10/4/18 Report - Sheathing on Early Ships. Treasure Coast Beaches. Erosion at One Beach.

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

Treasure Coast Beach This Morning.

With the rougher surf we've been having lately, I've been checking the beaches more often for you.  Very little has changed.  Even though the surf has been bigger, the waves have been hitting consistently from the east.  As a result, we've had almost no erosion.

There is still seaweed and the beaches are pretty mushy.  At John Brooks, and I suspect elsewhere, there was a little more scalloping.  

The surf this morning didn't look any more than six feet to me.  Maybe it will get higher later.  

Surf This Morning a Little Before Low Tide.

I just looked at three beaches on South Hutchinson Island this morning.

Breaking Swells.

At Fort Pierce South Jetty Park, there was some erosion and one fellow was metal detecting.  There were a good number of coins and a few other things.

Erosion South of Fort Pierce Jetty.

As I mentioned the other day, you can find erosion around rocks and other obstructions.

This sand is new renourishment sand but still there were good numbers of coins.

Source: nhc.noaa.gov

Leslie is still hanging around but won't affect us much, other than sending some more of the same.

The system down by Central America could come up into the Gulf.  That remains to be seen.

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Two Large Crumpled Pieces of Copper Sheathing Dug on the Treasure Coast.

I've talked about sheathing used on ships before and wanted to post something I found in a book I've been reading -  Six Galleons for the King of Spain by Carla Phillips.

… To protect against shipworms, tarred cloth and a thin layer of lead sheathing were often nailed to the hull below the water line.  As a final step, the entire hull was coasted with a  mixture of tar and some of grease...

I've talked about the transitions in sheathing before and I've shown some dug lead sheathing as well.  It is not uncommon for cloth marks to be found on the lead.

The six ships discussed in this book were built between 1625 and 1628.

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We're still supposed to have more high surf, but I'm not expecting much improvement in beach detecting conditions.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@ comcast.net

2/2/18 Report - One Eroding Beach That Serves As A Good Illustration. Best Overall Treasure Coast Treasure Hunting Book. Pirate Fest.

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

Fort Pierce South Jetty Park.
Photo by Joe D.

I've posted a lot about the Fort Pierce South Jetty Park lately.  While it is not a place where you will find a lot of treasure coins, it is interesting as an illustration of beach erosion.  It erodes a lot!  It seems like they renourish it all the time but it just keeps eroding.

Joe D. sent me these photos along with the following email message.

Just wanted to show you what i saw and why i hunted South Beach Park the other day! This was the only beach i looked at that day that had both a mid beach cut, and a firm beach with shells and rocks! While i didn't spend a bunch of time there, at least i was able to locate some coins and such!

Also, the picture of Ft Pierce South Jetty Park shows a higher tide verson of what Gaylen C. Sent that you posted! I've hunted there before, but this time i noticed that MOST of the rocks that are exposed are not from lower beach erosion (older sand erosion) but from the fill that keeps eroding from the cliff! ( newer sand erosion) It is very rocky fill and can be deceiving, in that it looks older than it is when it runs out toward the ocean! I hope that makes sense! I know its hunted a lot, and i haven't found much there at all!

I was having few issues with my detector setup that day, and was wondering if it was hindering my hunt, or weather the combination of poor conditions, and the number of detectorists that hunt the area where some of the reason for so few finds! So I hunted a park near home with same setup to iron out the kinks! I was there about two hours and did ok, and fixed some issues! ( Pic) So my conclusion is that all factors are correct!...

Fort Pierce South Jetty Park
Photo by Joe D.

There are two steps on this beach.  This is the mid-beach cut that Joe referred to.  The larger cliff is at the back of the beach.

Notice also the small wind blown sand ridges by the footprints.  The ridges will run about perpendicular to the wind direction.

This beach isn't a good indicator beach.  It will erode when there is very little other erosion on the Treasure Coast.

Rocks and Shells Near the Water Line.
Photo by Joe D.

Although the rocks are coming from the fill, they are from very old material.  I think it was dug from the intercoastal near the port, but there is definitely some VERY old stuff in that fill.

Joe's Finds.

I always recommend that you pay attention to what is being found and what is not being found.  The first thing that jumps out to me is the lack of nickels. 

