Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Double-Clinched Spike Found On Treasure Coast Beach. Head (left). Spike (center), Point (right). |
I mentioned this 1715 Fleet beach find yesterday but decided, as what I regard as one of my more interesting spike finds, it deserved better photos. I've long thought of it as a double-clinched spike, which I still think it is, but I also recently realized it could be a hook - either created as a hook or repurposed as a hook. The point is still sharp.
The head looks like it was pulled through a hole, but the hole, when it was pulled (if that is what actually happened) had to be bigger than the size of the spike. That raised some questions for me. The head looks like it was pulled through a smaller hole rather than pounded or some other way reformed. Amazing how when you think you know an item, new questions can pop up years later.
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| Coin Find. |
This is the type of find that can excite you at first glance. The Napolean gold-looking coin is mounted on an earring. It simply didn't feel heavy enough to take seriously, and I quickly found the same thing online. They are said to be from the 1980s and have rhinestones around the coin.
Here is the examples I found online.
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| Reproduction Coin Earring Found Online. |
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| Source: See OldSaltBlog.com link below. |
When one of the masts of Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory was removed for restoration work, a conservator found a Victorian-era coin that had been placed beneath the mast for good luck, 127 years ago. The coin, a farthing, dates to 1894, the year a set of masts were installed on the ship after the previous ones became rotten.
The BBC quotes HMS Victory’s principal heritage adviser Rosemary Thornber called the coin “invaluable”.
In its day it was worth a quarter of a penny, and now would have a value of 0.1p. The now-corroded coin once showed Queen Victoria’s head on one side, and Britannia on the other, with a lighthouse in the background.
The tradition of placing coins under ships' masts dates back to Roman times and still continues today...
'Good Luck' Coin Found Under HMS Victory's Mast (oldsaltblog.com)
Thanks to TekLord for that link.
From Wikipedia on why coins were put under the mast.
The ceremonial practice is believed to originate from ancient Rome. One theory is that, due to the dangers of early sea travel, the coins were placed under the mast so the crew would be able to cross to the afterlife if the ship were sunk. The Romans believed it was necessary for a person to take coins with them to pay Charon, in order to cross the river Styx to the afterlife and as a result of this, coins were placed in the mouths of the dead before they were buried. Another theory for this practice is that the insertion of coins in buildings and ships may have functioned as a form of sacrifice thanking the gods for a successful construction, or a request for divine protection in the future.[ A third theory is that corrosion-resistant coins of gold or silver provided a physical barrier minimizing the transmission of rot between the wooden mast and wooden mast step.
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SALT LAKE CITY — As a team of archeologists and volunteers sifted through the fragmented remains of a once-thriving town along the original transcontinental railroad last fall, they spotted some vertical timbers sticking out of sand dunes in the area.
They figured the upright posts may have once been a part of a wall to some sort of structure that once existed when the town emerged out of thin air in the late 1860s and early 1870s as a result of the important railroad project. As they dug deeper, they found charcoals that indicated the structure once burned, which made sense because many of the structures burned down as the city disappeared as quickly as it appeared.
They were then flabbergasted by what they discovered next. They stumbled across the floorboards of a house likely built in 1869 or 1870, a home probably for multiple Chinese railroad workers, said Chris Merritt, the preservation officer for the Utah Division of State History....
A history gold mine: Excavations from Utah ghost town uncover important artifacts | KSL.com
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Looks like we could have some bigger surf in the near future.
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com. |
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net