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[Diving Doc]

Members this is really all about old news, I posted much on another forum but it bears looking at. While there are some reputable people who do treasure recovery the vast majority of those who call themselves "treasure hunters" turn out to be nothing more than modern day pirates. Here's the headline but there is a whole lot more to this than meets the eye as will be explained. We are going to put this operation under the forensic microscope and take a very careful look at the individuals and their efforts at "treasure hunting".

Doc


On December 2, 2004, two subjects pled guilty and were sentenced before U.S. District Court Judge King in Miami, FL. The individuals were charged with trespassing, disturbing and destroying plants (mangroves), searching for buried treasure, and constructing and installing structures on a National Wildlife Refuge, all in violation of Title 16, USC, Section 668dd(f)(1) and Title 18, USC, Section 2.

[Diving Doc]

The incidents took place in December 2003 in the Marquesas Keys located within the Key West National Wildlife Refuge in Monroe County, FL. The Marquesas Keys are part of the National Key Deer Refuge. One of the subjects had been hired by the Amelia Research and Recovery to captain their boat the Polly L, a large lift boat that had proper permits to recover treasure from the wreck of the Spanish galleon Santa Margarita.

I was in Key West at the time but I will refrain from repeating heresay. What is it all about? Here are some of my posts from another forum. Marc, the owner of the site and one of the moderators wrote,

"This is where the Spanish set up camp in the 1620's to locate and salvage the Margarita and Atocha.

24?34'6.70"N  82? 7'33.33"W

I actually got a big, deep reading on the island - if anyone wants to go on a dig, let me know! Wink"

My response; "The crew off the jackboat the Polly L were trying to do exactly that when apprehended and jailed about 18 months ago.. I wouldn't suggest going on that island. It is patrolled and overflown regularly."

 Here's the historical background;
Twenty of the twenty-eight ships returned to Havana while an attempt was made to salvage the Atocha and Margarita. Gaspar de Vargas was sent with five ships for the salvage operation. The Atocha was quickly found, her mizzenmast still rising out of the water. The Atocha was down 55 feet, making it very difficult for divers to work. They found all of the hatched and gun ports securely fastened. Only two small iron swivel canons from off the deck could be salvaged.

Vargas proceeded west in search of the Margarita, which he could not find. At Loggerhead Key he found the Rosario and a small group of survivors. Vargas burned the Rosario to the water line to expose the cargo for salvage. In early October a second hurricane swept through the area, interrupting the salvage effort and forcing Vargas to seek higher ground. After finishing with the Rosario, Vargas returned to Havana for more tools to make another attempt on the Atocha.

When they returned to the place they had last seen the Atocha, the Almiranta could not be seen. Apparently the October hurricane had buried her, and even dragging the bottom with grappling hooks came up empty.

In February, the Marquis personally joined the salvage effort, and a few silver ingots were found, but the ships hull still eluded them. By August the efforts were abandoned and Vargas returned to Spain. Nicholas de Cardona drew a map of the search area for their salvage report before he left for Havana.

The loss of the 1622 treasure fleet was a disaster for the Royal Treasury. The Crown was forced to borrow even more to finance the Thirty Years War. Several of the Guard Galleons were sold to make up some of the loss, but it was not nearly enough. The treasure of the Margarita and the Atocha had to be found!

In 1624, Nunez Melian was granted a contract to salvage the Margarita and the Atocha. Over the next two years he had a 680-lb. Copper diving bell cast. Finally reaching the salvage site in June of 1626 the use of the bell proved successful. Juan Banon, a slave, spotted wreckage and managed to bring up an ingot. The Santa Margarita was found!

Over the next four years, interrupted frequently by weather and Dutch raiding parties, Melian managed to recover 380 silver ingots, 67,000 silver coins and 8 bronze canons. The Atocha still could not be found.

