Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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Washed Up.
Photo by Jim F. |
Jim F. sent in this account of an unusual event.
Tried to do some detecting last Thursday but a massive clump of seaweed was right along the shoreline and each wave brought in another layer onto the beach. My Grandson noticed a pair of sunglasses wash up, then a watch, then another pair of glasses. amazingly as we stood there, each wave would send a layer of seaweed and we just picked out the goodies. In that one clump about ten yards wide, we picked up a dozen pair of sunglasses, a new mask, a couple of pairs of goggles and a watch as well as a hat and some kids toys. Cannot believe that many people lose their sunglasses in the water. The best find was a new pair of Costas with no scratches on the lenses (value $259). Treasure indeed!
Thanks Jim.
Notice that those items are mostly plastic and would behave fairly similarly in water.
It isn't unusual to find sun glasses at the beach, but in my experience they are usually badly scratched, and you don't usually find so many grouped together.
I remember one time when a cargo ship lost some of its cargo and people at Hollywood Beach were running around picking up furniture that was washing up on sure, and a few years ago now, you might remember when all the packages of food, wine and stuff was washing onto the beach along the Treasure Coast.
There was one of those events back in 2015. How time flies.
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| Bostelo Coffee Cans Washed Up On The Beach in 2015. |
Here is a look back at what William B. said about that day.
Treasure hunters are a superstitious bunch. We see meaning in the randomness of everyday events. Take the anniversary day find for example. All those gold coins, found 300 years to the day of the tragedy. What are the odds? Is that really just coincidence? It seems like it was meant to be. Well, Tuesday was another one of those days for me. After hearing of coins being found on the TC, I came(from Pompano) up to hunt. I was on the beach (the same beach where the gold coins were found) Tuesday morning, standing in ankle deep water talking to a fellow detectorist when a bag of coffee floats by. Not just any coffee. It is Bustelo espresso coffee. The ONLY coffee I drink. Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you I am a Bustelo fanatic. I put the coffee in my truck, thinking that this is a really good sign, I just might find a coin today, and headed south down the beach to hunt. After walking for about 200 yds, I find another one. Then another. I had to stash them on the dune so I could keep hunting. I found the case of coffee when I was headed back, it had washed up while I was detecting. Another detectorist gave me a couple of bags he had found. All in all, 17 pounds of my favorite coffee washed up on my favorite beach, while I was there. Of all the things that could have washed up on this beach on that day, it happened to be coffee. Of all the other coffees that it could have been, it turns out to be Bustelo, a specialty coffee with a miniscule share of the market(meaning that statistically speaking, it should have been Folgers or Maxwell House), and the one coffee that I cannot live without. Coincidence? I think not. The treasure gods are obviously pleased and wanted to show it.
William B.
Here is that link.
Treasure Beaches Report Direct From Florida's Treasure Coast.: 12/11/15 Report - Cargo On The Beach. Treasure Comes In Many Forms.----
One Thing Leads To Another.
You would have a hard time finding a yard without a coin or some other buried item to detect. Of course some yards conceal much more than others. Just off the top of my head, I'd guess that I've found maybe thirty or more coins in the yard of the house where I now live. Nothing special, but yet something. I thought I had the front yard pretty well cleaned out years ago, but still found a buried penny that I missed a week or so ago. You never know.
My neighbor's overgrown back yard concealed all those railroad items that I've been digging.
A yard can conceal many kinds of treasure though. Being a country boy who feels more at home with farm fields and wooded areas than manicured lawns, overly attended fake-looking yards never appealed to me. Growing the grass as fast as you can so you can cut it never made a lot of sense to me.
According to the EPA, gas powered lawn mowers in America consume cause 5% of the nation's air pollution.
I never got along well with small gas motors anyhow. For the past couple of years or so I've been using a battery powered lawn mower. Except for the short run time I like it a lot. You just put in a charged battery, push the button and go. None of that infernal rope pulling.
At heart I'm still more of a mountain man than a Florida boy. Although I don't think I'm what you would call a tree hugger or anything like that, I really don't like noisy motors or spending any significant part of my life on mowing a yard. When St. Peter asks me what I did with my life, I don't want to tell him that I spent hundreds of hours making my yard look "presentable." Somehow I don't think that would impress him.
I much prefer nature to artificial looking suburbs. I like trees, bushes, wild flowers and animals much better than lawns that looks like AstroTurf. But lately I've learned something else.
If you have a sodded well-maintained yard, you have destroyed the natural habitat for butterflies, and who knows how many other creatures. I recently learned that each type of butterfly lays its eggs on a specific type of plant. They are very particular about that.
Monarch butterflies lay on Tropical Milkweed. Swallowtail butterflies lay their eggs on citrus trees. And Zebra Longwing and Fratillary butterflies lay on the corkystem passionflower (passiflora suberosa).
After I learned the host plants, I learned to find them in my yard. And when you find the host plants, you'll also likely find butterfly eggs or caterpillars feeding on the plants.
Here is an example of a Fritillary caterpillars feeding on a corkystem passionflowers that I found in my yard.
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| Fritillary Caterpillar On Corkystem Passionflower. |
For the last twenty or more years I was completely unaware of these butterfly host plants and had been walking over them and cutting them, and also undoubtedly destroying the caterpillars. If I had a sodded yard and had been eliminating weeds and using pesticides, the corkystem passionflowers would have been destroyed along with the Fritillary and Zebra Longwing butterflies that use the corkystem as their host plant.
What I am talking about today applies to more than butterflies. It shows how much we don't notice. We are content to walk around and over all kinds of things without taking notice. It also shows how one piece of new information can lead to another and another. It shows how things are connected. When you learn one new thing, you don't know where it will lead you.
When I learned that the Fritillary and Zebra Longwings lay their eggs on one type of plant, I knew those plants must be around. Then I learned to identify the plants and discovered that I have probably thirty or more of those plants in my yard. Now I can find them easily by following the butterflies, and when I find the plants, I find the eggs and caterpillars.
It is very similar to metal detecting. Curiosity and observation help you put together the clues. You put together the signs or clues and learn to follow the path to treasure.
As I always say, "One thing leads to another."
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I don't know if you noticed, but the two items that I've found on the Indian River Ridge site that showed specific patent dates had dates of 1905 (lantern lens) and 1924 (level plate). I've found tons of items on the site, but most of them being iron and badly corroded, do not show any clear marks.
Given those two specific dates that I have found, it would appear that the event leading to the burial of the many railroad artifacts would be some time after 1924, assuming that most of them were buried as the result of a single big event, which I think is the case.
Only one metal item showed a specific date (the brass level plate). The lantern lens provided important information, and was, of course, found while digging a signal from a metal target.
Another find that was easy to date was also an incidental find made of glass. It was a Pepsi Cola bottle, which I mistakenly referred to as being a double dot Pepsi. It is a bottle from the north side of the lot where a lot of later junk was found above the older railroad items, including the lantern lens.
I always recommend being alert to non-metallic items while metal detecting. Keep your eyes open while listening for a detector signal. Non-metallic items can provide valuable clues. In this case, glass finds provided some of he best dating information that has found on the site.
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There are no storms that will affect us.
The surf remains small, but will be increasing slightly over the next few days.
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com. |
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
