3/6/17 Report - Treasure Beach Conditions Report. Wreck of the Neva Explored.

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

Looking South From Turtle Trail Access Sunday Afternoon.

Down around the bend to the south there was a little bigger cut and just the top of a few bags were showing.

Looking North From Seagrape Access Sunday Afternoon.

I also looked at Rio Mar and Pepper Park Sunday afternoon.  Rio Mar was about the same as the above two locations.  Pepper Park showed even less promise.

I talked to one nice fellow at Turtle Trail who had looked at most of the beaches from Bonsteel down to Turtle Trail, and he said none of them looked much good.

As you might have noticed, the wind has shifted.  It is more now out of the east and tomorrow supposed to be more from the southeast.

I took a look at some of the South Hutchinson Island beaches this morning and they had not improved at all the past couple of days.

John Brooks Monday Morning.

John Brooks is not any better than it was too days ago - maybe a little worse.  Note the seaweed.

Most of the beaches I've looked at the past few days have a big protective pile of sand in front of the beach.  At low tide the surf is crashing on the front of the bar.

The surf will be decreasing daily for a week or so now.  I'm going to lower my Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Scale back to a 1 (poor).

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Archaeologists located the first traces of the Neva in 2012 when remains of cooking fires and Russian axes were found along the rugged coast of Kruzov Island. Beginning in August 2012, several attempts at underwater survey were conducted through the use of a marine magnetometer, sonar, and scuba dives. The dense kelp, iron-laden rocks, and frequent heavy seas, however, made these efforts all but impossible. Armed with a National Science Foundation grant and working closely with the Sitka Tribe of Alaska and U.S. Forest Service, specialists from the United States, Canada, and Russia returned to the site in 2015. Their excavations uncovered traces of an early Russian-period camp where the scientists recovered period navigator’s chart dividers, ships nails, and battered gunflints likely used to spark warming fires. Pieces of copper hull sheathing were found cut and fashioned into possible awls and a crude fishhook. Burned bone and shell at the site was found to be wild game and shellfish. Many artifacts were clearly those of the lost Neva crew. The team also discovered a previously unknown Tlingit camp, occupied at least 50 years after the shipwreck. 

In 2016 the team returned to further study the site. Eroded from the survivor’s camp was a scabbard fragment of bronze or brass, possibly from a Naval-style dirk or dagger. More scraps of copper hull sheathing were found, hammered into useful survival items. Additional cooking fires and food bones were found, confirming the Neva survivors were organized enough to send out parties to fish, scavenge, and even dispatch deer. The crew appeared to occupy a single large camp, possibly in makeshift tents or shelters salvaged from sailcloth and other wreckage....

Here is the link for more about that.

http://www.capitalcityweekly.com/stories/030117/ae_1273030087.shtml 

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

9/21/16 Report - Survivor Camps. Ribault. An 1813 Wreck Camp. Studying Survivor Camps.

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

Different beaches are different.  There are narrow beaches with a high cliff at the back, and there are wider beaches with only low dunes at the back.

The area from Turtle Trail to Wabasso has a narrow beach with a good cliff behind.  When the water gets high enough to erode the back dunes on a beach like that, coins and things will slide down the eroded cliff onto the beach.

John Brooks beach is another kind of beach.  It is wide, flat and has no cliff face on the back dunes.  When the water gets high enough to get to the dunes on a beach like this, which doesn't happen too often, the water generally just flows back and around the dunes and then down into the low spots.  By the time it gets to the dunes there isn't much water left.  As a result, beaches like John Brooks seldom have things washed out of the dunes and onto the beach.  It really takes a lot for erosion to reach back to the dunes.

Beaches like John Brooks seldom produce large denomination cobs.  More often you get small cobs, mostly 1/2 reales, 1 reales or 2 reales.  Beach shape is not the only factor though.

There were survivor camps in the dunes near the wrecks.  A survivor camp is not the same as a salvage camp, although they will often be found in the same locations and on top of each other. Salvage camps obviously come after survivor camps.

Salvage camps and survivor camps can sometimes be distinguished from each other by the types of artifacts, and when both occur at the same location, they might be distinguished by the distribution pattern.

Here is a paragraph from from an interesting NOAA article about the discovery and excavation of one survivor camp in the Cape Canaveral area.

During the winter of 1970-1971, a group of Central Florida relic hunters discovered an archaeological site on the western or inland shore of the outer barrier island in what is now Canaveral National Seashore. Over the next several months, the group explored the site and the surrounding area, locating two more related sites, all within 1.3 kilometers of each other.

Ship's spikes, jewelry and numerous 16th century Spanish and French coins were found by detectorists.

Douglas Armstrong, a member of the group that originally found the site, determined that the site might well be a survivor camp from the Ribault fleet.

(I've mentioned Douglas before in this blog. He also authored the book The Winter Beach Salvage Camp.)

You'll undoubtedly want to take a look at this NOAA web site.  Here is the link.

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/14lostfleet/background/survivor/survivor.html

They provide a map and pictures of artifacts and coins as well as more detail.

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Here are a couple paragraphs from another article that looks at a survivor camp.

...The archaeological team--which includes members from Russia, the U.S. and Canada--believes articles they found over the past two years represent the everyday tools used by 26 shipwrecked members of the Neva's crew. Those crew members survived for almost a month in the winter of 1813 by foraging and gathering materials that washed ashore from the wreck.

In July, researchers discovered at the campsite a series of hearths with early 19th century artifacts such as gun flints, musket balls, pieces of modified sheet copper, iron and copper spikes, a Russian axe, and a fishhook fashioned from copper. Well-preserved food middens--or refuse heaps--will allow reconstruction of the foraging strategies the sailors used to survive....

