12/4/19 Report - Flintlocks Found on Treasure Coast 1715 Fleet Beaches. Metal Detecting Lesson Learned Hard Way.

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

Yesterday I ended up talking about the wheellock and the fact that none have been found around Florida.  At the time they were used, they were thought to be unreliable and were not used much in the New World by the Spanish.

Next came the flintlock, the miquelet being an early version of the flintlock.  

Lock of Miquelet Pistol.

You can easily see the flint being held in the lock by what in this case looks like maybe a piece of leather where you would often see a piece of lead.

You can often tell a Spanish flintlock from those made in other countries.  Spanish made miquelets were more boxy, while those made by some of the other countries were more curved and graceful in appearance.

Don't forget that Spanish galleons were provisioned by equipment from many countries, so if something isn't Spanish that doesn't mean that it didn't come from a Spanish treasure ship.

If you want to know more about the parts of a miquelet lock, click here to see a good video.

So what has been found in and around Florida waters?  First here is what Noel Wells' book Small Arms of the Spanish Treasure Fleets says about that.

As I said yesterday, matchlocks have been found on the 1622, 1715, and even the 1733 wreck sites, and never, according to Wells, has a wheellock been found in or around Florida waters.

* 24 French cavalry pistols (flintlocks) were found on one 1715 shipwreck site.  Some were totally encrusted.

*A miquelet musket stock (broken in the area where the lock would have been) was found on a 1715 fleet site.

* A 1660s era miquelet pistol from a 1715 site which is in the McLarty museum collection.

* In 1990 a trubuco musket was recovered from a 1715 site.

* In 1993 treasure divers found 2 encrusted muskets on a 1715 Fleet site.

* Around the year 2000 a beachcomber at a 1715 Fleet beach found a complete encrusted English flintlock lock that had never been fitted to a weapon.

Those are the ones I found listed in the wells book.  I might have missed one or two.  Of course there must be others.

For example, in my blog I reported on musket parts and a barrel mold that was found by Will R.  You can find information on that find in my 12/4/12 post and my 6/25/19 post.  Will was able to create a cast of the barrel.

I also remember one being found in the Sewall's point area, although I did not find right off where I reported on that one in my blog.

There are others for sure.  I found what I believe is most likely a piece of a silver side plate.

Piece of Silver Side Plate?

Here is the link to the post where I previously posted that.

https://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/2012/07/72312-report-1715-fleet-ornate-silver.html

I once found a photo showing a side plate almost exactly matching the shape and design on the one that I found.  I don't know where that is now but there is a somewhat similar one shown in my old Dixie Gun Works catalog.

I clearly remember the first musket find that I made and have told that story before.  I found the rusted hammer and jaws of a musket on a steep hillside.  I can remember digging it up like it was yesterday, even though at the time I didn't know for sure what it was.  It was my first hunt in a historic area like that, and I didn't pay too much attention to the rusted twisted piece of metal that I just uncovered, and left it where it was.  In just a few short minutes, I found the flint.  I also didn't keep that.  I totally regret that to this day, but I just didn't have the knowledge and didn't know what I was doing. Sometimes you are just not ready for a find.  You can make good finds and not even know it if you don't have the necessary knowledge.  It would have been better if I found those items today rather than many years ago.  If I appreciated the items for what they were when I dug them up, I would have hunted the area better and I would have followed up by doing the research to better identify them. You can also ruin a find by not knowing how to conserve and store it.  Years later, I can now say that the musket lock and flint I found on that hillside was most likely English.

I've become painfully aware of how slowly I gain knowledge from experience and how that knowledge only makes my long history of ignorance that much more regretful.  Being a person that tends to learn independently rather than being quick to take advantage of the knowledge of others, much of my learning comes from making mistakes over the years.   One thing I've learned the hard way is that I could have saved myself a lot of wasted time and grief by being more organized and detailed in my documentation and record keeping.  I've said that before, but it is something I find myself very often regretting that I did not do.  I have objects that I can't easily find when I want to, and I've read things that I can not longer find when I want to.  I guess you can't avoid that, but being highly organized can help.

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The tides are pretty flat now, as is the surf.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

12/3/19 Report - Pirate Ship Artifacts Found. Part I of A Brief Introduction to Firearms of the Spanish Conquest and Treasure Fleets.

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

Source: VintageNews.com (See link below.)

17th century hand grenades and cannons from the wreck of a pirate ship have been found along the coast of Cornwall in the United Kingdom...

The wreck was rediscovered about two years ago. Local historian and author Robert Felce told Fox News that he found one hand grenade in November 2018 at Dollar Cove on Cornwall’s Lizard Peninsula. Felce found a similar grenade at the site in May 2017.

