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1715 FLEET BEACHES, NO GOLD, BUT.......:clapping:

B

Bernie

New member
Spent 10 days searching the Vero Beach area for 1715 Fleet treasure. Found no gold, but did find two 8 Real cobs, 3 small cobs, two musket balls ( I thought these were fishing weights, but a guy at Fisher corrected me), one small cross and a buckle. The large cobs were taken to the McLarty museum and they confirmed that they were 1715 Fleet type cobs. Two of the smaller cobs were very encrusted with one disintegrating on cleaning. The small cobs, the cross and buckle were taken to the Mel Fisher museum and they said they were of the type found from 1715 Fleet.
The nice large cob that cleaned up really good was found at the base of a cut about 12 inches down. I couldn't pinpoint it with my GTI 2500, but kept getting a good signal. I was about 10 inches down and ready to give up when my wife came over and kept digging. The Pro-Pointer found it about 3 inches past the side of the hole towards the cut. We spend many hours with no signals except for some trash. I made shoulder slings as shown in a previous post which really saved me and allowed me to stay out much longer than I would have.
I searched one cut that was over five feet tall with high hopes, but nothing but modern clad. Cuts that were there one day disappeared the next day as the surf really changed the beach scape daily.
Sorry about the poor quality of the photos, I will try to do better when my wife gets back from Florida.
 
Great stuff and great story. Those two silver pieces would be stars in my MD collection. Looks like you had a lot of patience. If you have details about how many hours you actually hunted and about how much modern stuff you found I think that might be interesting as a comparison. Did you find any modern jewelry?

Chris
 
People have MD'ed that beach for years and have not come up with such finds. Great job!!:thumbup:

I have found gold on Daytona Beach, but it wasn't Spanish. I lived near there for over 16 years and all my gold was modern jewelry. It was a drive, but all I found at Vero Beach was clad. I'm jealous!!:rofl:
 
Ahhhh sweet finds, I used to surf Sebastian Inlet near there back in my youth 25 years ago.
 
Real nice old coin find....:thumbup:
 
that's awesome they are my all time favourite coin & i"d love to find one to thanks for shearing
 
Great finds Bernie. I knew a guy that dove for Mel on the Atocha. He had some good story's. I have an 8 reale coin with a COA signed by Mel. It is from the Potosi mint.
 
How about a pic?

Chris
 
Thanks for all your interest and congrats... To answer some questions, my wife and I hit the beaches early each day. She brought a cooler with cold drinks, snacks, lunch and brought some beach chairs. We saw very few people on the beach other than a few guys swinging detectors. My wife was working a nice cut on Corrigans when some guy came on the beach with a detector and cut in front of her and began working the cut. We had very few signals and there was very little trash. We took a break one day for lunch at the Ocean Grill and I worked the beach there. I found one clad, one pull tab and one CZ ring. That was it. I ran into an nice old guy (I can say that because I am an old guy too) who told me that he had found a 22 ct. gold ring on the same beach that a jeweler told him was over 200 years old. We got home every night exhausted and sore, but it was worth it. :thumbup:

I don't have any good pics of the small cobs. My wife still has them in Florida as she wanted to take them to the Mel Fisher museum. She emailed me some pics, but the quality is not good. The two cobs together are the encrusted ones that one disintegrated when we tried to clean it. The other pic is of the other small cob that cleaned up pretty well. I will try to post some better pics when she gets back. :biggrin: It won't let me upload the two cob pic, sorry.
 
Bernie,
Well done...I am heading to Vero beach 6-13 Dec and plan on MDing many, many hours in the surrounding beaches. If you or anyone else has any pointers/techniques I would be very appreciative. Thanks


Loot
 
Hi Loot: Good luck at Vero Beach. We put in a lot of time, but I also think that we were very lucky. The best advice that I can give you is to read every book you can find on the 1715 Fleet. One inexpensive book is "Shipwrecks Near Wabasso Beach" by Robert Frogfoot Weller and Ernie Seascribe Richards. It is a practical guide to the beaches, but was published in 1995 and there have been changes to the beach access since then. For example, we could not find the Hibiscus of the Sea apartments to look for Urca de Lima treasure. It appears that that area is all private condos now. We also had problems accessing the beach in front of the Disney resort to look for Green Cabin Wreck stuff. We had our best luck searching Corrigan's and the Rio Mar wreck. An elderly gentlemen told me that he found a 22 ct. gold ring and several coins at the Rio Mar site.

Another thing that I learned is that if you find a cut that looks promising, work it until you are satisfied that you got everything out of it. We found some cuts that we were going to come back to, but they were gone the next day. The beach is ever changing! We searched one five foot high cut near Sebastian which looked very promising, but found only modern clad coins. I tried searching the wet sands from high tide down to low tide but had no luck. I had my GTI 2500 set at all metal with sens set pretty high, but had to reduced the sens because of lots of false returns. I made a strap as per a post on this site using a suitcase strap and a bungi cord. That really helped as my 2500 with the big coil is heavy and I wouldn't have lasted long with it on the beach.

If you watch the weather reports and are lucky enough to have a NorEaster go through, you could have a very good time. Remember how cruddy the silver cobs look before cleaning and trust your detector when it says "silver". Good luck. If you find anything interesting, please post pics.

I have also attached pics of the small cobs cleaned up as promised in my previous post. Unfortunately, the before pics are still in my wife's camera that she left in Florida.
 
Those are great finds.:thumbup:
 
Great job Bernie! Just read your posts. I want to get back down there this summer and detect after some storms, but I want to detect St. Augustine beaches as well. Does anyone know what beaches are closed to detecting or if the water is closed to detecting around St. Augustine. I love finding modern jewelry, but spanish silver is my passion and hopefully gold some day.
Bob
 
I loved this thread! Awesome pic's and finds! Very inspiring!:garrett:
 
Great finds Berine would love to find some treasure off a ship!!:thumbup:
 
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