Welcome to HH Mike;
Below is what appears to be the original story you referred to, from 8 Oct 2006, with contact info at the end. The reporter may have some current news, and if so, please let us know.
Bart
$1 billion treasure hunt
A Brevard man's team battles adversity to find a 1612 galleon.
Rich McKay | Sentinel Staff Writer
October 8, 2006
JAMA, Ecuador
Haig Jacobs emerges from the Pacific waters and punches a triumphant fist skyward.
"It's gold, fellows! It's pure gold!" he shouts to fellow treasure hunters aboard the salvage boat Nautilus.
Then he opens his palm, revealing a lump of mud hiding a spool of pure gold thread -- more evidence the team has discovered the 400-year-old hiding place of a sunken, treasure-filled Spanish galleon.
Led by Joel Ruth of Brevard County, Los Caballeros Aventureros -- The Gentlemen Adventurers, loosely translated -- have wrested enough galleon remnants to bolster their dreams of making the find of a lifetime beneath the sands and volcanic mud off Ecuador's north coast, 13 miles from the equator.
The Nuestra Senora de la Magdalena (Our Lady of Magdalene) sank about a mile off the Jama River in 1612, where the sea's treacherous shoals swallowed the ship. In the hold was a king's ransom of gold, silver and gems. Centuries-old ship manifests stored in Seville, Spain, value the treasure at more than $1 billion.
Ruth's team thinks it can do what King Philip III of Spain and treasure hunters through the centuries couldn't: exhume the Magdalena's cargo from its watery grave.
If they're right, it would be the largest Spanish galleon ever found, topping Mel Fisher's 1985 discovery off Key West of the Atocha. And because the Magdalena sank in mud, ship timber, guns with wooden stalks and other fine artifacts are probably better-preserved than those of other recovered galleons.
Ruth has risked everything -- money, health and his reputation -- to get this far. But he still cannot be certain he will find the Magdalena's treasury and its abundant wealth or whether years of effort will yield only a few gold trinkets from a ship too ravaged by the sea to bestow its full bounty.
It was on a recent September morning after 11 straight days of diving from the 52-foot salvage vessel that Jacobs made his discovery, handing his diver's bag loaded with mud-encrusted silver knives to Capt. Keith Plaskett.
Jacobs also held the pure-gold thread, once destined to be sewn into the capes and clothes of the Old World's aristocrats and royalty, and which was wound around a silver bobbin.
"Is that all?" Ruth, 54, deadpanned. His hunt for this treasure has lasted four years, and the latest recovery isn't much better than what his team brought up on earlier dives.
"It's here," the marine archaeologist and coin expert muttered. "It might be scattered a mile, but it's here."
Eureka moment
Ruth's quest began when a treasure-hunting friend showed him a perplexing, hand-drawn and water-stained map about a decade ago.
"On this shoal of the R. Jama was cast away. . . . In the year 1612. In her was an abundance of plate and other treasure," it read.
The ancient map didn't name a country or ship. But it did indicate a vessel was wrecked near the oddly named Ensenada Borrachos, or Bay of Drunkards, and a mountain called Coaque (pronounced KWACK-eh).
Ruth, a full-time treasure hunter for more than a decade, was intrigued. He recognized R. Jama as the River Jama in Ecuador, where he had been working for other salvors off and on since the late 1990s. Ruth, who has degrees in history and economics from Florida Atlantic University and Rollins College, knows by heart the routes the Spanish treasure fleets took along the Pacific.
Ruth squirreled away the map, hoping one day it would lead him to his dream. Then in the late summer of 2003 as he was scouting the shore in a remote part of Ecuador, Ruth hiked up a 200-foot bluff, scanned the early-morning landscape and noted its odd bumps.
The hair on the back of his neck rose. "I thought, 'There it is. Those hills . . . are these here on the map,' " he said. "It was like someone speaking to me through the centuries."
Ruth realized he had found the sunken ship's location. But not every ship is worth scavenging. Some didn't carry valuables; others held vast wealth. The challenge was to figure out this ship's name to learn of its cargo.
Only one man would know the answer.
Breaking his silence
Like other treasure hunters, the world's foremost living galleon expert, Sir Robert Marx, guards his secrets. The aging, salty-tongued adventurer and author of more than 60 books lives not far from Ruth's Indialantic home in Brevard County.
When Ruth told Marx what he had discovered, "He said, 'You [expletive],' " Ruth recalled. " 'I've always wanted to go after that ship but never got the chance.' "
Marx, whose recovered treasures have been sold by the world's great auction houses, had found records of the ship in the archives in Seville, where he spent six years doing research.
Marx accepted that he never would be able to hunt for the ship himself. But for 110 pieces of eight -- coins worth several thousand dollars to collectors -- he would give Ruth the answer he sought.
"I'm old," Marx explained. "There's no more waiting. I want to see this found." The men cut their deal, and as Marx spoke, Ruth held his breath.
