5/16/26 Report - Looking at a Very Detailed Shipwreck Map from the Past.

 

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

I was looking through some of my old stuff in a back room the other, day and one of the things I noticed rolled up on top of a bookcase was a shipwreck map.  Shown above, it was based upon research by Martin Meylach, the author of Diving to a Flash of Gold, a classic treasure hunting book originally published in 1971 and read by most treasure hunters of the era before the internet and James Dunbar of the Florida Bureau of Anthropology.

Among my old stuff, I often find things that I put away long ago and forgot about.  That was the case with this chart. I pulled it out and looked at it like a new find.  It was as new to me as if I just bought it and received it in the mail.

It is a large chart, and very detailed, but since its publication, some things have changed.  New wrecks have been discovered, and some wrecks now go by different names - sometimes the result of more recent research to identify the wreck.  I think the chart, which gives true compass readings for the wreck locations, would now have more specific GPS locations.  The chart is double-sided and jam packed with wrecks and details. 

The title is Old Shipwrecks of Florida's S.E Coast, and it does indeed cover that entire area with good detail.  It measures about twenty by thirty inches.

The chart is divided in three parts.  Part 1 covers the Sebastian to St. Lucie area and the 1715 wrecks.  Part II covers Fowey Rocks to Alligator Reef, and Part III covers  Alligator Reef to Sombrero Key.

The publisher is Spyglass publications of Chattahoochee, Florida. 

Here is part of the section showing the wrecks of the 1715 Fleet.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably know most or all of that, so you'll recognize these wrecks, starting with the Green Cabin, Cabin, Corrigan's, Rio Mar, Sandy Point and the Wedge Wreck.  The wreck at Douglass is referred to on the map as Gold Wreck.  Of course there are other wrecks in the area besides these.  Some are not the famous treasure wrecks, some are lesser known wrecks of other eras.  I'm surprised more of those aren't shown on this section of the chart.

Below is a small section of the chart from Part II (Fowey Rocks to Alligator Reef).  You might not be so familiar with those wrecks.

Included are names such as the Brick Wreck, Mandalay, Swedish Wreck, Pillar Dollar Wreck, Civil War Wreck, and Aladdin Lamp Wreck.  Those, being from other parts of Florida are seldom mentioned in Treasure Coast circles.

Below is a section showing some of the 1733 wrecks in the Keys.

The chart doesn't show some wreck sites.  I talks about many of the 1715 wrecks of the Treasure Coast, but it skips over others in the same area, and it also skips over wrecks in other areas, such as the wrecks around Jupiter, for example.

One thing I've not emphasized in my blog over the years is the amount of reading I did in the early days. I really did a lot of research and have boxes full of photocopied pages.  I read about everything relevant that I could find, including books, magazines, as well as maps and charts like this one.  Much of that probably didn't pay off directly but added to my general knowledge.  Who knows how that might have helped?  I'm sure it did though.

To give an example, I always also read about antiques and collectibles, which undoubtedly helped me recognize the possible value of some old bottles that washed ashore on Key Biscayne after Hurricane Andrew while I was metal detecting for coins.  I told that story before about how I first got into bottle collecting.  

Before the internet, we relied on print.  The internet didn't provide so much easy access to information.  Not only does that have its positive aspects, but probably also some negative aspects.  Now it seems there are few people who would take time to wade through the stacks of books in the library to find something relevant or take time to read through a two-or-three-hundred-page book.  Although today you can quickly find this little fact or another but probably miss a lot that you would otherwise find by wading through the many pages of a book.  

 The internet makes it easy to find information, and has a hugely positive effect, but I feel there is also a cost that isn't fully recognized.  I feel like I'm learning to use AI more efficiently all the time and am certainly finding it to be a very valuable research tool.  One thing there is way too little of (and I'm very aware of that now) is time.  There is simply not enough enough time in a life time to do or learn a small smidgen of everything.

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Surf Chart for the Fort Pierce Inlet Area from Surfguru.com.

No change here.

Maybe I'll look into the above chart a little more in the future.

Good hunting,

TreassureGuide@comcast.net