader!
<< <i>Oh, snap. Is that a royal strike in the middle of that picture? >>
Good eye LordM
That's the $500k jewel
<< <i>http://www.naplesnews.com/news/state/more-than-1m-in-gold-discovered-off-fort-pierce-from-1715-treasure-fleet_57930250
Kind of funny listening to him yell "Alright! Oh yeah!" underwater. >>
I believe that that film is a re-enactment, with coins placed back on the bottom to be found, as at one point he pokes into a fresh hole in the sand to pull out a coin while ignoring other coins in plain sight. They also appear to have been already cleaned.
As a recreational scuba diver, anything over about 90 feet gets tricky (have been below 150, briefly, with normal tanks and equipment, and it was trippy)
Neat find, must be really exciting once the wreck is located to go back for more..
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
Wow. Dreamy stuff.
OK, so this thread is over a year old, and I stumbled across it again while looking in vain for something else with the absolutely useless new search feature, but I thought that picture in the OP alone rendered it worthy of a resurrection.
Wow. Dreamy stuff.
Threads of historical interest are always welcome for return as they are timeless. Assume I am one of many who missed this the first time around.
It would be interesting to learn though the status of these coins now a year later. Have any been offered for sale to the public? Did the State of Florida ever put on public display their 20%?
I still have a treasure coin that I personally purchased from Mel Fisher years ago when he was in my state on a promotional tour so it was of added interest to read of his connection to the more recently found treasure subject of this thread.