Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| 9 Maravedis and Reliquary Pendant Finds and photo by Darrell Strickland |
There was a time when you could get up in the dunes to detect. That has changed.
I've been talking about survivor and salvage camps a bit lately. These finds were made in an area thought to be a campsite associated with the Almiranta.
Thanks for sharing Darrell.
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Everybody knows the much publicized names and place, but there were often others who were there first. Everybody knows, for example, how the Jupiter wreck was discovered by a lifeguard who noticed the cannons on the bottom one morning when making his morning swim, but people were finding cobs on that beach long before that.
One fellow that worked the beach there before the wreck site was discovered, I only knew as Dave. Dave worked the beach south of the inlet frequently. At the time he was like the beach keeper, and he found a lot of cobs there. I told the story before about how a jar of cobs was stolen from the trunk of his parked car while he was detecting. That was years before 1987, though I can't remember how many years before.
I first ran into Dave on the beach one morning after I made the drive up to Jupiter from Broward County. I didn't visit Jupiter very often because it was at least an hour drive for me. Dave used a brand of metal detector that I was not familiar with at the time, and he was very curious about mine. I was using a modified Nautilus, which I liked a lot. It was modified and mounted in a Ikelite case by Steve Noga of Maryland. After I got my first detector from Steve and used it a little while, I called him and asked if he'd give me a good deal on a second one to use as a back-up. It was that good. So I got a second one.
I tried to contact Steve a few times in recent years, but without any luck.
There were others besides Dave that detected the wreck area for cobs back then. One fellow I remember, I can only recall his last name, which was Rainey.
One day that I remember very well, the beach produced hundreds of old U. S. coins, including a lot of silver, but oddly no cobs. Dave showed up a little late that day, and promised he'd beat me there the next time beach conditions were good.
The first time I found a cob there, the cliff was really getting really banged by the waves and I was fighting a strong backwash as the water bounced off of the cliff. The backwash was up to my knee and washing back down the slope when I detected that cob.
The first time I met Dave there he told me that the cobs sounded like tin cans. I don't know if he was trying to throw me off or what. Some were loud, but the small ones weren't that loud.
I'm sure there were others that worked the beach by the Jupiter wreck even before that. If I correctly recall, Frank Hudson, who is not known for religiously sticking to fact, in at least one book said there were chests and other treasures buried in the dunes there, so I'm sure people were detecting there and perhaps having some luck. I think some of Hudson's Lost Treasures books were written as early as the seventies. Maybe I can find one around here somewhere.
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| Source: nhc.noaa.gov |
Not much but a two or three foot surf for the rest of this week.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net