8/19/22 Report - One Man's Story of the Early Days of Treasure Salvage Including the Treasure Coast, and A Huge "Treasure" Research Resource.

 

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

In the Wake of the Golden Galleons 
by Roy Volker and Dick Richmond (1976)

In the Wake of the Golden Galleons by Roy Volker and Dick Richmond (1976) is a book that is very different from the Frank Hudson books I recently mentioned.  It is narrative by Volker about how he got involved in treasure hunting and the people, events, wrecks, and treasures of his career in treasure hunting.  It actually starts before he was involved in treasure hunting, He came to Fort Pierce, like many young men, for training exercises during WWII.  

This book provides some early history on Florida treasure hunting but reads more like a biographical novel.  It is the kind of book you can happily read from the first sentence to the last and enjoy the entire book, while at the same time learning a good bit about the history of treasure hunting.

You can find that one online for a reasonable price.

When I started metal detecting I read most everything I could find on treasure hunting and still have a lot of the books and magazines around.  I'll tell you about some of them from time to time - especially the old classics.

Here is another one of those books, but it is an entirely different kind of book.   The title is Treasure

Treasure Hunting Bibliography
 by John Reed.

Treasure Hunting Bibliography and Index to Periodical Articles by John Reed (1989) certainly isn't a classic, and it is an entirely different from the kind of book I described above. You would not sit down and read this one from cover to cover, but it is a great research resource that can be very helpful. It is a "bibliography of over 5,200 periodical articles about treasure hunting, lost mines, sunken and buried treasures and related subjects." Being published in 1989, the articles were obviously written before 1989. The articles are not from the popular treasure magazines such as Lost Treasure and Western and Eastern Treasures, but come from sources that you would be less likely to search first, such as academic journals and non-treasure periodicals of general interest. The book includes 425 jam-packed pages.

Being published in 1989 you might think it is outdated, but don't let that fool you.  I'll explain more about that some other time.

For a few examples, I saw articles on the obvious topics such as the Titanic, Atocha and Oak Island, but also articles on metal detectors from as far back as the 1920s; various mines treasures and shipwrecks you probably never heard of, 

You might think these old publications are impossible to find.  That, however, is not always the case.  I just searched for a 1953 issue of Life magazine that had an article of interest and quickly found it listed online for around $9.00.  Other journals have old issues listed online, but most all can be found by going through a good library.

But you don't even have to find the specific article listed in the bibliography.  Do a search using teh same seearch terms, and you'll probably find the same and more updated information.  Maybe you've never heard of the Bear River Loot or Black Burro's Gold.  Now you have.  You can find out more about them in issues of True West and The Cattleman.  If you can't find old issues of True West or The Cattleman, you can still do a google search and find out about them.

I saw one title Finding Gold With A Camera, and did a google search.  Interesting things came up, including how to photograph precious metal finds and how to use FLIR to find treasure in walls.  the old sources can lead to more up to date information if you simply use the titles as search terms.  

Here is another example I noticed in the bibliography.  Treasure Fleets of Spain in the 16th Century published in Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 37, 1886.

The Gentleman's Magazine was a monthly magazine founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term magazine (from the French magazine, meaning "storehouse") for a periodical. Samuel Johnson's first regular employment as a writer was with The Gentleman's Magazine.

To sum it up, it is a valuable research resource, but is not easy to find. My first search did not reveal any copies currently available on Amazon.

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If you thought I was wrong when I called for the firing of Fauchi and Birx, you might want to think about apologizing.  As soon as they put out that stupid model and attributed its predictive inaccuracy to the benefit of the population "doing a good job" by wearing masks, things were going seriously wrong.  Now the CDC director is admitting "she will make major modifications to the agency’s structure, including staffing changes and efforts to improve public messaging, after she said the agency failed to adequately respond to the Covid-19 pandemic."   That is a positive move, but it won't be nearly enough.  

Here is the link.

CDC Director Walensky Announces Major Agency Changes After Covid Missteps (forbes.com)

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As I said yesterday, the Atlantic is getting a little more active even though you only see a little development of one system on the NHC map.

Source; nhc.noaa.gov.

The tides are more moderate and there is the slightest increase in the Treasure Coast surf.

Good hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net