And here is that link.

https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=136012

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Here is an abstract of an article that suggests a systematic approach to the study of shipwreck survivor camps.

Shipwreck survivor camps are a neglected terrestrial component of maritime archaeology, usually being investigated purely as an adjunct to work on the associated wreck site. Most studies have considered these sites as individual and unique, molded by the particulars of the historic events that created them. However, by considering the history, anthropology, and archaeology of a series of Australasian survivor incidents and sites, this paper highlights common elements and themes, which allow examination of these sites within a comparative framework. These include the development of authority structures, social organization, salvage and subsistence strategies, material culture, short- and long-term rescue strategies, and the possible infl uences of crisis-related stress upon the decisions made by individuals and groups. Survivor camp studies are linked into the wider concerns of maritime archaeology and anthropology by placing them within the context of wreck formation models.

Here is the link to entire article.

http://sha.org/wp-content/uploads/files/sha/Journals%201967-2005/2000-2004/Vol%2037%20(2003)/37-1/37-1-10.pdf

Since the beach is an area where items from the dunes and from the water mingle, it is good to know a little about those very different areas and the items that come from them.

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Tropical depression Karl and tropical storm Lisa are still out there, but my guess is that neither will affect us.  Things could change though.

The surf is small today and expected to increase a couple of feet by the weekend.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

9/10/15 Report - 1813 Shipwreck Site Studied. Treasure Tracking. El Nino. Adventures of Sir Francis Drake.

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

Archaeologists are trying to locate the salvage camp and figure out how the survivors survived an 1813 shipwreck near Sitka.

...The nature of the artifacts seems to strongly indicate that survivors of the shipwreck were active in ensuring their own survival. They modified wreckage in desperation, but with ingenuity.

"Collectively, the artifacts reflect improvisation in a survival situation, and do not include ceramics, glass and other materials that would be associated with a settlement," McMahan said...

Here is the link for the story and which is also the source of the picture at the top of the post.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=136012&org=NSF&from=news

I've been talking a bit about how things come to be distributed after a shipwreck.  Part of that involves steps taken by the survivors to survive.  Some of the first items salvaged will be those most necessary for survival.  Some of those items will be modified and repurposed.

As you know, we have a few salvage camp areas along the Treasure Coast.  Some were used for quite a while.

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One of the early tourists to visit Florida was Sir Francis Drake.  He also visited Virginia and took tobacco home to England.

Here is an account of his quest for treasure at Nombre de Dios and Cartegena.  It is supposed to be an eye-witness account approved by Sir Francis himself.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2854/2854-h/2854-h.htm

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I often liken metal detecting to hunting wild game.  There are similarities, most especially when you are hunting older items.  To hunt old items most successfully, you have to know the signs, and how treasure travels and where it is most likely to be found.  Tracing its path and course is very much like stalking wild game.  That is something I enjoy.

I like hunting things.  It isn't any fun to go out and buy it at the store.  I don't really like spending.

I always think it is odd to see people clap when a bidder wins something at an auction.  The winner simply paid more than anyone else was willing to pay.  That might be an odd perspective, but paying more than anybody else just doesn't seem like a win to me.

I don't want to pay more for something than anybody else is willing to pay.  I'd prefer to find bargains.  I guess I just don't feel smart enough to find bargains at auctions attended by really serious collectors who know a lot more about the items than I do.  To do very well economically, and I know it isn't all about the economics, you'd have to be able to spot items that aren't fully appreciated by other bidders.  Of course if you love an item and just have to have to own it, I can see why you'd be perfectly content to pay more for it than anyone else.  And I suppose that if you do your homework, you just might spot a real bargain that no one else sees and end up doing very well.

If I was going to start a collection, I would try to find something that is fairly rare.  Maybe something like Panama cobs.  There aren't many of them.  They aren't so expensive that you have to be a millionaire to buy one.  And if you put together a small but good collection, study them and publicize them, you really have something that would appreciate in price.

One thing I don't like about some items, is that there might be a very limited number of them now, but some new discovery could make them much less rare.  I'd hate to have the only X, Y or Z, and then learn that ten more were discovered.  That could hurt, or it could possibly help if they were unique examples and all of a sudden became popular.  I'd prefer to know that if there is a limited number, a big new supply wouldn't likely come onto the market all of a sudden.

For the auction business it is fortunate that not everybody is like me. And I wouldn't even have said this if I thought I'd influence all the people who like paying for the things they collect.  I'm sure I won't change anybody's feelings or auction behavior, so no problem.

I could imagine building a collection to study, but probably won't at this point in my life.  Of the collectibles I have, most I've either found or they have some family history.

I find a lot of things that I use.  Most of my hats were found on a beach or somewhere.  You can find all kinds of hats in the wild.  I prefer to find things.

I was out walking down the river one day recently and came across a pair of ruined waders that some fisherman probably discarded.  I cut the boots off and now use the boots all the time.  I like to recycle like that.  I don't like waste.  You might say I'm cheap.  It is environmentally friendly.

I love auctions despite what I said above.  I like to study the collections.  Auctions provide an opportunity to look at things you might never see elsewhere.  And auctions tell you something about how other people value things.  If I fall in love with some item, I might even bid on it, but in the mean time, I'll mostly watch and study.

I'll continue to enjoy tracking my wild game. even if will look at it from time to time in the zoo.

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They are saying that El Nino is this year the strongest ever and will continue into 2016.  Whatever pattern we've been having it certainly has kept our beaches building near continually for at least two years now.

The next two or three days on the Treasure Coast, the winds will be continually shifting about every two or so hours. That is all to little effect though.  We'll have something like a two foot surf.  The tides are not as high now either.

Henri is still out there but will not affect us much.  The National Hurricane Center isn't showing any other tropical weather in the Atlantic except for one disturbance barely off the coast of Africa.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net