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I just read through Numismatic Archaeology of North America: a Field Guide by Akin, Bard and Akin, published 2016.  It might be OK for an archaeology student, but it didn't provide any real revelations for me.  There were a few interesting ideas, but it sure wouldn't be worth the purchase price, which is quite lofty.  There wasn't much about actual sites, and nothing about the Spanish Colonial sites or the Treasure Coast shipwrecks.  Most of the author's experience seemed to be related to shell money and Asian money found on the west coast of the United States.

One of the more interesting points was about the various uses of money.  Coins can be many things besides circulating currency.  That discussion was interesting.  A coin, as you know, can be sewn to clothing and used in fashion, or used as a votive or religious offering, and for various other purposes.

One thing they mentioned that caught my attention because I have long wondered how coins found on the beach get bent in half.   I read that coins were sometimes bent as a superstitious way of changing ones luck.  It could be that some were intentionally bent for that purpose, although I think there are ways that they can get bent by nature.  I've mentioned that once or twice before.

As is often the case, the bibliography of the book is the biggest value of the book.

If you want to read about Treasure Coast treasure hunting in general, there is one book that I recommend above all others.  It is The Rainbow Chasers Tricentennial Yearbook by T. L. Armstrong and Tommy Gore.  It is published by Sigmum Ops.  240 jam packed 8.5 by 11 pages.

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Pirate Fest starts today at Veterans Memorial Park in Fort Pierce.  It runs Feb. 2 through Feb. 4.

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... The FBI once sent a high-level official to Facebook, begging for some of its personal information — information on private citizens...

And now, besides having our phone numbers and addresses and birthdays and a list of our friends and our personal histories and our credit-card numbers (if we use it for Facebook “boosts”), as well as logging what we read and chat about, Zuckerberg’s company is ready to sell hardware with microphones and cameras that would be placed in your home. Meanwhile, both Facebook and Twitter send certain posts to target customers who they deem are extremists to counter their views....

Here is a link for the rest of that article.

http://spiritdaily.org/blog/commentary/little-big-brother

I don't use Facebook.  I very much resent how companies such as Facebook and Google try to get as much of your information as they can.  They don't need that second phone number, or any phone number for that matter, and they don't need your social security number unless you do a certain amount of business, but they'll get it if they can.  If there is anything to resist these days, I would rank that as being one of the top ones.

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I don't expect any real change in beach conditions today.  We are still having big tides.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/30/18 Report - Big Tides and Super Blue Blood Moon Jan. 31. Tumbling Coins. An Excellent Beach Illustration.

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

Fort Pierce South Jetty Park Monday
Photo by Gaylen C.

Gaylen C. sent in these great photos of South Jetty Park.  They show the different zones of the beach and how different types of material get piled up in different areas.  The same thing happens with coins and other objects.  They are distributed according to density, shape and the force of water as it increases and decreases at different locations.

South Jetty Park Monday
Photo by Gaylen C.

Here is how Gaylen described it.

Went to check out Fort Pierce again. This was a completely different look as far as the beach went . Very wide low tide, there was a long trough running down the beach that was probably the first drop off under the waves yesterday. A long, wide band of shells ran near the waters edge. A couple of really big scalloped areas to the south, which started an increasing south to north flow in the trough as the tide started to come in. Lot's of debris, a couple of the black sandbags. The dunes had been cut back to vertical and 7-8 ft again at the north end near the jetty, but looked more filled in ,or collapsed, going south. saw one other detectorist in the north corner. I went first to the trough, then the shells at the waters edge. Sand was like quicksand along most of the ocean side of the trough. Really soft dark sand. 

Fort Pierce South Jetty Park Monday.
Photo by Gaylen C.

Thanks for sharing Gaylen.  Great photos.

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Nearly Antique Tumbler With Newly Cleaned Coins.

Above you see an old tumbler with a load of newly tumbled coins.  I don't know how long I've had that tumbler.

Be careful about the coins you tumble.  If a coin is encrusted or something so that you have no idea what it is, don't just throw it in the tumbler.  I once made the mistake of tumbling an old 1715 Fleet pendant that looked like an encrusted coin before it was tumbled.  Good idea to check the coins frequently too.  No use in over tumbling.  For clad you just want them clean enough to inspect and spend.  You don't want to tumble nice old coins or other objects.

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For the first time in 150 years you will have the chance to see a Super Blue Blood Moon on January 31.

