5/19/26 Report - Shipwreck Treasure History. More About the 1733 Fleet. Bamboozled I Was!

 

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

Closeup View of Small Section of
Yesterday's Mystery Object After More Cleaning.

I soaked yesterday's mystery object another day and then brushed it off.  You can see a closeup microscope view of a part of the object above.

I was bamboozled, dumbfounded, and flaberghasted - an honored member of the Bumbas region. Or to put it more clearly, I was just plain and completely wrong.  

After getting so much of the surface crud off, I saw the object differently.  The object itself is metal.  Before I was convinced there was something inside.  Now I can see that there was only a thin encrustation.  And there is some remaining mostly white material that is extremely hard to remove.

Below is the entire object after another day of cleaning.

Mystery Object After More Cleaning.

The metal is a very hard metal as tested on a touch stone.  In the microscopic view above you can see the granular look of the surface metal. 

What remains of the white stuff was not removed by two days in undiluted 5% acid white vinegar.  Most of the darker material that looked like rust is actually quite granular too, but it mostly came off.  One of those rusty areas on the precleaned object looked like maybe something sticking out of the encrustation.  That was not the case.  

Here is what the remaining very hard enrutation looks like under the microscope. 

An even closer inspection of the remaining whiteish encrustation (below) shows it to be very hard to.  It looks more like mineralization or even a type of quartz matrix.  I need a geologist right now or an XRF test.  Now I'd just like to know what metal it is

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Here is a little treasure diving history.

    The story of the contemporary shipwreck treasure era in the Keys probably began in 1938 when Islamorada fisherman Reggie Roberts looked up Homestead diver Art McKee to show him an old "cannon wreck" he had found.  The wonderfully curious McKee wrote to Spain after he discovered Spanish coins on the wreck - and received back a salvors' map of the locations of ships of an entire fleet that had wrecked in the Keys in 1733.  It is one of North America's greatest maritime disasters, an event totally unknown to us until the letter from Spain arrived. There is a copy at the Islamorada library of Spain's National Library's letter to McKee stating they had forwarded his inquiry to the Archives of the Indies.  It is dated "28 febrero 1938" to "Mr. Arhur McKee, Jr., Phone Key Largo, 3731, P. 0. Box 165, Tavernier, Florida (U.S.A.)"

I've written before of the time I met Art in the Keys.

And here is another piece from the same article.

 John Colcock of Charleston was sailing near the Dry Tortugas when the hurricane struck and later told the governor of South Carolina that he himself barely survived it and that afterwards at the Keys his ship was approached by a launch with 20-30 survivors aboard, who asked if he would take them to Havana.  He did so and his merchant ship with a cargo of hides was immediately seized by the Spaniards and pressed into the rescue and salvage operations, leaving him and his crew to wander about Havana for the next five weeks.  Upon complaint they told him that "he had two remedies - patience or beating his head against the wall."  Another colonial American ship, the John, was also pressed into the rescue service while at Havana...

Here is the link for more of that article.

IK 1733 Fleet Wreck

That bit about the English boaters and the Spanish fleet.  Here is a little from another article.

During the summer 2004 season, a crew of four archaeologists from the Bureau traveled to the Florida Keys to conduct the field portion of this year-long project. This chapter reports on the results of this research, describes the public interpretation of this intriguing historical event and attempts to answer the question: how can managers interpret significant shipwrecks allowing unlimited access, but also begin to limit the amount of human disturbance they receive?

returned to Havana just after Spanish admiralty officials dispatched a small sloop

to assess the fate of the fleet. Survivors reported seeing several large ships

grounded near a place called “Head of the Martyrs” (present-day Islamorada).

Nine rescue vessels were loaded with supplies, food, divers, and salvage equip-

ment and sent to the scene of the disaster (Smith, 1988a).

Several salvage camps were constructed in convenient locations and the sal-

vage operations were overseen by soldiers sent to protect the precious cargoes.

Nearly half the vessels were re-floated and towed back to Havana; those left were

burned to the waterline enabling divers to access the cargo holds and concealing

the wrecks from freebooters. Salvage of these vessels continued for several years.

When the final calculation of recovered materials was made, more gold and sil-

ver was retrieved than had been listed on the original manifests, tell-tale evidence

of contraband aboard the vessels (Smith, 1988a).

Here is the link for that article.

(PDF) Creating a Shipwreck Trail: Documenting the 1733 Spanish Plate Fleet Wrecks

That is one of those articles written from the perpecitive of an academic, so you know what you'll get.

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The surf is a little rough and a lot of seaweed is washing up onto the beaches. Beware the little irritating creatures that can ride the seaweed.

Here is the link for the Jensen Beach Cam.

Jensen Beach Live Webcam Stream

Surf Chart from SurfGuru.com.

The surf will calm a little.

Good hunting,

Treasureguide@comcast.net