“I don’t use a metal detector – I use sight,” he explained. “I have become accustomed to what a lot of these things look like.”...

Both objects were heavily encrusted after lying on the seafloor for more than 300 years, and “Felce said he at first thought the latest grenade was an ordinary rock until he slipped and dropped it, and it broke open, revealing the two halves of the metal weapon and the explosive powder inside.”...

Here is the link for more finds and photos from that wreck.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/01/05/hand-grenades-found/

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Part 1.

Introduction to Firearms of the Spanish Conquest and Treasure Fleets.

The first small firearm was the hand cannon.  It was little more than a small cannon.  It was fired by touching a match directly to the powder.  Imagine trying to hold a firearm and aiming while applying a match to the touch hole.  Having a second person ignite the powder while another held and aimed the hand cannon made the process more manageable and accurate.

The hand cannon was used centuries before it was brought to the New World.  Christopher Columbus brought crossbows on his first voyage, along with one hand cannon, but brought a hundred hand cannons on his second voyage.

After the indigenous populations overcame their fear of the noise, the hand cannon lost much of its effectiveness in battle.

The hand cannon was eventually replaced by the matchlock arquebus, which was the first firearm to have a trigger.

The matchlock arquebus was invented in Spain in the 15th century.  It held a burning fuse in a clamp at the end of a lever.  When fired, the clamp dropped down, lowering the smoldering match into the flash pan and igniting the priming powder. The flash from the primer travelled through the touch hole igniting the main charge of propellant in the gun barrel.  (Wikipedia).

Source of illustration: Firearmshistory.blogspot.com. 

 Complete link immediately below.

See https://firearmshistory.blogspot.com/2010/04/matchlocks.html


In his book Small Arms of the Spanish Treasure Fleets, Noel Wells says that matchlocks have been found on the wreck sites of the 1622, 1715 and 1733 treasure fleets.  Things were repaired and used over long periods of time in those days.

In the same book, Noel Wells also writes that in 1596 Ponce de Leon requested 500 arquebuses and one hundred muskets.

It seems to me that some of the terms are confusing and different sources don't always use them the same.

On quora.com ( https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-physical-and-operational-differences-between-the-matchlock-musket-and-the-arquebus ) I found the following explanation.

The arquebus was the main firearm during the 16th century and was used into the 17th century (Gush, 1975). In the early 16th century the term arquebus covered quite a range of weapons but the most common type was a weapon about 3′ 6″ long (~108cm), weighing about 10 pounds (4.5 kg), and firing a ball of 1 1/2 ounces (~10 to the pound). From the 1540s the heavier muskets became a separate class of firearm and arquebus (called Caliver in England) standardized around 4′ (~123cm), weighing 12 pounds (~5.5 kg), and firing a ball somewhere in the range 10-16 to the pound.

The next step in the evolution of firearms was the development of the wheellock, sometimes called the Spanish lock.  The wheellock mechanism was used on pistols as well as long guns.

Here is how Wikipedia describes the wheellock.

The wheellock works by spinning a spring-loaded steel wheel against a piece of pyrite to generate intense sparks, which ignite gunpowder in a pan, which flashes through a small touchhole to ignite the main charge in the firearm's barrel. The pyrite is clamped in vise jaws on a spring-loaded arm (or 'dog'), which rests on the pan cover. When the trigger is pulled, the pan cover is opened, and the wheel is rotated, with the pyrite pressed into contact.

A close modern analogy of the wheellock mechanism is the operation of a Zippo lighter, where a toothed steel wheel is spun in contact with a piece of sparking material to ignite the liquid or gaseous fuel.

A wheellock firearm had the advantage that it can be instantly readied and fired even with one hand, in contrast to the then-common matchlock firearms, which must have a burning cord of slow match ready if the gun might be needed and demanded the operator's full attention and two hands to operate. On the other hand, wheellock mechanisms were complex to make, making them relatively costly.

The following simple illustration shows the main differences between a matchlock and a wheellock.

Source: Pinterest.

And here is another illustration of a wheellock.

Source: Pinterest.

In his book on Spanish firearms Wells says, An interesting note about Spanish guns is there has never been found on any of the Spanish shipwreck sites in or around Florida waters, a wheel lock pistol, a long gun, or a wheellock mechanism.  




I don't have time to complete this topic today.   This was a challenging topic for me because of what seems to me to be some inconsistency in the terminology, the difficulty of finding the best illustrations, and my general ignorance about early firearms.


I hope to be able to post part II tomorrow, which will focus more on firearms and firearm parts that have been found on treasure fleet wrecks, including the 1715 Fleet.

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With the recent cold front moving through, we'll have offshore winds and a calm surf for a few days.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net

10/17/18 Report - Two More Excellent Treasure Coast Reader Treasure Displays. More Ancient Shipwrecks Discovered. Weather Map Clean.