The ship was the Magdalena, the second of a three-ship convoy that carried 18 million pesos -- or $1.5 billion -- in silver and other treasure.
Built of tropical hardwoods in Spain's New World shipyards, it was heavily armed with 68 bronze cannons and would have had a contingent of soldiers armed with matchlock rifles, long pikes and swords.
The treasure ship annually cruised along the Pacific coast to ferry silver, gold, gems and other valuables from mines in Lima, Peru; Potosi, Bolivia; and other places.
The treasure was then taken north to Spain's stronghold on the Isthmus of Panama, where it was unloaded, hauled to the Atlantic coast and placed aboard ships headed to Spain.
In order to avoid the Dutch pirates who lay in wait for the ships, convoys split up. But the Magdalena ventured too close to shore, listing on the shoals and shifting its 800-ton cargo. Under its own weight, its hull cracked like an egg -- and survivors, if any, would have faced a months-long walk to the nearest Spanish settlement.
Ruth realized the significance of Marx's revelation. The ship, unlike the typical galleon carrying timber, spices and agricultural goods along the Atlantic route, was a floating treasure chest.
Ancient records showed three salvage attempts had failed, resulting in only two cannons being raised.
This was the opportunity Ruth had a dreamed about since growing up on the Space Coast, fascinated by history while his friends wanted to be astronauts. Such a discovery would top anything he had ever done: working on the Atocha recovery with Mel Fisher and even finding three English merchant ships off Haiti.
And he had a feeling it would be bigger than Santa Maria de la Consolacion off Santa Clara Island in Ecuador, which is yielding troves of silver treasure thanks to Ruth's success in locating the vessel for his employers.
Ruth was ready to pursue the biggest discovery of his career.
The hunt begins
In midsummer 2003, Ruth began to assemble a treasure-hunting team. He needed reliable workers who wouldn't betray his secret. And he needed money.
Treasure hunting costs about $20,000 a month. Financial backing came from two Brevard County friends: Lou Ullian, one of the founders of the famous Real Eight Co., the divers who first found treasure from the Spanish shipwrecks of the 1715 fleet; and Ed O'Connor, a retired Air Force colonel and a reconnaissance expert.
For a diver, Ruth turned to former Orlando and Key West resident Jacobs, 38, whom he knew from treasure-diving days with Fisher in Florida.
He hired an electronics expert to run equipment, more divers and a series of ship captains. Some are still working with him; Ruth fired others he grew to distrust. In 2005, he hired his current captain, Keith Plaskett, a former Navy diver and security expert.
But sailing over ancient sunken treasure requires 21st-century negotiation and paperwork. He laid out thousands of dollars for a salvor's permit that guarantees his rights to the area and agreed -- as is customary -- to share half of his find with the Ecuadorean government, which will display recovered artifacts in a national museum. The bureaucratic hassles and getting equipment through customs took months.
He set up shop in Matal, a poor fishing town so off the beaten track that it isn't on most maps.
About 200 residents live in bamboo huts with thatched roofs. Most make their living off the sea, using gill nets to catch wahoo and Patagonian toothfish. Some still use dugout canoes.
They sell the fish that would be worth a small fortune in a big city for just pennies. The high-stakes weekend event is rooster fights that net winning gamblers $5 or $10.
There are no police, giving almost free rein to small-time crooks and drug runners. Capt. Plaskett kept onboard an old shotgun with bullets that can pierce an engine block. "I expect when word gets out, people will think we keep the treasure here," Plaskett said.
Any treasure will be kept in a government vault. The team stored dive gear, food, water, guns and high-tech metal detectors in a padlocked safe house hidden behind iron gates. Organizing the operation was like "setting up a climb to Mount Everest with the mob," Ruth said.
To the water
By October 2003, his team was in place and ready to make its first foray into the sea. The work started slowly. Team members spent months dragging metal detectors over the water, a task rather like mowing a 100-mile swath of ocean -- over and over. The aim was to plot where the ship and its contents were buried beneath at least 5 to 12 feet of mud. The signals spread over a square mile.
Ruth zeroed in on some of the largest hits but needed to make some dives, which required more equipment and also more government permits and red tape.
He shelled out thousands of dollars for a government archaeologist to observe the work, and for Ecuadorean navy divers (Hombres Rana, or frogmen) who provide security and ensure whatever is found gets put under lock and key.
It wasn't until January 2005 that Ruth and his team were ready to dive. They used machines to blow trenches in the mud. But muddy clouds made it so dark that divers had to feel along the holes with their hands, listening to metal-detector pings to tell them where to reach.
"It's like coffee, working in a cup of coffee," Jacobs said. They blew holes for days before finally catching a glimmer of something valuable.
Jacobs reached in and pulled out a gold spool of thread. Another hole revealed guns, dating from the late 1580s to 1620 -- the exact time the Magdalena would have sunk.
The guns, called harquebuses, were the most advanced weapons of the day, and only the highest order of the military had them, said Madeleine Burnside, executive director of the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society in Key West.
