3/17/19 Report - The Manila Galleons. Big Cash in The Sofa. New TV Treasure Shows. Big Surf.

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

A few days ago I wrote about the Kang His porcelain that you can find on the 1715 Fleet beaches.   Of course that pottery came from China.  The porcelain and other items from Asia and the Phillipines first crossed the Pacific on the Manila galleons before being loaded on the galleons that would cross the Atlantic.

There are wrecks of the Manila galleons that have been investigated.  You can find them described in The Archaeology of the Manila Galleons, by Robert Junco.  Here is the introduction.

This paper presents a brief recount of the Manila Galleon sites investigated to date. It also proposes, some ideas of what the archaeology of Manila Galleons could consider in its research objectives. The Manila Galleons, loaded with their rich cargos of oriental goods are still a great mystery to researchers, especially those belonging to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Furthermore, studies of Asian ceramics and other products of exchange in New Spain and beyond are scarce. While the work of historians and art historians has contributed significantly to the topic, archaeological studies are rare given the few sites located. In this paper, I shall mention the Manila Galleon sites that have come to my attention, and then present some ideas that I deem relevant in the pursuit of what can be termed the archaeology of Manila Galleons.

And here is the link if you want to read the rest of that article.

http://www.themua.org/collections/files/original/61b274c68e00272c5e50f0af53f5b140.pdf

I think you'll find a lot of interesting information if you read that study.  It summarizes seven different wreck sites and has an extensive bibliography that you might also find useful.

Another study of the Manila Galleons is The Arrival of The Spanish Galleons in Manila from the Pacific Ocean and Their Departure Along the Kuroshio Stream, by Jose Eugenio Borao Mateo.  This one is historical rather than archaeological.

Here is the abstract from that one.

The aim of this paper is to revisit some well-known features of the seasonal conditions and geographical incidences of (1) the yearly arrival in Manila of the galleons coming from Acapulco and (2) the first stage of their return voyage along the Kuroshio stream. It will be based on existing published data, like the well-known Blair&Robertson (BRPI), the less known Navas&Pastells (CDF), the collection of Spanish Documents of Taiwan (SIT) published by the author, and other documents from Spanish Archives. The paper will try to present the routine of these trips, and some of the nautical conditions (specially the monsoons and typhoons contingencies) as explained by sailors like Cevicos, and to revisit some particular well-known cases of shipwrecks like the ones of the Spanish galleons San Felipe (1597) and San Francisco (1609) in Japan, and Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (1638) in Marianas Islands. Finally, some conclusive ideas will focus on Taiwan as one of the last ramifications of the Acapulco-Manila route; and the fact that for the sailors was much more important the winds than the currents, which—as it seems—their knowledge was not yet totally clear.

And here is the link.

http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~borao/2Profesores/Kuroshio.pdf

Again, you will find a useful biography with references from some unusual sources.

There haven't been many books on the Manila galleons since the one written in the 1930s, but here is one you can preview online.  It is The Manila-Acapulco Galleons: The Treasure Ships of the Pacific, by Shirley Fish.

You might want to get it at your local library.  If they don't have it, ask for an interlibrary loan.

Click here to preview that book.

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You might like this story about how three students found $40,000 cash hidden in a sofa they purchased at a thrift store.  Good story how it turned out.

https://people.com/celebrity/cash-couch-students-return-40000-found-stuffed-in-thrift-store-sofa/

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There are some new treasure hunting TV shows this season.  I ran into one the other day.  It is Lost Gold.  I think it was on the Discovery channel.   I didn't find it very exciting.  The best thing about it for me, in the short time I saw it, is that they talked about some famous treasures and early treasure hunters and detectorists, such as Frank Fish.

You can read more about Frank Fish in this issue of The Tombstone News.

It begins...

In April 1963 death came to one of the most famous and successful of the treasure hunters, Frank Fish. To all appearances and evidence he died by his own hand. But did he? Frank was my close and personal friend; my family and I spent many hours in his Gold Rush Museum listening to him spin yarns of lost and buried treasures. To say the least, it is my honest opinion that Frank Fish was not the suicidal type. He loved his museum and its thousands of relics too well. In addition he was close on the track of a large treasure cache for which he had searched many years...

I also saw advertisements to a program on Civil War gold and a Japanese treasure in the Philippines.

I'm a little over most of the TV treasure shows.  They have generally been disappointing.  Too much foolish hype and showmanship, and not totally trustworthy.  It is better to go out and do it for yourself anyhow.  Still, we all have a little downtime for foolishness.

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The Treasure Coast surf forecast has changed a little.

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com.

