7/13/19 Report - New 1715 Fleet Finds Being Made. Mystery Button for ID. Putting the Puzzle Together. Tropical Storm.

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

Crew of the Bottomline Salvage Vessel 

Finding Treasure Off The Treasure Coast.

I got a couple photos of brand new 1715 Fleet finds from Captain Jonah Martinez.  Jonah is working on the Bottomline this year.  Here is an eight and some four-reales that they've found.

Reales Recently Found by Crew of the Bottomline.

Congratulations!

Thanks Jonah.

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Here is a two piece button bearing a lion and crown.  I'd like help if anyone can identify it.

Unidentified Two Piece Button Find.

The back of this button is missing, but the front is in good condition.

It is just a little less than 3/4 an inch across.

Any help is appreciated.

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Putting Together the Pieces of the Puzzle.

Yesterday I showed what I think is a piece of soldier art.  That is one piece of a puzzle.  I think it is a very interesting piece, but yet it is only one piece.

The puzzle is of one place and time in history.  A lot of the pieces are there.  I showed the island, the landscape, the fort, where the cannon were, and some of the other things found there, including some buttons that tell us some of the regiments that were there.

On the island you can still see some of the stone walls where the parts of old buildings still stand.  You can see the paths that were undoubtedly the same paths used hundreds of years ago.  And we can read much of the history of the island, including about the battle.

That is a land site that hasn't changed much.  Relics can be found at about the same place where they were dropped.  That is one of the advantages of land sites that haven't been much disturbed.

Putting it all together you get a pretty good picture of that one time and place in history. There is layering.  One era rests on another.  There were the times long before when the indigenous populations used the island, and there were times later.  The different time periods are like individual picture puzzles that have to be put together, each one on top of the other.  \

On Pigeon Island, the late 1700s is the most evident time period.  Many of  the large pieces are still there, including some of the buildings and forts, but there are pieces of puzzles from other time periods still there as well.

Occasionally a piece of the puzzle from one era will get mixed in with the pieces of another.  That happens at some places more than others, like on the side of a steep slope where erosion occurs and things fall towards the sea, but there are a lot of pieces from that one period that you can put together to form a pretty good picture.  That is the way it is with some land sites, but it is much more difficult on a constantly changing beach.

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The topics are getting active, and it is time to start keeping a close eye on the weather.  We might get a storm that produces some nice erosion, and you want to be ready for that.

We have had so much flat surf, and it is continuing for now, but the systems are beginning to come off of Africa.

Source: nhc.noaa.gov

You can see Barry down by Louisiana.  The yellow system will probably fizzle out by the time it gets into the Caribbean, but you can't say for sure yet, and there will be other systems developing out there.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/22/18 Report - New Iron Shipwreck Finds. The Secret Treasure. Precautions. Bigger Surf Coming.

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

Finds From Unidentified Shipwreck North of Treasure Coast.

Yesterday I posted pictures of some 1715 Fleet treasures found not too long ago.  Today I'm posting the above picture of items from an unidentified shipwreck found under the beach north of the Treasure Coast.

Here is the email I received with that photo.

...Thought I would share with you and for your blog as Sunday after a 1 mile walk to my hidden wreck site,it produced a few more pieces of iron. As you recall,this find started after  Hurricane Matthew in 2016 as I retrieved 29 total pieces.I went back searching after Hurricane Irma in 2017 and fetched more bringing my total to 49. After our latest N'easter on Jan 3 2018 I was able finally to make the long mile hike again hoping to add to the mystery.As soon as I hit my area,first iron hit,then another,another.Due to the erosion these were only down around 10 inches or so and still have wood and roots intact as they are now in dirt rather than beach sand...I broke the 50 piece mark as I feel these are all from the same ship.Maybe one day I'll have something more interesting to show like in Today's [ yesterday's] blog....until then it's a waiting game for the next shift of sand.Thanks for all your hard work.

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Things have changed over the decades.  You can learn a lot from TV and the internet today that would take you forever to discover on your own.

I'm now bored by Gold Rush and Curse of Oak Island, but I've seen some very interesting episodes of Expedition Unknown.  I think it was Friday that I saw episode 4 of season 4, which was about The Secret a book by Byron Preiss that presents a treasure puzzle leading to several actual treasures buried around the country.

Here is how The Secret is described.

...The Secret, a puzzle book published in 1982 by Byron Preiss.  To set up the puzzle, Preiss traveled to 12 locations in North America to secretly bury a dozen ceramic vases, or, as he called them, "casques." Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding the casques was to match one of 12 paintings to one of 12 poetic verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the 12 casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1983 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues. 

The last part of the TV episode on The Secret ended with a search in St Augustine, where they failed to find the treasure.  It could still be there.

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Things change.  People change too.  I was thinking over my metal detecting years and remembered how I changed.  In the very beginning I was not secretive at all about my finds.  I guess there wasn't much to be secretive about.  I was just picking up mostly modern coins on tourist beaches. 

When I got into finding gold jewelry, that changed.  I was hunting harder and finding a lot.  On top of that, I found out that people would try to claim finds that didn't belong to them.  This was in South Florida where there are a lot of criminals and theft.  That was another reason to be more discreet.  

This is something that I don't like to post about, but it might help somebody.  There is also crime on the Treasure Coast.  Every once in a while a car is broken into at one of the beach parking lots.  I know that happened several times at both John Brooks and Walton Rocks, and I'm sure at other places as well.  I remember reporting a couple years ago about a theft at gun point at Pepper Park.  Be alert, take precautions and don't leave valuables in the car.

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If you missed yesterday's post showing the 1715 Fleet finds, you'll want to go back and take a look at that.

Surf Prediction for Fort Pierce Area.
Source: MagicSeaWeed.com

The prediction doesn't show the surf being quite as big next weekend now, but the it is showing that the surf will remain high for a longer period of time.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net