"It's like a detective solving a murder," Ruth said. "You put all the pieces together, and it points to just one thing." Their jubilation was fleeting, however.
Repeated dives during the next few months produced only a few more guns. Ruth thought the guns were from the Magdalena's forecastle, near the bow where the armory would have been. The treasury would be aft -- and deep within the hold, above the keel. It could have drifted away, or was buried even deeper, so they dug over a wider area.
The days and months ticked by. Ruth ran low on money and had to calm his antsy backers. The rented boat broke down, and crew members were stricken with intestinal illnesses that kept them on land for weeks at a time. Some of Ruth's workers quit or were fired. Frustrated by working with outdated equipment and borrowed boats, Ruth decided to buy his own ship.
But it took months to get the ship and new equipment through customs. And then on one very bad day in August 2005, members of Ruth's team thought it was all over.
Risking it all
Jacobs and another diver, plus Ruth's former electronics expert, had just returned to an apartment building in Guayaquil where they rented rooms to find the door ajar and three armed men inside.
The gunmen demanded money and grew angry that the trio didn't have more than a few dollars. Jacobs realized it was a setup. A week earlier, a friend's computer containing pictures of the treasure was stolen, so he figured these robbers wrongly thought they had the booty with them.
The gunmen marched the treasure hunters downstairs, ordering them to get on their knees. Jacobs knew their lives were on the line. So when they got to the bottom of the staircase and moved toward a hallway door, Jacobs acted.
"I hung back and let the others walk by," he said. Right when the robbers were in the doorway, Jacobs body-slammed the first gunman with the door.
He caught the gunman's arm and pistol in the doorway. Staring down the muzzle, Jacobs, breathing hard, tried desperately to get the door closed.
"I was knocking about in Joel's shoes. They had leather bottoms, and I couldn't get a grip. My feet were slipping."
His two friends seemed paralyzed. They didn't budge toward the door. "The thought that we were done for did cross my mind."
With adrenaline-fueled strength, Jacobs braced one foot against a step and slammed the door hard against the gunman's arm. The robber cursed, and his arm and the gun disappeared behind the door as they fled. Jacobs and his friends were safe.
But the lesson was clear: Ruth, who wasn't with them at the time, reminded the crew that secrecy is the only thing keeping them all alive.
Enduring hardship
It was Dec. 29 as the crew hovered over the dive site, operating in the worst weather of the season, when the captain mused they were floating over a graveyard. "Davy Jones and all the sailor's ghosts were up on board tonight," he wrote in his logbook.
Ruth asked a local priest to bless the site. But during the next month, the boat was bedeviled by strong currents, pulling them away from their anchored points.
The welds on the blowers broke, one slicing deep into Plaskett's left hand Jan. 19. He wrapped it and kept working. But a week later, he was feverish from infection. A local doctor cut into the captain's hand six times in three days, removing necrotic tissue each time. But the infection spread, so Ruth loaded him on a plane bound for a Florida hospital.
Without Plaskett, the team couldn't pilot the boat. He was back in a week, but the bad luck continued. The boat had more mechanical troubles, and Ruth was hospitalized from mosquito-borne dengue fever. The crew was growing weary from intestinal illnesses and heat. "We were exhausted," Ruth said.
They gave up -- temporarily -- and returned home for a few months to rest. With the treasure so inaccessible, and government soldiers guarding the site, they could leave assured that no one else could steal their prize. Secrecy had grown less important than in the beginning.
"Some people call us madmen, but I, Ludwig van Beethoven, will prove them wrong," Ruth joked, wide-eyed and mimicking a German accent.
Never giving up
The men reassembled in Ecuador in August and resumed their treks into the muddy seabed. It was midmorning Sept. 2 when Jacobs called out that he found gold and guns. "Fresh out of the brine, fellows," he said as he held up a wooden-handled pistol called a hackbut or hagbut.
It smelled like sulfur -- old iron. "There's more," Jacobs said. "There's a whole wall of them."
With the help of four men, a rope and a cable, he brought up a large slab with eight to 10 ancient harquebuses. Mixed in were a trove of black coral-handled knives, beads, brass pins and rings. Ruth smiled and said, "Roll over, Mel [Fisher]."
Ruth's backers also are confident. They expect private collectors, museums and elite auction houses will pay well for the galleon's riches.
"The market for these artifacts is huge," O'Connor said. The men don't plan to sell all of the artifacts, though. They would like to set up a museum in Cocoa. Their excitement is building. Just a few weeks ago, Ruth and his team pulled up a mahogany chest -- almost perfectly preserved -- that held a case of ancient swords.
It's a find that propelled the spirits of Ruth and his crew higher than they have been in years. "We're close," Ruth said. "I can feel it."
Today, the hunt is on. There is treasure here. And Ruth has no plans to give up -- even if the ship's bounty is discovered one gun, one sword, one spool of golden thread at a time.
Rich McKay can be reached at 407-420-5470 or .
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/specials/orl-treasure0806oct08,0,1008674,full.story
