Atocha Treasure Company
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| In 1960 the ballast pile was still well-formed, about forty feet wide and close to 120 feet long. In some places the ballast stones reached four to five feet high, and wooden bottom timbers showed on both sides as well as large athwartship members on the north end, which was the stern. Some ballast was scattered toward shore, up a small slope that ended in white sand stretching several acres shoreward. Here the water was twelve feet deep. Over the wreck site the depth was closer to sixteen feet, and gradually deepening seaward, so that 100 yards to the east the water was thirty feet deep. To the north, the reef became fairly rugged, and to the south were a series of reefs with deep sand between. Down the reefs to the south several hundred yards we were to locate the bow anchor of the Infante years later, both flukes missing, torn away as the ship was driven over the reefs by the July 15, 1733, hurricane. Later that day, as Harry and I were looking over the reef seaward of the Infante, we located the scatter pattern of another wreck. As it turned out, this was the H.M.S. Fly, a British Frigate that sank on Little Conch Reef in August, 1805. It was the only day we explored this site, recovering a glass prism from Captain Pellew's skylight, and a bronze door hinge. | |
| I took Craig up on his offer, and several days later I found myself browsing through his shelves of artifacts, treasure he had accumulated over ten years of salvage diving. Things that I had only dreamed of he seemed to take for granted as he pointed out flintlock pistols, boarding cutlasses, clay figurines, pottery bowls, a silver chain with a hinged reliquary dangling on one end, bronze and silver buckles, buttons, conglomerates of straight pins, cannon balls, and a cigar box full of silver coins. He did have two gold coins that he would eventually let me see, but that would be weeks later. What captured my imagination were the "Pillar Dollars." He explained the story behind them, that they were the first round silver coins ever made in the Mexico City mint, and that one of them dated 1732 had been auctioned off at Christensen's for $2,400. I was impressed. |
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| For the next six months Craig took me under his wing showing me what equipment to buy and where to buy it. I had never used a hookah rig, an air compressor driven by a gasoline engine that pumped air down to the diver all day long. The 40-cfm compressor he used as an air lift, the rig used to vacuum the sand off the bottom, was an air-conditioner compressor used by Eastern Air Lines commercial airplanes. He shared with me the information gleaned from an old chart the Spanish salvagers had made of the 1733 wreck sites. In 1960 only three of the shipwrecks of 1733 had been located. I didn't know it then but I was becoming a part of the salvage scene taht would eventually locate and identify the entire 1733 Spanish Flota. It would provide me with some of the greatest diving experiences I would ever remember...the "good ole days." | |
| I was into underwater movies, an ambition that was prompted by a Christmas gift of a 16MM camera in an underwater case. Telling friends and guests that I had some footage of sunken shipwrecks proved more enticing that the usual footage of our last vacation north somewhere with the kids. And so it happened that on my first diving trip with Craig, I wound up on the end of a camera as he prepared to "go to work" with an air lift. "I'll cut a line on the bottom with the air lift, and when you get done with taking your underwater thing, then use the other air lift and work the north side of the line. O.K.?" I nodded agreement, went over the side, and was busy filming away as he splashed above me and drifted down to the sand that stretched northward from the stern of the ballast pile. There was a myriad of fish, and the old Infante timbers made a great backdrop that had my full attention. |
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| It wasn't long before sand and shells were spewing out the end of his 15-foot-long, 3-inch-diameter air lift, most of it right on top of me. That wasn't so disconcerting intil he suddenly dropped his air lift, reached into the small hole he had burrowed to hard bottom, and held something up for me to see...and smile. I swam over to take a look and did a double take on one of the nicest gold crosses with four green emeralds I had ever seen. The original cross, actually an earring, had held seven stones, but three of them were somehow lost in the sand. As soon as I had a good glimpse of the cross he headed for the boat, grabbed the other airlift, and before long both Craig and I were "pumping sand." | |
| Less than an hour into my first commercial salvage effort, I uncovered a GOLD RING! It was a rather small ring, with a design that had been etched with silver. The silver was nothing more than blackened lines within the grooves of the design, but it was my first gold. Craig, from fifteen feet away, shook his head and kept pumping as I took my prize up to the boat. By the time I was back on the bottom Craig had a surprise for me. He waved it in front of me before I could pick up my airlift. It was another gold-cross earring with three rubies of the original seven stones still there; there were three emeralds and four rubies still snuggled somewhere in the white sand that marked the stern of the Infante. I searched this area for fifteen years after that and recovered only one of the emeralds. |
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| The day of surprises wasn't over yet. Towards the end of the day Craig had drifted over to the sloping embankment that strecthed shoreward. It seemed there wasn't much there except dead staghorn coral. Before long he was swimming towards me with a 12-inch piece of the coral in his hand. It formed a perfect slingshot, and in the crotch was a round silver coin. He aimed it at me, pulled back on the imaginary rubber sling, and let me have it! In the boat we took a good look at the coin. It was a perfectly round eight-real coin dated 1731, apparently what would later be called a "royal," a coin that was used to "prove" the die. It was a very valuable coin, worth much more than either Craig or myself ever imagined. | |
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Bob Weller email frogfoot@adelphia.net |
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