...The last Blue Moon occurred in July 2015 and in 2018, we'll experience two of them, a phenomena that won't happen for another 19 years. The second Blue Moon is slated to occur in late March.

The Blood Moon occurs because the Earth is passing between the Moon and the Sun, which gives the Moon a reddish tint to it. It's caused by light bending around the Earth because of gravity passing around a portion of the atmosphere, more commonly known as a lunar eclipse.

A Blue Moon combined with a Supermoon (when the Moon is at its closest point to Earth and appears to be 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than normal) the rare phenomena is called a Super Blue Blood Moon happens. Supermoons generally only occur once every 14 months and will not happen again until January 2019...
Here is the link for more information about that.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/01/29/super-blue-blood-moon-2018-what-when-and-where.html

Along with all of that, we are going to have some big high and low tides.  You can see the nice low tides that have already started in the photos today.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

12/8/17 Report - Erosion at One Renourished Beach. Ole Timer Talk: Crate of Dishes. Benefit of Reading Broadly.

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

Fort Pierce South Jetty Beach Erosion
Photo by Gaylen C.

You might remember Gaylen's find that looked something like a Marlinespike or maybe an engraving tool.  Galen sent a message and some photos from his hunt yesterday.  Here is what he had to say.

Went back to the same area as my relic find. Found another nail or spike, but it may prove to be fairly modern. Lots of signals. Picked up a few things. The dunes look like this from the south jetty for a long way and then gets a little more slope. High tide was within a foot or so of dune. Really undercut in some places, with lots of sand falling to the foot. Several different layers showing. The piece I got was among larger rocks at the base.

The following photo shows how high the cliff is and the various layers.  Note the rocks at the bottom of the cliff.

Thanks for the report and photos Gaylen.

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Brain M. sent the following Ole Timer Talk.

Here is a quick little treasure story that happened to an old friend of mine 20 + years ago on the treasure coast. He was out metal detecting after a storm . Big cut on the beach and if I remember correctly it was at night. He noticed something that stood out as strange. There partially exposed in the wall of the cut was a stack of dishes. He told me when he saw it he figured that someone had a pic-nick back in the 1930’s   and must have left them on the beach. He didn’t mess with them he was looking for coins and metal. Days later he was talking to another treasure hunter and was told of Chinese porcelain dishes were cargo. I don’t remember what dynasty he said it was from. He told me they looked like they were stacked and the crate must have rotted away and left the stack of dishes in the wall of the cut. From what he told me they were worth a fortune had he only known what he was looking at. When he went back the sand was in and the cut was gone. We wonder if they are still there waiting to be found intact or did the incoming sand and surf knock them out and smash them to bits.

We most likely will never know.

Thanks Brian.

A stack of well preserved Kang Hsi porcelain would indeed be worth a lot.

I've been very much surprised by how often I already know something about these accounts that go back twenty years or more or the people involved.

I knew the fellow who found the eight escudo in Clint's account, for example, and I also heard about these plates.  I don't remember now when or where I heard about the plates, but I think I might have even posted something about them in this blog years ago.

The lesson Brian's account provides is that you should get to know as much as you can about various types of treasure so you will recognize them and their possible significance when you see them in the field. There have been a lot of times when I failed to recognize something good.  I regret some of those failures to this day.

One example that came to mind yesterday was the time when I was on Pigeon Island at a battle site from right around 1800 when I dug a rusted twisted piece of metal that I later realized was the hammer from a flintlock.  Right beside that piece was a squared piece of flint.  I can see it in my mind's eye today.  I was hanging on the side of a steep cliff, with an old Tesoro detector, which I fitted out with a short board as a rod stem.  ( The short stem helped since the face of the cliff was right in front of my face.)  I was using a screw driver as a dig tool.

I didn't pay much attention to either the rusted metal item or the flint when I dug them.  I wish I had realized their significance and kept them.  If I found the same items today, I know I would have kept them, and better realizing their significance, I also would have hunted the immediate area more thoroughly to find other pieces of the musket or other items.

It is easy to get so focused on coins or some other particular kind of target that you miss other types of items that can actually be more valuable, not to mention being significant clues.

Those dishes, as Brian pointed out, could have been worth a lot, but they were ignored because of a lack of that realization.  They could have also been a clue that other good things might have been buried in the area.

I didn't know what my first fossil find was, but I kept it.  I just kept it out of curiosity.  I didn't find out what it was until probably at least ten years later.  I undoubtedly passed up other fossil finds before that one, not knowing what they were.

