Anyone done the math?

[ropesfish]

My opinion...worth just what you paid for it...
I think there is enough.
Enough to make it interesting.
Enough to make it worth investing time, energy and effort.
Maybe even enough to make it profitable.
While it is not possible for everyone to get the ol' jon boat out and go hunt for doubloons, it IS possible to hunt the beaches and maybe invest or dive with a subcontractor...heck..if you work at it long enough you might get to be a subcontractor and find out how hard it really is to go do it day after day.
Nope. It is not perfect, but a few chances remain to hunt treasure only because the Fishers fought the US and FL governments for the right to salvage the wrecks off of Florida. The Bahamas will likely never open up. Nearly all of the Caribbean is already tightly slammed shut and most of the corrupt SA governments will sign onto UNESCO so "The State" can retain control of all those 'Cultural Heritage" sites with all that unrecovered patrimony.
If our Fearless Leaders had their way there would be nothing like a treasure hunt left to dream about, but there is still a little freedom to chase the dream...and that's enough.

 

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[ivan salis]

well there is some left most likely -- and while the water is "off limits" due to leases with the state and such --once you get to "the beach " from the high tide line to the dunes foot is fair game --for the common beach hunter type metal detectorist ...

 

[ou8acracker2]

Shame - us young guys (I'm 26) cant remember the "hay day" of the treasure hunting days and probably will never be able to become subcontractors due to our age (I guess you have to be old, have huge rigs, and established now a'days) and pocket book size.

Suppose I should find a new hobby here soon haha

 

[ivan salis]

well the fact of the matter is that the king's "recovery people" actually salvaged more stuff than was upon the original manifest in the first place ...oppsie ...uh that's clearly not supposed to occur , and the "king" was royally pissed off about that --the fact that smuggling of this degree was occurring on his treasure fleet vessels meant that the smuggled value could double the "on the books" value of a fleet -- smuggling was rampant because no one wanted to give up 20% of their hard earned money in "taxes" to the king just to return home with it , so they could live the "good life" with it in Spain .

 

[ou8acracker2]

^ much like today in regards to taxes haha

Has anyone gotten a detailed account of the amount of contraband that was brought aboard? I remember not to long ago they found a small cannon with coins shoved in it. Just wonder how much they brought on there - seems the cannon stuffing indicates they ran out of other room haha

 

[ropesfish]

If it were declared, counted and recorded in "a detailed account" it would not have been contraband. Smuggling to avoid paying the King's tax was frowned upon and most likely dealt with pretty harshly. Filing an insurance claim on smuggled goods would be an admission of guilt, so that avenue is unlikely to bear fruit.
>>On who can hunt treasure- there are at least 2 divers working on a treasure boat here in Sebastian who are 23 or 24. They want to do this badly enough to move 900 miles to work for expenses and a share of the recovery.
There is at least one boat (Christopher James' 'Half Reale") that is a 20' Shamrock. Not very big and not expensive to operate. I have seen some dig boats sell for under $5000. They may need some sweat equity -clean up and minor repair- but they'll get you on the water.
Your expenses are fuel, repairs, dockage, air fills and sustenance. In the past a lot of folks have bunked on their boats
Getting a subcontract is up to you, your skill on the water, under the water and in the meeting you will have with whoever you wish to be a subcontractor with.
This is real life. There are no participation trophies. I work on or near the water doing my own stuff several days a week and the people who are most successful are the ones that go out the most. Capitana, Finder and Mighty Mo have gone out nearly every workable day and several that weren't.
If you want to get into any business and be successful (IMHO), you start at whatever level you can gain access, learn all you can, do whatever job/favor/task that you are asked to do as well as it can be done, keep your reputation clean and prove yourself to be worthy of trust and advancement.
Never give up. Never surrender.
Good luck.
Now...back to that 'sweat equity' part of my day.

 

[ou8acracker2]

Rope - I understand all of that and thank you. However - on this particular thread I do not feel like justifying myself in regards to what I can and cannot do :-). I will say though - quick and dirty - that I have worked nonstop on drill rigs in Nevada, was a maintenance man at a Florida university for 5 years, am a geologist, also have an MBA in finance, I am a "quant" who now works in risk at a large bank, have a boat, and have plans for tools to salvage with. I am also 26 years old. I know how to work hard and also know how to think.

Now back to the topic at hand haha I also meant has there been a tally of the contraband found thus far. Of course they would not report it in fear of the consequences, but starting from the modern day treasure salvage - what has been found that WASN'T on any manifests.

 

[ropesfish]

There is certainly no need to justify yourself or provide a resume. I was merely responding to a statement that you posted that I believe to be in error. What you believe you can or can't do is up to you.
I will refrain from cluttering up your threads in the future.
Good luck to you in all those things.