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

Finds Made by Jerry P in a Display Box Created by Jerry.

Photo by Jerry P.

Jerry P. sent photos of two of his treasure displays along with the following message.

... I like the shadowbox look so most of my displays are done this way. I also keep a detailed catalog on the back of every display with the date the item was found, beach it was found at along with GPS coordinates and a description of the item/items. The first display is a collection of large bronze ship spikes in a cigar box, that one can acquire for free at any ABC liquor store. I just cut out the top of the box and place a piece of picture frame glass that can be found in a trash pile of thrift store cheap. The second shadowbox I picked up at a thrift store and put smaller bronze spikes, square nails and a brass side plate to an old musket. I photo shopped pieces of the 1774 Bernard Romans map and printed it on old brown paper for an old rustic look. Thank you for all your posts. 

Treasure Display by Jerry P.

Those are excellent finds and displays.  Thanks for sharing Jerry.

There are some things Jerry said that I want to emphasize.  First, on the back of his displays
 he writes the date of the finds, GPS coordinates and item descriptions.  That is a great idea.

He got a good start for one display in a thrift store.  That is also a great idea.   
Also notice the nice graphics.  You can do a lot with a home computer and printer.

The cigar box idea is a great tip.  With a little creativity you can inexpensively make 
some excellent displays.

I'll add one more thing.  Put your name on the back of the display.  Those displays might be 
around after you are long gone, and although you don't need that information now, some day it 
might be good to have it on the display.

Thanks again Jerry.

Source: See APNews link below.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A Greek-U.S. team of marine archaeologists has located three 
more ancient shipwrecks with pottery cargoes, including 1,900-year-old branded designer 
lamps, and two from much later times in a rich graveyard of ships in the eastern Aegean 
Sea, a project official said Tuesday...

The older wrecks date to the 4th and 2nd centuries B.C. and the 5th-6th centuries A.D., 
while the more recent ones are from the 18th or 19th century, said archaeologist George 
Koutsouflakis, joint leader of the project.

He said they were discovered at depths of 10-40 meters (33-130 feet). Because that is 
relatively shallow, the wrecks bore traces of looting by illegal antiquities hunters or of 
damage by fishing nets...

Here is the link for more about that.

https://apnews.com/2153bb35180f4f9190260beb927d70c1

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There is absolutely nothing on the National Hurricane Center map in the Atlantic or
Caribbean right now.

The tides are near flat, as is the surf.

The prevailing swell is from the southeast.

Friday the surf will increase to three to five feet.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

6/1/15 Report - Found Old Lead Buck Shot. Hunting Lost Items And Dealing With Dishonest People.

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

Not The Man In The Moon.
A Small Old Lead Buck Shot Found

I was recently in West Virginia for a couple of days and had the opportunity to hunt the woods where the brother of one of my ancestors, well-known Indian scout Louis Wetzel, roamed during the 18th Century.  I have a couple of interesting books about Lewis and hunting that area makes it very interesting for me because I'm always thinking that Lewis or his brother (my ancestor) could have been at that very spot centuries ago.  I know from the books that he was indeed in that area. from various places and landmarks that are described in the books.

I like hunting the woods and listening to the birds and watching the squirrels and chipmunks and always having a chance at sighting an arrowhead or something (I'll post some arrowheads and things like that from the region some other day).  No people, just the sights and sounds of nature.

It sure is a change from the beach.  The hills are so steep I can hardly hang on them at times.  And the mud, clay and rocks makes it really different too.

You might remember me showing the 1829 Large Cent that I found up there in the woods.  I checked that area a little while again and then moved over a hundred yards or so and was hanging on the side of a very steep hill when I found on old axe head.  That was the first sign of some older things that day.  Then a few feet from there I dug an old lead buck shot.  That was one of my favorite finds of the trip even if it isn't worth anything.

Picture Of Musket Ball Found On Line
For Comparison With The Recently Dug Item.

Buck and ball were used from around the Revolutionary War to the time of the Civil War.

It was very difficult to find that little ball after it was dug.  It was covered with mud and looked just like a small pebble.  I probably touched it several times before identifying it.  It is very small and has a heavy patina.  (I'll get pictures with objects for size comparison.)  The above photo shows the dug buck shot under magnification.

They were made of lead or pewter.  I think this is lead, but not absolutely sure yet.

In the picture of the musket ball that I found online, you can see where the sprue was.  A sprue is the hole where the molten metal is poured into a mold.  When the ball or buck was removed from the mold, material that was in the passage (sprue) to the mold would be cut off.  In the picture of the recently dug buck you can clearly see where and how that metal was cut.  A pinching device, maybe something like a scissor was used.

