7/17/15 Report - Treasure Salvors Au Dreamers and Capitana Most Recent Treasure Coast Finds On The Cabin Wreck.

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

Treasure Coast Finds By The Crew Of The Capitana.
Photo submitted by Captain Jonah Martinez.

Yesterday I mentioned that the crew of the Capitana was still finding things.  Here are some, not nearly all, of the musket balls and a nice olive jar top that they found.

Captain Jonah sent this photo with the following message.

Thought this was interesting the other day our first hole Bill found 90 musket balls also more throughout the day. Our great weather is letting us dig most every day for the last 36 days. 

Thanks Captain!  I always say there is always some place to hunt and something to be found.  While this weather has been bad for beach hunting, it has been good for the salvage crews.



 It must have taken Bill a little while to pick up 90 musket balls.  Signals going off everywhere.  We're all waiting to see what you find next.

Treasure Coast Find By Au Dreamers
Photo Submitted by Captain Jonah.

There are four boats working the Cabin Wreck these days.

Au Dreamers is one.  They found this nice ceramic piece with handle.   You can see the horizontal depressions around it.  Very nice.

Another find made by the crew of Au Dreamers is shown below.

There are several good books and studies on olive jars and Spanish colonial ceramics.   Marken's book is one.  Also the Odyssey Marine study on the ceramics of the Tortugas wreck.

Here is one link if you want to read about olive jars. Lost of good pictures too.

 http://www.shipwreck.net/documents/OMEPapers38.pdf

Silver Fork Found  By Au Dreamers
Photo submitted by Captain Jonah.

The word “fork” comes from the Latin “furca” and the Old English “forca”. Small forks used for eating first appeared in Tuscany in the 11th century, but they were still a rarity in Italy by the 14th century...

...In late 17th Century France, larger forks with four curved tines were developed. The additional tines made diners less likely to drop food, and the curved tines served as a scoop so people did not have to constantly switch to a spoon while eating. By the early 19th Century, multi-tined forks had also been developed in Germany and England and slowly began to spread to America.

In 1630, Governor Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had the first and only fork in colonial America.

In the early 18th century, the four-tined fork had become the rule in Germany. In England, however, forks still have two tines and are not so helpful for scooping up bites of food.

In Europe at the mid-18th century, the fork has achieved the form which is now most familiar, four curved tines..

The above excerpts came from the web site linked as follows.

http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/lifestyle/the-history-of-dining-utensils/

The above fork has four tines, but do not seem to be curved.

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The surf is almost unbelievable along the Treasure Coast.  Just very small swells. The beaches and surf are pretty clean though.  Nothing but a few remaining recent drops.  

No real change in the forecast yet.

Happy hunting.
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

12/24/14 Report - More On The Mystery Find. Metal or Ceramic? Smooth Surf For More Days.

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

Another Picture of The Mystery Object.
Find and photo by Robert H.

Mystery objects, or what I call "whatzits," can be a lot of fun.  You can learn a lot while doing the research to figure them out.  I've already learned some things from this one.

If you didn't see the pictures of this object that I showed in yesterday's post, take a look.

The first thing that struck me is what appears to be an ornamental design that you can see in the top picture of yesterday's post.  I'd never noticed that on an olive jar before. 

Then Robert told me something else.  Here is what he said.

I was also very convinced it was some sort of pottery but now I'm not so sure. On the CTX it gives off a silver reading and tone. I scratch tested it when I got home. 3 different corners. It all seems to be metal but I could be wrong. I'm thinking pewter or bronze possibly. I would say it was 8 to 9 inches or more deep in the sand. It gave off such a nice strong signal the whole time. Could be the shape the reason why it sounded like it did. I've found gold rings that have sound like silver items or copper/zinc pennies or reading on the detector. All depending on the different metals alloyed. I guess the real question would be how does bronze or pewter react with my detector.

Interesting!  The new picture, which I posted above does appear to show a metallic shine on some of the edges and corners.  He said that It gives a silver tone on the CTX.   Now, like Robert, I started to think it might actually not be a sherd.  But then I got some more good information.

William B., who has been working on the Capitana for a couple of seasons, provided some great  information.  Here is what he said.

I work on the Capatana out of Sebastian. Regarding the shard ...  most of the olive jar pieces found on the 1715 fleet wrecks will ring on a detector, as will ballast stones. They obviously have some metal content, probably iron.  I have only been diving for 2 seasons but I have found hundreds of pottery shards and I have never seen a pattern as the one posted by Dan. Also, it looks a little too thin to be an olive jar shard.

Thanks much William.

OK.  So now I don't know if it is pottery or metal.  It evidently gave off a detector signal, but I just learned that olive jars shards found on the 1715 Fleet wrecks can cause a detector signal. 

I guess the signal could be the result of mineral deposits, such as leached iron, or maybe he signal is from clay or paste bearing mineral deposits or something that was added to the paste. 

It could also be something in the glaze.   Iron glazes, for example,  are common and have been used for centuries.

When I first learned that the piece emitted a detector signal, I wondered if there might actually be something embedded in it - possibly something being smuggled.  That seems very unlikely.

Even if the piece is a type of pottery, it does not appear to be an olive jar, since according to my reading, and more importantly, William's experience, it would be rare for an olive jar to have such a decoration.

So at this point, I don't know if it is pottery or not, but if it is a piece of an olive jar, it definitely seems to be an unusual one.  Maybe it ornamentation was applied later, or maybe it was manufactured as some other object or type of container from the beginning.

It is always more difficult to identify an object from pictures when you can hold or test an object for yourself.

Even though we haven't yet solved the puzzle, I've learned a few things in the process.

I love hearing the thoughts and opinions of the many knowledgeable readers of this blog.  I didn't mention all of the excellent comments that I received relevant to this object in this post.

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On the Treasure Coast we'll have a smooth surf at least until this weekend when the surf might be a touch bigger.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net