Where did the gold go?

[Oceanscience]

Might edit your original post and try again?

OK, I got it, "the files are too large"

 

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[Tanneyhill]

OK, I got it, "the files are too large"

No worries. I found pdf copies of both on archive.org:

1) Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415 - 1825 by CR Boxer
2) The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695-1750 - by CR Boxer

If you have any other recommendations please feel free to kindly add, I would be very grateful. Ty.

 

[treasurediver]

archive.org is a fantastic source. Look for "View of Brazilian Gold and the Commercial Sector in Oporto, 1710-1750.pdf"
It does not upload.

 

[treasurediver]

Here are more sources

 

[treasurediver]

more notes

 

[treasurediver]

https://bdor.sibi.ufrj.br/bitstream/doc/420/1/371 PDF - OCR - RED.pdf

A very good book about the gold from Brazil is "O Ouro Brasileiro E O Comercio Anglo_Portugues". You can download it free at the link above and use Google Translate.

 

[Tanneyhill]

There is a virgin shipwreck out there with a huge amount of these on it, that sank in 1722. This is not the packet-boat mentioned earlier, but a different documented galleon.

Anybody knows of that one? It has a great story.

Oceanscience, do you mind sharing the fascinating story of this wreck you refer to? I would love to research this wreck. Thank you.

 

[Oceanscience]

Oceanscience, do you mind sharing the fascinating story of this wreck you refer to? I would love to research this wreck. Thank you.

If you would like to do some researching, I have a shipwreck with 3,000,000 Pieces of Eight. There are some mysteries, inaccuracies and cover-ups in the official story.
If you want to research and share your findings, I will give you the information of the ship, date, etc. needed to get started.
I made one expedition on site, verifying the route of the ship and succeeded in uncovering some of the mysteries. With a little more information, this could become a feasible project.

 

[Tanneyhill]

If you would like to do some researching, I have a shipwreck with 3,000,000 Pieces of Eight. There are some mysteries, inaccuracies and cover-ups in the official story.
If you want to research and share your findings, I will give you the information of the ship, date, etc. needed to get started.
I made one expedition on site, verifying the route of the ship and succeeded in uncovering some of the mysteries. With a little more information, this could become a feasible project.

Dear friend, I sent you a DM. Ty.

 

[Oceanscience]

Oceanscience, do you mind sharing the fascinating story of this wreck you refer to? I would love to research this wreck. Thank you.

Sorry, I realize there is a typo. The date is 1711. The story of the wreck is real and documented, but the location of the sinking is very vague because the ship was separated from the fleet in a storm.

 

[Red_desert]

Don Martin was first Minelab distributor in Brazil. These are slave dig site Google Earth maps he gave me back in July 2010. The Zoom Earth are copies I made with the gps coords displayed top left. The quartz dump mounds stretch across at least 2 different ranches.

Since the time of slave digs Brazil has produced tons of gold from dredging in a reservoir lake. In recent years the water level dropped with reports of recovered gold in kilo amounts rather than ounces or lbs. from above the waterline.

Brazil has a golden history.

Don said you can't go there for a weekend and not find gold (it takes permissio).

 

[Oceanscience]

Thank you Red-desert, this is a very interesting contribution. It brings up 2 questions:

• why is there no Brazilian metal detector manufacturer?
• Should we start a new thread: Where did the gold come from? At no time in history there has been so much gold dug up as now. Why. Because of the high gold price, many long-forgotten gold producing sites have been re-discovered.

Like the site you show, already a gold producing region hundreds of years ago. How many of these are there?

 

[ARC]

Thank you Red-desert, this is a very interesting contribution. It brings up 2 questions:

• why is there no Brazilian metal detector manufacturer?
• Should we start a new thread: Where did the gold come from? At no time in history there has been so much gold dug up as now. Why. Because of the high gold price, many long-forgotten gold producing sites have been re-discovered.

Like the site you show, already a gold producing region hundreds of years ago. How many of these are there?

Cauca Valley mines in Colombia (opened in 1540), Potosí (1545) and Oruro (1595) in Bolivia, and the Castrovirreyna (1555) and Cerco de Pasco (1630) mines in Peru.

