Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
Pirates of the Marine Silk Road by Lauren Hilgers.
Below are some excerpts from an interesting article talking about the development and an interesting technique used on wrecks off China.
... the Nan'ao Number One is unique. It is the only known wreck from the late Ming Dynasty. Archaeologists estimate the ship sailed between 1573 and 1620, a period when China had turned inward, banned maritime commerce, and begun to dismantle its once-great fleets. In another time, the vessel would have been a merchant ship, following a busy trade route. But when China closed its shores and docks, maritime trade and commerce became piracy and smuggling. Officially, the Nan'ao ship never should have been in the water—it was likely moving along the coast illegally. Its cannons, now half-buried in the mud at the bottom of the South China Sea, would have been necessary for defense...
... the development of underwater archaeology in China owes much to English treasure hunter Michael Hatcher. Hatcher's biggest find, which came to be known as the Nanking Cargo, came in the 1980s. All the archaeologists on the Nan Tianshun know the story well. It was the wreck of a Dutch ship that had run afoul of a coral reef near Indonesia in 1752, dropping a load of tea, gold, and more than 150,000 pieces of Ming Dynasty porcelain. "The porcelain was all from Jingdezhen, near Nanjing," says Wu. "That boat wasn't Chinese, but all that porcelain originated from China." China's government did its best to stop the sale of what it saw as national cultural heritage, but Hatcher was still able to auction off the bulk of his find in 1986, reportedly earning more than $20 million. Two years later, Cui was enrolled in an underwater archaeology program at Qinghua University. "Hatcher got Chinese archaeologists to start studying underwater excavation techniques," he says...
"The Nanhai was in shallower water than the Nan'ao, but the visibility was terrible," Cui says. "We would have had to conduct excavations by feeling our way along the bottom of the sea floor." In 2001, archaeologists revisited the wreck with a bigger budget—$20.3 million—which was used to build a custom saltwater tank on Hailing Island in Guangdong, part of a new Maritime Silk Road Museum, which opened in 2009. Archaeologists actually lifted the boat—along with the silt in which it was buried—out of the ocean and into the tank for study. The spectacle of a 3,000-ton steel cage being pulled out of the water earned shipwrecks a place in China's popular consciousness....
Here is the link for a lot more about that.
Pirates of the Marine Silk Road - Archaeology Magazine Archive
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It could be said that metal detectorists, Reg Mead and Richard Miles were explicitly looking for the Le Câtillon II hoard—or at least, they strongly suspected that something significant was buried in the area based on local lore of Jersey's Grouville parish,,.
Their search began after they heard about a farmer who had discovered silver coins while plowing his field in the 1950s but had not investigated further. Intrigued, they spent over 30 years searching the area with metal detectors, believing a more significant hoard could still be buried underground...
in early 2012, they found a single Celtic coin. It was the first tangible proof that the rumors held weight. Using a metal detector initially designed to locate downed World War II aircraft, they soon uncovered one of the largest Celtic hoards ever discovered. It’s safe to say that while they didn't know precisely what they would find, they systematically searched for a specific treasure based on the local account of the farmer’s find, rather than hunting randomly for just any significant find...
In addition to the approximately 70,000 silver coins, 13 gold torques, and glass and bone beads, the Le Câtillon II hoard contained a variety of other artifacts including 23 gold staters, silver ingots, gold sheet and fine silver wire, silver and bronze jewelry, and a late Bronze Age projectile point dated to 950-800 BCE...
Here is the link for more about that.
Buried Treasure: The Le Câtillon II Hoard and the Mystery of Jersey’s Celtic Riches - Numismatic News
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The price of gold has just reached levels never seen before, going to over $3000 per oz. for the first time ever. And then it fell back a little. Of course it did. You'd expect that.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average recently fell to under 42,000. The near daily drops have been making the news, and there are panicky talks of recession. But in Dec.of 2024, the DJIA was at an all-time high of over 45,000. The market is just coming off of new record levels. The price drop isn't as noteworthy as the recent new record levels. Ups and downs are normal. It doesn't seem all that long ago that I watched the Dow hit over 35,000 and then with amazement I watched as it went over 40,000, and then over 45,000. It reached a peak in December of 2025. You don't expect to see new highs and new records continue forever without and some downward moves, and some day there is likely to be a big downward move. That is just how things go.
It helps to have experience and be able to take a longer-term perspective. One of the best things you get from aging is that long term perspective. You can look back and see how things have changed over time and put it all into perspective/
The beaches are the same in some ways. Sand comes and goes. There are daily tides, storms events that last a day or two, and there are longer term changes. We've seen them all.
If you have been around, you can look at a beach and see long term trends, such as how a beach has been building not only during the summer, but over years and decades. There will be occasional erosion, but those smaller events don't mean as much when put in perspective.
John Brooks beach, for example, has been building rather steadily for several years now . It was eroded way back by the major hurricanes of 2004, but since then it has been building.
If you remember the 1980s, the same beach was eroded way back close to the condos to the north. Now that beach is hundreds of yards farther east. It would now take a big event to expose old layers of sand that were previously exposed.
Fort Pierce South jetty beach continues to erode, but it is still not back nearly as far as it was in the past. It wasn't too many years ago that the old sand was exposed. But since then there have been multiple beach renourishment projects. That sand continues to was out and eventually make its way down to John Brooks.
I could go on for a long time about how the beaches have changed, but I'll try to keep it brief. I'll stick with John Brooks for now. It doesn't look at all like it once did. They removed the Australian pines at one point. The signs hung in those trees with big painted letters are gone too. The salvage crews didn't need those painted signs hung in the trees after they got GPS.
At one point, probably in the 80s or 90s when the beach was cut way back, there was a concrete foundation exposed at the water line. That was up north a ways. I haven't seen it in decades. There was also a line of tree stumps exposed along the beach running north of the beach access up to the condos. I haven't seen them since the same time the foundation was exposed.
Some of you probably remember what was called the Christmas tree to the north of the beach access. It was a landmark for detectorists. It disappeared during the storms of 2004, if I correctly recall.
As the beach builds, the dunes have also been moving eastward, which makes it difficult to judge how much the beach has accreted without reference to a survey marker, which you can find next to where the walkway (now gone) used to end.
I could go on with other beaches that look very different than they used to look, but won't do that right now.
I remember Mo having the Virgalona backed up to the beach as far as possible, and that was when the beach was way back from where it is now.
I remember where I made certain finds, and exactly where some of them were made. All of those memories recorded depth and perspective. You might call it another dimension. I see those bygone times when I go out to the beach today.
Things have changed. The beach looks very different from the way it looked forty or fifty years ago, but my memory preserves the times in between. If I were to walk out on that beach today and hadn't been there since the first time I visited, things have changed so much I probably wouldn't recognize it as the same beach today. Yet the most magical thing happens when I walk out onto that beach. My memory is activated by the breeze and sound of the waves, and many of those previous times are replayed in my mind. I am no longer in a three-dimensional space. A fourth dimension that was built slowly like the beach appears. That fourth dimension is time. Standing on that beach, I can see layers of ghostly figures. I see the Virgalona with blowers roaring. I see the Australian pines with painted markers hung in the trees. I see the Christmas tree up by the bend. I see myself standing there with my wife inspecting my first silver reale. The howling storm winds of engulf my senses and I stand there and looking back through the sea mist and times I've known.
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It looks like next week we'll get some higher surf.
Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net