 

[ivan salis]

well are you asking does anyone have a "running total" of everything that was recovered from the 1715 fleet and what was legal and what was contraband ... that my friend would be a massive bit of work spanning 300 years of time 1715 to 2015 ...so its highly doubtful and with folks taking stuff the wasn't recorded off the wrecksites thru the years of people "fishing" the 1715 wrecksites with grappling hooks 9in the old days even the "offical records" would not be correct ..there is still stuff just waiting to be found as the current finds show ...for the right person..at the right time at the right place

 

[ARC]

No mention of those Jewels yet I see...
Common sense dictates estimates like this...
IMO... there is tonnage left.

It was smashed and thrashed the day it went down... and periodically for three hundred years it got/gets it again.
The cracks and crevices / holes... still bear much fruit.

Serious moving of sand... is the name of this recovery game.

 

[Au_Dreamers]

Brent's web site Home

Salvage efforts on the wrecks began immediately and by the end of December the officials in charge of the operation reported they had already recovered all the King’s treasure and the major part of that belonging to private individuals, totaling 5,200,000 pesos.

**Note this says all the "King's" treasure. I believe in the regurgitation of telling this people apply this to the overall coinage, inaccurately**

The following spring they recovered an additional small amount, so that by July the Spaniards called a halt to their salvage efforts. When the Spaniards stopped their salvage work, a total of 1,244,900 pesos of registered treasure remained. Add an estimated 19% contraband, and we believe 2,200,000 pesos remain. Using a conservative sale price of $250 per coin, we feel over 550 million dollars of treasure remains to be recovered.

**Again this addresses the coinage for the most part. I believe the contraband might possibly be about coinage also.**

Gold, which in terms of weight was sixteen times more valuable than silver, was the most common item smuggled back to Spain, and since there were almost no gold coins registered aboard the ships, those recovered in recent years from the wrecks must have been contraband. This is substantiated by the fact that most of the gold disks recovered lacked the required markings of registered gold bars. It is more than likely that a substantial amount was being smuggled in this convoy.


From Haskins papers

Capitana 1300 chests 940 salvaged 360 left
Almiranta 990 chests 736 salvaged 254 left

The above Haskins papers is reported from Spanish archives from their salvage. There is the amount taken by pirates and then what was "fished" off them over the years. I have read/heard that Real Eight found somewhere in the vicinity over over 50 chests of silver coins. More modern salvage is hard to say....I at one time was going to attempt a compilation from records but there's just not enough hours in the day.

The Refuerzo carried eighty-one chests of silver coins and over fifty chests of worked silver. Another ship, a patache, carried some 44,000 pieces of eight.

**So these other wrecks aren't in that tally. Neither is the Capitana and Almiranta of Echeverez**

In the letter of 29 October it is stated that out of 1300 boxes of coins on the Capitana they have salvaged 940 and of the 940 on the Almiranta they have salvaged 736. This leaves 360 on the Capitana and 234 on the Almiranta. Captain Don Francisco de Sotosanchez states he is going to look for the fondo of his ship, the Patache of the Flota.

Info found about chest of coins from an Atocha study

Atocha Chest 130 lbs 7 oz.

2225 coins 2,4,8's reales

Gold Hound Treasure Divers...

What are the estimates for the amount of sunken treasure still remaining from the 1715 Fleet?

$700 million to $900 million by conservative estimates, according to Dr. R. Duncan Mathewson III, author and Archaeological Director of the Search for The Nuestra Senora de Atocha. According to Mathewson, if one takes the non-perishable cargo left after the hurricanes and subtract what the Spaniards and English pirates recovered in their salvage efforts, together with what has been recovered in modern day times, “we are left with almost 3 million pesos worth of gold and silver treasure still strewn on the ocean bottom somewhere along the St. Lucie Inlet-Melbourne coastline.”
Using the same appraisal value indices and point system devised years ago for valuing the 1622 Atocha and later the Santa Margarita, the 3 million remaining 1715 pesos represent three times the value of items on the Atocha manifest. Today’s minimal value, stated Mathewson in January 2007, is between $700 million to $900 million.
************************************************************************
My personal opinion is that if you throw away the semantics of 30 tons vs 49 tons or all the "stolen" silver coins, it's 100 chests left vs 550 is irrelevant to my thinking. There's still "more than enough" left for years to come and when you factor in finds like Bonnie and Jo's "bird" and the Schmitt's last 2 years, mind boggling treasure like that proves it's not all hunted out!

**Note I wrote this before this 2015 salvage season**

So let's take "someone's" one hundred million. That too was calculated before the 2015 salvage season.

Subtract the $5.5 to $6 million estimate of this years big finds....possibly $5,000 from all the other vessels and we have $93,995,000

GO GET SOME!!