hey, just seen your post, done some research, according to the british archives there was several ships with that name, accordly if the british records are correct, no such vessel named HMS Looe ever been to the usa.
one was shipwreck oversea, one outlived it use and still in england some where and the last one was in the sunk off the coast of the florida coast. now i know what u are thinking, the one off the florida cost could of been here, i thought same thing, but this vessel sunk before supposed landing in the highlands. i have the dates on record for all these vessels. the british record only list these 3 vessels from the 1600's to 1799 year dates.
so my next step is find a ship with similar name, if there was any ship by the british there. there is a record of dutch ship there.
also the coins that the locals found were supposedly english and portuguese. i find it hard to believed that it was pirate treasure simply because blackbeard was already hung, so it wasn't him, capt kidd, no because it wasn't really a pirate and fact show he was framed
so where does that leave us, research dutch ships and maybe british ships if they were really there.
i believe these to be the facts:
it could of been stolen cache, hidden by local for safe keeping, maybe pirate, but most unlikely since the cache isn't big enough, maybe a ship went aground and while crew was abandoning ship it was lost, there are so many reason other than what most people want to believe
like to here from others
joe