Another Piece of an Old Plank Found on a Treasure Coast Beach.This one has what appears to be the rusted head of an iron spike to the right of the penny. The same spike seems to be broken off but visible on the other side.
You can also see a hole where a pin or something once was to the northwest of the penny in the middle of the dark brown area. There is some iron residue in that hole.
Emails that I received showed an interest in the piece of wood that I showed yesterday, so I decided to show another.
Also, I wanted to mention another wood find. One of the more interesting is an ornate trailboard found by John Brandon in the Vero Beach area. That piece was about four feet long and in very good condition.
It was preserved in such good condition because it was buried under five feet of sand and two feet of mud.
Items can remain buried for many many years. Depending upon what they are buried in, they can be very well preserved.
Beach and water hunters are very much dependent upon the movement of sand to uncover items like that.
Of course the piece of plank that appears in the photo today could be detected because of the piece of iron spike still attached to it. It could be missed by a metal detector if the detectorist discriminates iron.
Oh, the ornate trailboard is discussed as an important clue in Laura Strolia's book The Marigalera of the 1715 Fleet, which can be purchased at Amazon.com in time for Christmas. It is a nice little book with lots of good information.
Beachcombing has a long history going back at least 3000 or so years. One nice article that I found discusses how indigenous people scanned the beaches for shells, fossils, and would you believe, oil that ended up on the beach as the result of natural seepage from underwater locations.
I think you'll enjoy this article "littorally." Pun intended.
Here is the link.
http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/coast/prehistory/images/beachcombing.html
It is interesting to think that people today search the beaches and find things that were found and used by people that searched the beaches thousands of years ago.
Beachcombing is an activity that seems to be natural to the nature of man and points somewhere beyond.
I've noticed that people haven't been registering as followers to this blog since I haven't been displaying the follower photos. You can still register as a follower from the main blog display. Just click on "FOLLOW" at the top of the page. Maybe I'll display the photos again. The main page got pretty full.
Forecast and Conditions.
The seas are now down to around two feet. The weather is beautiful. The high tides are still fairly high.
It could be interesting to check the beach fronts at low tide and look in the shallow water. Maybe even do some water hunting, where permitted.
Don't ask where that is. I've posted on that in the past.
Conditions won't change significantly this week. Expect calm seas for the rest of the week.
Happy Thanksgiving.
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