 

[Oceanscience]

I always wondered what the official amount was.

How much gold did the Spanish take from the Americas?


The relative importante of the two metals is starkly indicated by the estimate that between 1500 and 1650 registered trade alone conveyed 181 tons of gold and 16,000 tons of silver to Spain from her American colonies.

My guess is maybe 200% more for the smuggling?

 

[Red_desert]

I can answer a certain number of questions. First metal detecting in Brazil. So many local prospectors found enough gold that, everywhere you went somebody was using a Minelab gold detector. The ranch owners would dig long trenches for a split of the gold. Like the American West the surface gold became hunted out. Don told me when Garrett new pulse detector (not recent Axiom) the person who did the field test used a ranch permission then hunted a brushy area turning over rocks. He found enough large nuggets that way and still wanted more, so he crossed over into the bordering ranch doing the same. Many of the locals didn't like asking permission and ranch owners got tired of that because there was no gold split. Even Don's hunting partner wouldn't ask. Don always got permission giving ranch owner a fair share. Once Don found a nugget bottle cache down the road from his home at an abanded property.

I think the date on my Zoom Earth map is actually a satellite image when made. Back then it was usually 1 year behind, you could refer to it as a date stamp. Emeralds have been found in this gold region also. Eventually they got a Garrett dealer there, they showed Don the new pulse detector. Recently government started cracking down on gold prospecting. Too many fires were started to burn off brush and it ruined it for everyone.

Enough gold, emeralds, diamonds, probably existed in Brazil during Spain's occupation. In Colombia there was an indigenous culture which got their wealth by trading emeralds. The tribe accumulated a large amount of gold treasure from emerald mines on their land.

 

[MiddenMonster]

Like the American West the surface gold became hunted out.

I recently saw a program about the various gold rushes in the West and Alaska. They said that most of the people who made a career of mining gold at that time never even saw a nugget get pulled up out of the ground. It was all tiny specs mixed in with the soil that had to be chemically extracted. So for them it was just back breaking work for low wages. I've also heard that here in Texas we have more gold in the ground than most places on Earth, but it would take a whole Cowboy's stadium worth of soil to get an ounce of pure gold, so the economics just ain't there. Still a lot more profitable to drill for oil and gas.

Another interesting tidbit from that show was that there is enough gold in both the molten core of the Earth and the solid core at the very center to cover the surface of the Earth to a depth of 12 feet. I did some research and that figure fluctuates wildly, which means nobody knows for sure and it all comes down to the data you choose to use in your calculations. But the bottom line is that we will never/probably never be able to access that gold because of its depth and the inherent risks of actually punching through to the molten core. And worse would be going deeper and punching into the solid core. That would be like popping the lid off a 225 degree pressure cooker. Suddenly release the pressure on the solid core and it would pop like a zit. The contents would instantly go molten and shoot up the shaft toward the surface. That would leave a void where the solid core was, and the pressure from the entire weight of the Earth would force the molten core into the void and cause who knows what havoc with the Earth's mantle and crust. I think that in any case we would all be dead.

 

[Red_desert]

I think if we could only have the gold already sunken in the oceans, we all might be rich.

 

[Red_desert]

Don Martin's bottle cache of Brazilian gold.

Nuggets and gold from cache in pan.

Brazil still has plenty of nuggets.

 

[MiddenMonster]

I think if we could only have the gold already sunken in the oceans, we all might be rich.

Look at it this way: If your yard was covered in gold to a depth of only 1 foot, you would have more wealth than you could spend in a lifetime unless you were trying to compete with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the rocket launching business.

 

[treasurediver]

Cauca Valley mines in Colombia (opened in 1540), Potosí (1545) and Oruro (1595) in Bolivia, and the Castrovirreyna (1555) and Cerco de Pasco (1630) mines in Peru.

Very interesting.
How much gold was shipped?
What were the paths of the shipping over land?
Where was the gold laden on coastal ships and boats?
What were the routes of the ships?

We know that most of the gold was shipped in the form of coins, bars and jewelry.
gold dust is very difficult to find on a shipwreck.