I also failed to recognize the first enameled ring I found from a 1715 Fleet wreck site.  I thought it was modern because I incorrectly thought that enameling was a modern process.  Even though it was gold and very attractive, I didn't pay very much attention to it when I dug it.  I just slipped it into my pocket not thinking much of it because I was targeting shipwreck items.  How wrong I was!

Enameling is actually a very old process.  In fact it is believed to go back to at least the 13th century BC. (See https://www.ganoksin.com/article/earliest-cloisonne-enamels/)

I used to hear people say that if something is plated, it is not hundreds of years old because plating is a fairly modern process.  That might be true of some types of plating, but gold and silver gilding is a very old process.

I think you get the point.  Knowing something about a wide variety of types of objects can be very helpful.  The failure to recognize items you see in the field can be a big mistake.

I'm sure I sometimes talk about items that a lot of people are not interested in.  You might not have any interest in iron artifacts, for example, but those rusted old items might provide important clues to a site and other types of treasure.  They might also hold more economic value than you think. 

You might not be interested in sea glass, but a piece of black glass washed up on a beach might be a good clue to the presence of other historic items nearby.  If you do a lot of reading, you might be better prepared to recognize various kinds of treasure when you see them and be better able to interpret what the item is telling you about the site.

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We're going to be getting a cold front.  The wind will be coming from the north for a couple of days, but the surf will be small.  The tides are pretty good yet.

Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net

2/19/16 Report - Rougher Surf But Little Erosion In Most Places But Some Exceptions.

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

Surf On Treasure Coast Beach

The surf was up today.  Somewhere around 4 - 6 feet.  Unfortunately the surf is already hitting directly from the east.

Not much erosion around most of the Treasure Coast.  Above is a typical beach.  Note the small amount of sea weed.

It looked like later yesterday that there might have been some cutting, but then after that some filling.

The last high tide came up over the berm in some places.

John Brooks Beach Looking South This Morning Before Low Tide.

John Brooks Beach Looking North Before Low Tide This Morning

In the photo immediately above you can see a little erosion.  This beach is not very different from what it was a few days ago.  

The sand on this beach in front of the berm is very soft.

The water had been up over the berm here.

I would not be surprised if there were a spot or two that was better.  I didn't get around to a lot of the beaches.

The areas south of inlets and jetties have been losing sand though.

Take a look at the beach south of the Fort Pierce inlet.

Fort Pierce South Jetty Beach This Morning.

There is a seven or eight foot cliff here.  I'd say the beach has eroded back 50 to 100 yards here in a few months.  

Erosion Running Hundreds of Yards.

This sand doesn't appear to be as junky as the sand that was here in the past.

I sampled this area with a detector some today.  Some coins were laying along the foot of the cliff. Lower on the beach was more iron junk but also a few other things. 

Cliff at South Jetty Beach Park.

People were walking along inspecting the cliff for shells and things.

There have been times when old items were found in the renourishment sand here.  I haven't seen any evidence of that lately.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

10/8/15 Report - Just A Quick Post This Evening On Beach Conditions.

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

Douglass Beach This Evening.

John Brooks Beach This Evening

I've been busy the past couple of days and just got a chance to get out to the beach this evening.  Just got a little time to check it out.  I only had enough time to look at South Hutchinson Island.  There were no significant cuts at either of those beaches.  There was a little scalloping.

The main thing is how high the water got.  It was farther back on the beach than it has been for a long time.  As you know these beaches have built all summer.

The water was high enough that I'm sure you can find a few interesting spots, such as around rocks, jetties or other obstructions.  Maybe even a few places where the beach angle is just right.

As you know, many beaches are still covered with renourishment sand.  Most erosion will be either where there are obstructions or where the renourishment sand is washing away.

Here is an example of what is happening south of one jetty.  As you now this beach which was renourished a few months ago.

Fort Pierce South Jetty Park

There was about a three foot cut that ran for a couple hundred yards here.

There were pennies and other things about three of four feet to the east of the foot of the cut.  There were pieces of metal all along the cut coming out of the renourishment sand.

In summary, I haven't seen enough to upgrade my beach detecting conditions rating yet.  I'll try to get a chance to take a look at some of the other beaches soon, but that is all for tonight.

I also received a variety of good emails and have some other things to discuss.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net