Melian was eventually appointed Governor of Venezuela, and he hired Captain Juan de Anuez to continue the salvage efforts, which he worked sporadically until 1641. That year Melian applied for another salvage contract upon hearing rumors that the Indians of the Keys knew the location of the Atocha. Melian died in 1644, before anything could be found. His salvage accounts were collected in Havana and eventually forwarded to the Archives of the Indies in Seville, Spain.

Very interesting just how much was salvaged. There were inventories of the actual treasure carried by both vessels but, and I will get back to this later, there were not  30 some odd chests of  'Church Treasure' on board the Atocha as was publicly stated in the press.

Now you know what? The salvage party was raided a few times during the years that salvage was carried out on these two ships. Yes, a very lengthy salvage and there is a massive inventory of what they reported, still the salvors were accused of stealing and tried in court. {Things you won't hear about in Key West.} Makes sense that some stuff might have been buried while they were under attack and never recovered. They were driven off at least once.

I posted; "Good luck, might be golden but get your permits first."
Doc

[Diving Doc]

That is very bad my freind, anyone who destroys natural habitat out of pure greed should be drawn and quartered.  Thanks for the news.

It was really much more than that. There had been speculation about the salvage camp for years but it was an off-limits area unless you could talk the State of Florida into granting permits. The mag and M/D hits were a lot more than rumor but whether or not there was really any treasure remains to be seen. Let us take a closer look at this company, its claims and its employees.
Doc

[Solomon]

I'll be interested to see if either of the big-name, so-called 'marine archaeologists' appear in this story. They hover like vultures over a carcass, kept aloft on flimsy qualifications and hot air.

Solomon

[Diving Doc]

Solomon,
Here's the news splash and the link on the vessel who's crew were involved.

http://outside.away.com/outside/news/200405/scuba_diving_resort.html

Hotel Oceana
An innovative dive outfitter lays plans to build a futuristic platform resort?right next to the reef
By Mark Schrope
The allure of scuba diving far from shore has always been offset by the requisite marathon boat ride and double dose of Dramamine. But this spring, a Florida treasure-hunting outfit, Amelia Research & Recovery, began inviting charter groups to its new $1.8 million offshore base camp?built on a rig known as a lift boat. Long used by the oil industry, these vessels create sturdy platforms in up to 500 feet of water. From the Polly L, as the aqua-lodge is called, divers can explore wrecks and reefs dozens of miles from the coast, sans commute. By mid-2005, Amelia plans to launch a $3.5 million deluxe lift boat (illustrated below) designed exclusively for hosting tourists on dive spots from the Keys to the Caribbean. Here's a look at a splashy new kind of inn.

>>The 2005 resort, like the Polly L, will essentially be a barge with legs. After motoring it to a sandy spot near a dive site, the captain will activate hydraulics that drive the legs down until they hit bottom and the vessel rises above the water. It can sleep 60 and, with an onboard desalinization plant, stay offshore for up to nine months, requiring only biweekly food deliveries. Garbage will be ferried to shore, and sewage will be biologically processed, then filtered, with only sterilized water released into the ocean.

And what happens when the seas are so high that the supply boat can't come alongside without knocking over the Jack Boat?

A Jack Boat in 500 feet of water?
Who wrote this copy?
LOL
Doc

[Bart]

Hunt Begins off Stuart for lost 1715 treasure ship

SUZANNE WENTLEY
February 13, 2007

HUTCHINSON ISLAND, Florida -- Treasure hunters arrived on the Treasure Coast on Monday in search of what they hope might be a ship from a gold-filled fleet that gave the area its name.

   The four-person crew of a lift boat named the Polly-L expects to reach Tiger Shores Beach, located just north of Stuart Public Beach, this morning and begin looking for historical artifacts associated with a shipwreck possibly from the 1715 Spanish treasure  fleet.

   The search begins four years after officials with the Amelia Island-based Amelia Research and Recovery team first surveyed the shallow waters off Hutchinson Island for a stack of cannons that a local surfer discovered almost 30 years ago.

   "I'm excited and ready to go," said Dave Jordan, a former Palm City resident and surfer who kept his discovery a secret for 25 years until his wife triggered the memory. "I want to see what's there."

