st augustine shipwrecks..older article

[Larsmed]

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-onlin..._2A1CANNO.html

[pcolaboy]

I remember someone posting this last fall as well. Crazy stuff.

[LM]

St. Aug is my hometown... I grew up with historical shipwrecks as a daily part of life. Every other week, there was some story in the paper about this or that being found.

After good storms, you could walk the beach and find all sorts of little fragments of really old artifacts (rusted nails, chards of broken stoneware, etc), that had washed ashore. Every now and then, someone found good stuff (coins, or whatever)

There was no doubt that there are a buttload of really old wrecks out there. Unfortunately, from what I gather (I'm by no means an expert on this), Florida is a real booger when it comes to diving on them and recovering stuff, but to be sure, people do it anyway.

[FISHEYE]

Whats really interesting is if you go to the LAMP website all they talk about there is the bringing up cannons and how the people lived back then.Never any mention of any treasure brought up or found on any of the wrecks they work.You know alot of those wrecks have treasure on them,even if its just a few coins.They say they are not looking for treasure on any of the wrecks.Any contract you get from the state of florida says that if you see precious metal to bring it up,even with a exploratory permit to not to leave it there.So wheres all the treasure from this non-profit group that gets state grants to operate?

[LM]

Whats really interesting is if you go to the LAMP website all they talk about there is the bringing up cannons and how the people lived back then.Never any mention of any treasure brought up or found on any of the wrecks they work.You know alot of those wrecks have treasure on them,even if its just a few coins.They say they are not looking for treasure on any of the wrecks.Any contract you get from the state of florida says that if you see precious metal to bring it up,even with a exploratory permit to not to leave it there.So wheres all the treasure from this non-profit group that gets state grants to operate?

I don't know a whole lot about LAMP in particular. I had a dear relative who worked at the Lighthouse for many years, but in an unrelated function (the Lighthouse Museum part). I do, however, know a little bit about the colossal ineffectiveness of non-profits in general. I'm sure to a pro salvor, the idea of diving these wrecks and not finding treasure boggles the mind, however, in the non-profit world where people are graded on their 'good intentions' rather than their results, they tend to operate in very strange ways and it wouldn't surprise me that a non-profit diving on a treasure ship might not find treasure. In a way, it's kinda metaphorical for non-profits in general.

In reading their blog, they're clearly anti-treasure hunter- going so far as to actively take an anti treasure hunter stance in Tallahassee, which is quite disturbing.

Their website is StAugustineLighthouse (x) com, I actually own SaintAugustineLighthouse (x) com for reasons unrelated to them.
I suppose if need be, an information based protest site could be erected to help counteract their anti private salvage philosophies, so long as we made clear mention that we were in no way affiliated with them.

[OldGold74]

PP you have too much time on your hands dont pull the dogs tail, get certified and go dive with SeaHunter many nights and beers to ***** if you stick it out, get diving, later