Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Gold Found on Treasure Coast Beach by Ken A. After Irma. |
You might remember the Irma 1715 Fleet beach gold find made by Ken A.. I showed it just a few days ago. Here it is again.
I noticed a piece of oro corriente in the Sedwick auction and thought it looked very similar to Ken's find.
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| Lot 20 in Current Sedwick Auction. |
Here is the description of the auctioned piece.
Gold "oro corriente" cut piece with choice full "f" stamp for Ferdinand V of Spain, 80.10 grams, from an unidentified early 1500s wreck in the Caribbean. 1-5/8" x 1/2" x 1/2". Rectangular edge-cut of a thick gold disk of undetermined fineness (probably around 20K), with three sides (all but the outer edge) crystalline in texture (broken, not sliced), granular bottom but smooth top marked with partial circular tax stamp and full "f" in box, believed to be one of the earliest markings known on "oro corriente" pieces (used in place of coins in areas where coins were not yet made or available), with small spots of black but otherwise fairly clean. From an unidentified early 1500s wreck in the Caribbean.
It looks like Ken's piece could be a piece cut off a larger piece. It would not be easy to see if there are any marks inside the rolled piece, but Ken should take a good look for any sign of a mark. I'm sure he did.
Ken's piece could have been intentionally bent for easy concealment or other uses or bent by the forces of nature over the years.
Anyhow, it looks to me like that could possibly be what Ken's find is. Or maybe just a cut piece.
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A few days ago I briefly talked about this Atocha silver bar that is being auctioned in the current Sedwick treasure auction. The stick-figure TA monogram. or what the auction catalog calls a cartouche, is the kind of thing that really interests me. It indicates a specific person, the owner/shipper. In this case the owner/shipper was a man named Tirajo. I decided to look into the subject of such owner/shipper marks a little more. It turns out that they have been well studied and there is a lot of documentation on them.
There were 1,038 ingots on the Atocha. A number of ingots were from Potosi, but the above ingot was from Oruro.
A register of the Atocha cargo was maintained by the silver master, Jacove de Vreder.
Corey Malcom did an article entitled Simon de Torres' Shipment of Five Silver Ingots Aboard the 1622 Galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which was published in The Navigator: The Newsletter of the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society, Vol. 23, No. 1, January/February 2007.
The five ingots that were the subject of Malcom's study were owned by another private shipper, Simon de Torres. Here is what Malcom's study has to say about those ingots.
All of those ingots bear Torres’ distinctive “TR” sigla, along with mintmarks, tax stamps, fineness values, registry numbers, and assayer’s bites. Each bar in this shipment also bears marks whose purposes are not recorded or understood. Chief among these, a large “V” is believed to be the mark of the Atocha’s silvermaster Jacove de Vreder, who would have stamped this after registering the ingot. (An alternate theory suggests that it might be a Roman numeral five, symbolic of the quinto, a tax of one-fifth the value of the bar.) Most of the Atocha silver ingots bear this particular mark. Also, a cross, which is found on these particular bars in association with the “V” stamp, suggesting it had some sort of official function. Two other stamped marks are a small, well-defined Omega near the assayer’s bite on bar number 346, and an unusual “X” near the bite of bar number 342. It is assumed these two also served an official function because of their purposeful placement so near the assayer’s sample.
Here is an illustration explaining the various marks on the silver bars.
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| Source: Malcom Study See link below. |
It is not often you can find so much information about a treasure find. It is fortunate that the treasure is so well marked and the ship's manifest is available to document these pieces. In my opinion, that makes the treasure much more valuable. Not only do we have the existing bars, which have been salvaged, but we can also track them to a particular person, source and destination.
Although we know much about the five salvaged silver bars that Simon de Torres was shipping, we don't know what happened to him. Maybe he was lost at sea like his five silver bars that were salvaged in 1985.
Here is the link to the Malcom study.
http://www.melfisher.org/pdf/Torres_Five_Silver_Ingots_Atocha.pdf
The study is not long but very informative. You might want to read it.
The registered silver bars on the Atocha were generally well marked like those of Simon de Torres. Not all silver bars being sent to Spain from the New World were so well marked. Below are two more examples from the Sedwick auction.
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| Lot 217 Current Sedwick Auction. |
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| Lot 218 Current Sedwick Auction. |
Sometimes there are multiple marks, indicating multiple shipper/owners. Sometimes one mark would be over top of another, perhaps indicating transfer of ownership.
The information found on these bars is unusual and provides an excellent starting place for additional research on the individuals and history of the New World.
You'll find, though, that not all silver bars are so well marked. Some silver ingots and bars are not marked at all, perhaps being smuggled and therefore not listed on the ship's manifest.
Here is another Atocha silver bar.
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| Source: Christies web site. See link below. |
http://www.christies.com/features/Jill-Waddel-examines-a-silver-ingot-from-a-shipwreck-8022-1.aspx
You'll find a variety of Atocha bars on the internet, many with the kinds of cartouches you see above.
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On the Treasure Coast today we have a four to six foot surf. The temperature is a little lower. That is nice. The swell will be from the east.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
