Thursday, June 18, 2015

6/18/15 Report - Spanish Armada Wreck Uncovered. More T. C. Hurricane Damage Pics. Soup Treasure.


Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Cannon Recovered From Ship Of Spanish Armada
Source: UTV link on this site.

Spanish Armada ships were wrecked off the Sligo coast in 1588 as the crews made their way towards England to invade it.
The artefacts recently became exposed due to stormy weather off the west coast in the last two years. The Department were alerted to this in April 2015 after the local community and the Grange Armada Development Association reported that a large number of ship timbers were being washed ashore.
Dive surveys have been ongoing since then and an action plan was established to preserve the exposed material...
When was it that toredo eaten old shipweck wood was being washed up on some of our beaches?  Seems like a couple of years ago now.
I just looked it up.  It was longer than that.  It was 2011.  (See my 9/5/11 post, for example.)  It was longer than I thought  - nearly four years.
Here is the link for the article on the Spanish Armada article.
http://utv.ie/News/2015/06/17/Spanish-Armada-artefacts-retrieved-from-the-ocean-39279

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I often talk about the signs of treasure.  If you see really old wood being washed up, that can be a good sign of not only a nearby shipwreck, but also could indicate changed bottom conditions.  That wood could have been covered by sand, perhaps in the water, for a long time before it was uncovered and washed up onto the beach.

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Wabasso Picture

Mitch King sent these pictures o Wabasso beach as it looked after Hurricane Frances.

Mitch said, Then after Hurricane Jean, all of this was gone along with the bathrooms. 

That is a lot of erosion.

Thanks for the pictures Mitch.

Look under the pier in the second picture and you'll see how that was scooped out.





I've been asked what do conditions have to look like when there would be a 5 rating on my Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions Scale.  Well, this would be one example.  It wouldn't take that much though.

I think since I started with my beach conditions rating scale back in 2008 or whatever it was, I've only issued a 4 rating a very few times.  I'm sure we haven't had a 5 since then.

In fact it has been a very long time since we've had as much as a 2.  The past couple of years haven't been very good for finding older things, and that is an understatement.

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Yesterday's post did more than answer the question that was posed.  It also told you the type of things that will create really great beach detecting conditions, even if we don't have a hurricane.

The storm was stationary off our coast for days producing sustained gusts of 40 or so miles per hour hitting from the north/northeast, along with twenty foot swells.  All of that coincided with unusually high tides.

If you read that NOAA report carefully enough, you can actually learn more about the meteorology of it all.

I hope somebody will send me some pictures of the beach after the Thanksgiving Storm of 1984.

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Remember the myth, “Be careful eating clam chowder, you may bite into a pearl”? In this case it’s true and it’s a rare quahog pearl. They are so rare only four are known to have been found since 2002 and all were found while eating or cleaning clams. A fifth pearl was sold in 2015 but had been found a few years before in a bowl of chowder. The quahog pearls are lavender and lustrous and big enough to mount in a ring. They finally sold it to a Japanese collector for $16,500. The pearls are so rare it was difficult to set a value. This is the first price we have seen.
Source: Latest KovelsKomments.
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Not too long ago I called for the start of the Environmental Metal Detecting Movement and today I read that the Pope said the earth is becoming a garbage dump.  If you are a detectorist you are probably more aware of the garbage spread covering the earth than most people.  Most people don't see all of be buried pull tabs, sinkers, fish hooks, beer cans etc.  If the recovery of jewelry, artifacts and money were not enough, removing a little trash each time you detect will be help clean up our beaches and improve the environment.  As I've pointed out before, a lot of the junk can be recycled and turned into cash, including thins such as aluminum and lead.  Returning coins to circulation also saves U. S. dollars.  While I don't want to dwell on this point, I think we'd be wise for the metal detecting community to publicize the many hidden benefits of the metal detecting hobby.

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In the forecast for the Treasure Coast I see nothing but a one foot surf predicted well into next week.  South winds bringing us more warm air too.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net