9/1/25 Report - 16th Century Reliquary Detected by Three-Year-Old Holding Metal Detector: Update. Revolutionary War Submarine: Turtle.

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

Found by Three-Year-Old First Time Holding a Metall Detector.

My all-time most read-post is the one about a three-year-old finding a multi-million-dollar 16th Century gold reliquary.  It was posted all the way back in 2010.  The original link does not appear to work any- more but I've found other active links to the story.

James (the three-year-old) said: ‘I was holding the detector and it went beep, beep, beep. Then we dug into the mud. There was gold there. We didn’t have a map – only pirates have treasure maps.’...

He had just been passed the device at a field in Hockley, Essex, when it began to buzz...

Here is a view of the reliquary that wasn't in my original post.

And my original post didn't have the gold purity. Here is article found by the new link says about that.

The sides of the reliquary are about an inch long and it is 73 per cent gold...

Here is the new link.

James Hyatt unearths £2.5m treasure trove on FIRST metal detecting expedition | Daily Mail Online

And here is a link to a July 2025 article that states that the find was made in 2009 but is now getting a lot of attention in social media.  

The boy who struck gold: How a 3-year-old unearthed a $4 million treasure

The pendant was acquired by the British Museum and is now called the Hockley pendant.  It was opened by conservators and found to only contain some flax fibers but probably once contained a religious artifact.  It is thought it could have also been enameled.

Here is another of the additional views presented in the Met article that you can reach with the following link.  The new views are after conservation.

Medieval Golden Pendant Valued at $4 Million Found by Toddler

Old posts occasionally need to be updated, especially after conservation and research has revealed new findings.  Old links also often need to be replaced by new working links.

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After the Battle of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775, Bushnell began working on the project with New Haven’s wealthy inventor and fellow patriot, Isaac Doolittle (1721 – 1800). The pair assembled the earliest true submarine affectionately named the Turtle.  But to do so required several firsts.

Bushnell's idea of using water as ballast for submerging and raising a submersible, considered simple and ingenious, is still in use to this day. So too the screw or two-blade propeller, as the name indicates to propel a vessel, was first crafted by Doolittle for the Turtle, which later revolutionized all steam and coal driven water craft.  While a student at Yale, Bushnell was the first to demonstrate that gunpowder could explode underwater. Even more so, again with the help of Doolittle’s knowledge of brass and clock mechanics, was the first ever to construct a time-bomb; a clock-work mechanism that used a flint-lock sparking mechanism to explode water tight black powder. The plan was to attach the time bomb to the hull of a British man-of-war. Lastly, further expanding his knowledge of explosives, Bushnell became the father of ‘sea mines’, the first to use a firelock system, similar to the breech of a musket, to ignite water-tight black powder upon contact. They were called torpedoes as were all explosive water devises at that time...

The idea of exploding ships by the use of mines had been around since the 14th century. The Chinees floated wooden boxes laden with black powder. However, the explosive remained above water and could only be set off manually by tugging on a trigger mechanism attached by a long cord to either another vessel or on land. What could be called the first submarine was designed by Dutch engineer and inventor Cornelis Drebbel (1572-1633). By 1620, he had moved to England where he designed and built a wooden vessel that could be propelled underwater. This first submarine, though billed as such, did not fully submerge. Weighted down so a large portion remained underwater, it used sixteen surface oars to drive it up the Thames in London during its demonstration...

Here is the link for more about that.

The Turtle: Infernal Vessel Became the First Submarine Used in War – Revolutionary War Journal

Several attempts were made using the Turtle to affix explosives to the undersides of British warships in New York harbor in 1776. All failed, and her transport ship was sunk later that year by the British with the submarine aboard. Bushnell claimed eventually to have recovered the machine, but its final fate is unknown. Modern replicas of Turtle have been constructed and are on display in various museums.

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Wabasso Beach Cam Clipping.

People are on the Treasure Coast beaches to enjoy the day off.  There are a good number of people with surf boards despite the small surf.

Here is the link for the Wabasso beach cam.  Indian River County FL.

Fort Pierce North Jetty Beach Cam from SurfGuru.com.

Several surfers trying to catch a wave by the north jetty.

Sebastian Pier Beach Cam from Surfguru.com.

Not much going on there.  More fishing than surfing today.

Source: nhc.noaa.gov.

So a little development here.  Keep watching.

Good Labor Day,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net