It looks like the peak of about seven feet will be Tuesday.  It doesn't look like it will be as sustained as forecast earlier.   Still a pretty good size, along with some good tides.  And still a couple days for things to shape up.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

5/11/17 Report - TV Show Poll Results and More. Space Treasure and Collectibles. Custom Made Cobs.

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

The poll has concluded and the results are in.  I think the poll could have been constructed better, but it worked.  One person said I should have had a "none of the above" answer.  That is a good idea.  Maybe I should have done that.  There were other possibilities as well.

The sample size was good.  Over fifty people responded.

Here are the poll results on the perceived "realness" or "trustworthiness" of each of the four TV shows.

Bearing Sea Gold	20 (38%)
Cooper's Treasure	3 (5%)
Curse of Oak Island	9 (17%)
Gold Rush	20 (38%)

The amazing thing to me is how precisely the results matched my own feelings.   The poll respondents put the shows in exactly the same order that I would, and the relative number of votes for each show reflected how I felt about the shows.

Bering Sea Gold and Gold Rush were selected as being the most real or trustworthy by the same number of people, and both of those shows received more than twice the number of votes received by either of the other shows.

I also had a hard time deciding which of those two I trusted most.  It was a toss up.  I like Bering Sea gold better, but that has nothing to do my feeling about it being more real.

Coming in third was the Curse of Oak Island show.  That is where I would put it too. I think it is an interesting, even with all of its short-comings.  I can watch it, even with all of the dramatization and baiting.

And dead last in trustworthiness according to the poll results was the Cooper's Treasure show, which, as I think I said before, almost makes me feel like I need to take a shower after watching a few minutes.

It seems that there are a lot of people that feel the same.  That was my feeling from the first few minutes, and I wondered if everybody else felt that way.  Evidently many did.

For me the meeting between Darrell Miklos and Gene Kranz said it all.  Darrell had obviously misled Gene about the purpose or topic of the meeting in order to arrange a meeting, and then tried to get Gene to say something about the topic of treasure. Gene didn't appreciate being misled and put an abrubt end to the meeting and walked off.

Below is a link to an article on the Cooper's Treasure program by Variety, an entertainment publication, and even they address what I would call ethics issues.  That article starts with the following.

The poorly kept secret of unscripted TV is that it is, in general, rather scripted. Ari Mark and Phil Lott, co-founders of production company AMPLE, are looking to affix that “un-” back where it belongs.

“Our generation, you’re at a point where you want to believe in things,” Mark tells Variety. “Everything in your life is fake, and especially in our genre.”

Here is that link.

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/coopers-treasure-discovery-ample-darrell-miklos-1202011043/

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I've made several references to space lately, ranging from meteorites to rocket parts.  Occasionally people discover what appear to be melted metal from Shuttle launches on the Treasure Coast.  I've written about that, provided tips on how to test that metal to distinguish it from melted aluminum and reported on some people who talked to NASA to verify that their finds were related to space shots.

On May 7 it was reported that  The U.S. Air Force's secretive X-37B mini-space plane has landed after a record 718 days in Earth orbit, touching down for the first time on the Florida runway historically used by NASA's space shuttles.

I've said before that someday people will be salvaging space vehicles and debris similar to how shipwrecks are salvaged now.  In fact there is a space vehicle that orbits while collecting space junk to turn into fuel that it can use.  Interesting idea.

I recently heard it said (I think it was on TED) that if you want a new idea, read an old book.  I agree with that, but there are other ways to get new ideas too.  Creativity is stimulated by reading broadly.

Here is the link if you want to read the article about the vehicle that vacuums up space junk to use as fuel.

http://www.popsci.com/design-concept-space-vacuum-thats-fueled-by-space-junk

Continuing on the subject of space, there is a good web site that offers a wide variety of "space collectibles."  Here is the link.

http://www.collectspace.com/

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Did you know that there is a company that will manufacture cobs that are hand struck from die that are  custom made?  They hand strike them on planchets.  You can send them the silver after I investigate it more.

I'll have more on that in the future.

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We're supposed to have a couple weeks of one or two foot surf on the Treasure Coast.  No change in beach conditions expected.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

6/17/14 Report - Another Type of Detecting Location, Metal Detector Design, Six Fortunes Found and Video of Returned Ring

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

Wide But Thin Gold Ring Detector Find.

Do you remember the TV show Lost?  I never liked it, but my wife did.

Well, I ran across this web site where some people went out and scouted around and found the locations where it was filmed.  They found the specific locations where particular scenes from the TVshow happened.

That reminded me of all the times I've seen film crews and photo shoots on various beaches.  Some of those locations were not at high traffic swimming beaches.  Some were very much out of the way.