   So does Doug Pope, the president of Amelia Research and Recovery, who on Monday captained the four-story-high boat down the Intracoastal Waterway in Fort Pierce.

   Pope and Jordan worked with the state to secure necessary permits to "dig and identify" the 42 targets they found during a 2005 survey about 200 yards from the beach.

   Starting as early as today, professional divers will use metal detectors to rule out which of the targets are "modern junk" -- bridge parts or other metal debris -- picked up in the initial survey, Pope said.

   Then they'll use a 6-inch vacuum dredge to determine what the remaining targets are. If they uncover an artifact of potential historical significance, the treasure hunters must first receive a permit to "salvage" the material.

   "When the treasure gods start smiling, then we'll say we found something," Pope said. "They don't smile that often."

   If Jordan's memory turns out to be accurate, Martin County historians say the shipwreck could be part of an 11-vessel Spanish fleet that wrecked in a hurricane in 1715.

   So far, the ship from that fleet discovered farthest south was the Urca de Lima, found north of Fort Pierce's Pepper Beach Park, which now contains a state underwater archeological preserve around the wreck. Other ships from that fleet have been discovered in Indian River County.

   While it is unlikely any gold will be uncovered in the search, officials with the Historical Society of Martin County are hoping historical treasures will be discovered and eventually displayed in the new Elliott Museum planned just yards from the possible shipwreck site.

   Jordan, who has family in Martin County and is in the process of moving from North Carolina to Gainesville, said he will likely stay on the Polly-L for a few days as the work begins. The project is expected to take about a month.

   "It's important for me to find the cannons, but it's not about me," he said. "I'm excited Martin County is getting a chance. There's tons of history here. It's unbelievable."

TREASURE HUNT TIMELINE

October 1978: Dave Jordan, former Palm City resident and surfer, rides a wave off Tiger Shores Beach and, underwater, sees cannons stacked in the sand. He keeps the memory to himself for years.

September 2003: After a discussion with his wife prompted his memory, Jordan works with treasure hunters with the Amelia Island-based Amelia Research and Recovery to begin searching for the cannons. Archeologists believe they could be from the 1715 Spanish treasure fleet that sank nearby.

May 2005: Treasure hunters return to continue surveying the area with the hopes of securing a state permit to search for artifacts underwater.

February 2007: With the proper permits in hand, officials will bring the four-story-high lift boat named the Polly-L to begin digging for the cannons and other historically significant pieces. They said it is unlikely they will find any treasure.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-213treasureship,0,7057680.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

[Bart]

Ship searches for sunken treasure off Fla.
MIAMI, March 26

   A treasure-hunting ship has spent the past few weeks off the Florida coast looking for a Spanish galleon that may have wrecked there in 1715.  "This could be the real deal," Doug Pope told The Miami Herald. "The research says a shipwreck should be there."

   Pope and his company, Amelia Research & Recovery, learned about the site of the possible shipwreck from retired U.S. Navy sailor Dave Jordan. Jordan was a 15-year-old surfer in 1978 when a wave tossed him below the surface and he spotted some black tubes sticking out of the sand.

   "I swam down and grabbed onto one," he told the Herald. "I thought to myself, Man, these are cannons.'" Jordan said he kept his find a secret until he told Pope, who spent two years getting the necessary permits to go looking for the cannons and any other buried treasure off Tiger Shores Beach.

   So far, the treasure recovery ship Polly-L's search has cost about $50,000 and turned up a shard of 19th-century pottery.

   "This job can be frustrating sometimes," Pope told the Herald. "But if it isn't the greatest adventure in the world, I don't know what is."

[Solomon]

The Polly-L

I first moved the above post from 'Maritime Archaeology' to 'Marine Salvage' then recognised the Polly-L and merged it with the above.

Official website: Amelia Research & Recovery, LLC

Solomon

[Bart]

Doc;

I am beginning to wonder if someone recovered the cannons a long time ago, without prmission. How likely would that be, in your view?

- Bart