On the ball shown immediately above you can not see how the cut was made, but you can see where the sprue was, and you can see the seams of the mold.

On the one I dug you can see the seams, but not in the picture.  The one I dug was not as round.  It was a little flattened.  Maybe it was made in a more primitive mold or maybe flattened later.

Buck And Ball Dug At Various Other Times and Places.

Here you can see both a musket ball and buck that I found at other times.  Notice the patina on the musket ball,  The buck in this picture, though, look like they could be modern reproductions.  People are still making their own buck and ball.

The patina and location where the recently dug buck was found convinces me that it is old.

I'll have more on my woods hunting in the near future and some other finds when I get the photos ready.
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Robert H. brought up an interesting topic.  Here is what he said.

Was wondering if you could shine some light on this experience or if others have encountered the same. I'm pretty sure you've covered having business cards or a contract with you but I'm not sure you've mentioned when a person looses an item in particular a wedding ring. Knowing when they are lying or when they are serious. I've only been able to do a handful of recoveries for people. I run into it very often when someone tells me they lost a ring but then I come up empty handed. I hear them laugh or look at them seeing them smiling or they say it's only worth so much and I'm convinced they didn't loose anything. Lately I've told them $20 just to look for the item but then they some how convince me to look for the item saying they will give a reward if found. It's left a bad taste in my mouth and I really don't take it too seriously or I will do a quick 5 or 10 minutes search or three or four quick lines of 25 feet length just doing a quick check.   


I'll make a few comments and then let everyone else weigh in. 

There are people who will lie about losing things.  That is always an unfortunate possibility.  There are also,people who will try to claim found items that they did not lose.  I've talked about that in some detail back a few years ago.

Here are some things that will work in some situations.

Before hunting for a particular item, get a good specific description including specific identifying marks such as inscribed names, dates etc.  That is very important.

Don't let anyone see finds unless you have a detailed specific description from them first.  

There are a number of techniques for keeping finds concealed.  One of my favorites when water hunting, is shaking the scoop vigorously while the scoop is still in the water and then while there is near zero visibility, with one motion quickly move the item from the scoop to your pocket without it ever being visible.  Develop the skills of an amateur magician.  You can tell what the item is by feel, and you can inspect it later when you are away from people.

I don't put much stock in contracts.  The main thing they are good for is making clear what the conditions and expectations are.  Don't expect to enforce a contract.  It depends upon the good will of both parties.

Get a defined area where the item is thought to have been lost.  Draw lines in the sand or use other markers.

All observers should stay out of the defined search area while you hunt so that you can run a grid and work the area properly without people getting in the way.  Explain that you can not work an area unless they stay out of the search area.

These days I seldom hunt around people, which solves a lot of problems.

Reading people is an important skill.  Sometimes if you press for a detailed description, dishonest people will stumble around as they attempt to make up answers.  Ask questions that will reveal dishonesty.   Is the ring 24K gold?  A yes answer indicates a probable liar, for example.  Be prepared with trick questions.

How much does it weigh?  Few people will know that.  A too quick, precise or unrealistic answer can be a tip off.

Learn to be a bit of a detective.  Ask a second party and see if you get the same or a completely different answer.

I know that most of us want to believe that people are honest and we want to help people, so we go out of your way to help, but you need to realize that not everyone is honest and you should be prepared one way or another to deal with that.

I don't have any set policy.  I try to evaluate each individual situation and the people involved.  I don't see any problem with asking for $20 out front.  I've known people that do that and stick to it.  If you do that, stick to it. I've never done that myself, but I have no problem with that.  It might be seen as greedy, but it can also save you from a wild goose chase.

It is too bad there are dishonest people, but that is a reality that you have to deal with in your own way.  Be kind and helpful, but don't let people take advantage of you.

Don't expect a reward, promised or not.  Most people don't give a reward, sometimes even if they promised one.  I don't really understand that.  I'd think if someone found something and returned it, it would be natural to offer some sort of reward, but it seldom actually happens.

As far as coming up empty when looking for an item for someone.  It happens.  People often don't know when or where they lost the item.  That is one benefit of drawing a boundary.  You get a good idea if they actually know where they lost the item, and it confines the search to something less than the entire beach.

I often find something good other than the item I was looking for when I hunt for a lost item.  That brings in many of the points I mentioned above.  You need a good description to identify the targeted object.  You are better off not showing or even giving a hint that there were finds.  Keep people away from you and skillfully keep finds hidden.

Those are a few of my first thoughts on the subject.  Please sent your own thoughts and experiences to add to this discussion.

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On the Treasure Coast we have a small surf again.  This week we'll have something like one or two feet.  There is a small negative tide again.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net