Crandon Park on Key Biscayne is one location where there have been a lot of photo shoots and where a lot of TV ads are made.  That has been the case for a lot of years, and I often see ads that are shot there.   There was one location right in front of a sand bar in the middle of the beach where they did a lot of the shoots, but there were times when they'd shoot at locations on the island where you'd never expect it.   One day I saw a photo shoot taking place back in the mucky mangroves where most people never ventured.  Models were running back and forth jumping in the shallow water.  That activity plus the fact that they were changing clothes and working with a bunch of equipment, made that a good site to detect after they left.  Those people had some nice stuff.

You might know where other TV shows have been shot.  Virginia Key, just across Bear Cut (I think that is what it is called), was the site of a long running TV show.  That was before Virginia Key was rehabilitated and it was primarily at a spot away from the swimming beaches and so could be easily overlooked by many detectorists.  Many scenes of Flipper were also filmed very close to there.

The Alexander Hotel on Miami beach was where some of the Miami Vice staff stayed during production.  Most detectorist back in the day hunted south of there at some of the bigger hotels and busier beaches.

Those are just a few that come to mind.  My point is not that you should go to those specific places to detect today, but if you know where filming or photo shoots have been conducted, those spots can be good places to detect - particularly those which are more out of the way and therefore where few others would have detected since.

It can also be a bit of a treasure hunt to just go out and identify the locations where the scenes of movies or TV programs were shot.

Here is one web site that talks about the fun of going out and locating where film scenes were shot.

http://www.govisithawaii.com/2007/07/10/finding-lost-sites-on-oahu/



One thing I want in a detector is compactness.  Even if it isn't the kind of detector I'm looking for, the SDC 2300 folds up nicely.  I like that.  Sometimes you want to take a detector on a plane or pack it a long distance on foot.  And sometimes you might want to ship it.   I'd like a detector that disassembles, folds up, takes little room, doesn't have unnecessary bulk, which also means it does not have unnecessary features.   I can give up a lot of features.  I don't need a lot of bells and whistles.  In fact I'd prefer to not have them.

If you look in your detector, the circuit board takes up very little space.  The knobs and adjustments take up quite a bit.  I can do without most adjustments.  I can't remember the last time I took my primary detector off of the automatic sensitivity setting.  I could easily do without that adjustment, as one example.  I don't need most of the knobs and adjustments.

 A few diode lights could provide all the signal that I need, or maybe better yet, a bud ear piece.   I don't need or want big neon headphones.  (You could wear some controls or battery pack under your hat.)

I once made a pocket inside my hat for things.  An small control box could easily be worn there.

I don't want a bunch of wires.  They aren't necessary any more.  Basically I want an unobtrusive coil and a simple indicator of signal strength.  Make everything else that can be done away with disappear.  Maybe a button to turn it on and one of two small switches or buttons.

The XP Deus is one step in that direction.  They've eliminated some of the wires and use a smart phone as a control box.

I once made my own rod out of a short sections wood that I packed in my carry-on luggage. The standard metal rod wasn't wanted or needed.

There are times when you don't need an entire length of rod, such as when snorkeling, or here is one you might not have thought of, when detecting on a steep hillside.

I can't believe how slowly metal detector technology has changed.  Just the other day I saw a brand new 2014 detector model using the exact same rod assembly the manufacturer was using over twenty years ago.  I know there is no reason to change for the sake of change, but there should be significant advances over that amount of time.

I know, some of you will rave about this or that detector or change or improvement, but I haven't seen anything new that impresses me as being significantly better than what I had 25 years ago.

The detectors I used over twenty years ago are just as good as what I can get today - at least when it comes to my wants and needs.  Those detectors were good basic machines.  They weren't produced by major manufacturers but were put together by individuals and they did the job.  There were things that I would have liked to change about them, for example they were unnecessarily awkward and bulky just like detectors today.



I've mentioned this before, but here is a video about it.  I'm talking about the Tiffany ring lost on Jacksonville Beach, found by a detectorist and returned a year later.

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2014/05/19/dnt-tiffanys-engagement-ring-lost-found-beach.wjxt.html

Did you notice that it was found buried under a fishing sinker?   Always check to make sure there isn't more than one target.



Here is a good article about six people who accidentally found a fortune.  Two of those six stories are about really fascinating metal detector finds.  One was found while a farmer was trying to find his lost hammer.  That resulted in the find of the Hoxne Hoard.   Another is about a lady who detected every Sunday afternoon for seven years before she stumbled on a very important find.

Here is the link.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/22449/get-rich-quick-6-people-who-accidentally-found-fortune



The surf on the Treasure Coast is two or three feet today and for a couple more days, then it will go flat again later in the week.  Nothing that will change beach detecting conditions.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net