Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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Source: Caritaspublishing.org - see link below. |
Even though I originally started my blog to give frequent beach condition reports, it quickly evolved. The very first posts were brief and included little other than present beach metal detecting conditions. I started adding other information to my posts, which included finds and other information relevant to the metal detecting/treasure hunting communities, and the daily posts got larger. It became huge.
After all the years of posts, people not only check the daily posts many search and read the old posts, which remain online. In fact, the old treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com posts have been getting about 1500 views a day, according to the blog statistics.
I have two big regrets about my blogs. First, when the blog became so huge, it was difficult to find old posts you might be looking for. And second, when I was having trouble with blog, I thought it might be because it was so big, and I deleted a good number of the older posts.
Hoping to fix the first problem, I have been attempting to do a better job of adding good labels or keywords to each post to aid searching.
Hoping to alleviate the second problem to some extent, I started a second blog (tbr202o.blogspot.com) instead of continuing to add to the already huge treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Being Super Bowl Sunday, I thought I'd look back over the year to see which posts were in the competition as the most read posts. Maybe not the winner, but the old 8/1/10 post caught my attention. That post is like 13 years old but was still being read a lot.
Sometimes I don't know why some posts are popular, but I can see why a lot of people liked this one. It relates to some great finds and also provides a little mystery. Sometimes current events relate to something from the past and an old post becomes popular again.
One of the interesting topics in the 8/1/10 post is the coded inscriptions found on a couple 1715 Feet gold rings as well as a bracelet that was found on a beach.
You can see below what I said about that in the 8/1 post by using this link. (The Treasure Beaches Report Direct From Florida's Treasure Coast.: 8/1 Report - Inscriptions on 1715 Fleet Gold Rings).
Here is an excerpt.
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Here is a web site by an archaeologist discussing the history of the 1715 Fleet and a few items found. Most interesting is the discussion of two rings and a bracelet that all bear the same inscription.
Here are the inscriptions.
1989 gold ring: Z+DIA+BIZ+S+ZB+Z+HGA+BFS++
1996 gold ring: Z+DIA+BIZ+SAB+Z+HG+F+BF
Bracelet - beach find: Z DIA BIZ SAB ZHG BFRS
I don't have any idea at this point, but it would be a good project if you want to do the research and decode it.
Here is the link to the article. Unfortunately it seems the illustrations are no longer attached.
http://www.tuspain.com/heritage/gold.htm
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In my 8/15/14 post I discussed the code a little more, but it appears I didn't yet have the meaning of the inscriptions. Below is some of that.---
A posey ring is a finger ring, often of high carat gold, with a poem or motto inscribed on it. The tradition goes back to the Middle Ages.
Here are a couple of examples of 18th Century posey rings.
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| Photo source: www.georgianjewelry.com |
These examples are English.
Posey rings have been found on 1715 Fleet wrecks. Two examples are very large, and may have been worn over gloves.
The inscriptions on the two 1715 Fleet rings, one found in 1989 and the other in 1996, are as follows:
Z+DIA+BIZ+S+ZB+Z+HGA+BFS++
Z+DIA+BIZ+SAB+Z+HG+F+BF
Presumably those abbreviated messages would be in Spanish.
They were originally published in the Oct. 1977 Florida Historical Quarterly in an article by Catherine M. Gaither.
I could not find those pictures now.
Like the two posey rings shown above where the words are separated by marks, the abbreviated words on the 1715 Fleet rings are separated by crosses.
There is also an old Treasure Coast beach find bracelet reported to have the following similar inscription.
Z DIA BIZ SAB ZHG BFRS
Here is the specific source link for the two posey ring photos shown above.
http://www.georgianjewelry.com/items/show/15602-i-lyke-my-choyse-poesy-ring-ca-1700
But before finally finding that post, I found another source that explained the inscription. along with some other good information.
In short, the inscription is an abbreviated form giving the blessing of Saint Zacharias. I'm not sure right off if you can call it an acrostic, but here is the link for a detailed explanation.
Plague-Cross-Blessing-print-half-letter-.pdf (caritaspublishing.com)\
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Good hunting on this SuperBowl Sunday,
from Treasureguide@comcast.net.