It was on this first visit that I met Craig Hamilton. Craig had been diving wreck sites for many years, and as a Miami fireman he had a schedule of days off that allowed him to salvage these old shipwrecks. He introduced me to the air lift and the hookah compressor which allowed divers to remain on the bottom for hours at a time, and he spurred my enthusiasm for treasure by showing me the coins and artifacts he had recovered. Among those coins recovered on El Infante was a one-escudo Mexico with a hole drilled near the edge of the coin. He suggested to me that some Spaniard had hung this around his neck, possibly as the cost to bury him when he passed over the bar. 

I began diving with Craig on several of the 1733 galleons, and one day we were air-lifting along the hull of the El Rubi, capitana of the 1733 fleet, that sank about four miles off Tavernier Island. It was on this day that Craig had exposed about five feet of the hull, close to the point where we were concerned that the ballast above us might break through the softened wood overhead. At this point, Craig noticed a flash of gold drop from the silt that seemed to encrust the hull. As it rolled to the bottom of the hole he caught it, held it up for a look, and...all smiles…flashed a two-escudo pistolé dated 1728 at me. 

Within a year of that recovery, Craig had a visitor, Señor Calicó, a noted collector from Spain. He purchased that coin, as well as a 1733 MX “pillar dollar” that Craig had recovered from the Infante one day while I was diving with him. 

In 1962 I spoke to Tim Watkins, the captain of the Buccaneer, a salvage boat that operated out of the Miami River. His crew had salvaged material from the Infante in 1957, and their story made front page news in the Miami Herald. He advised me that other than artifacts and some silver coins, he had recovered only a single gold one-escudo Mexico. I did not determine if the coin was dated. 

I was also advised by Jack Haskins, a noted salvor on many of the 1733 galleons, that he was with his close diving partner, D. L. Chaney, when D. L. recovered a two-escudo from the ballast of El Infante sometime during the 1980s. Unfortunately D. L. Chaney passed over the bar several years ago, so I could not determine the mint or date of the coin. 
 

The San José, one of the larger naos of the 1733 treasure fleet, produced quite a few gold coins. Jack Haskins and D. L. Chaney located a bonanza several hundred feet from the main ballast pile while metal detecting around an abandoned lobster pot. One day Jack was scouting the area seaward of the José ballast pile when he got a deep “hit” on his metal detector. Without an air lift nor a “blower” on his boat, he fanned down as deep as he could, then squiggled his arm down deep in the sand until he could grasp what he had a hit on. With more squiggling and squeezing he was finally able to pull out the target—an encrusted flintlock musket. Some days later he and D. L. Chaney were going to run a magnetometer survey, but the magnetometer was on the “fritz”. They decided instead to snoop around the area where Jack had recovered the musket.  

Art McKee was able to build a treasure museum on Plantation Key, based on the quantity and quality of artifacts that he was fortunate to recover from the capitana, El Rubi. In fact, he was able to put visitors over the side in Miller-Dunn deep-sea diving helmets to see for themselves what a Spanish galleon looked like. I can remember first diving the capitana in 1961. The ballast pile lay huge across the bottom, over 100 feet in length and 40 feet across. The rounded river rocks were piled as high as five feet off the bottom, and the wooden ribs—and there were quite a few that Art had propped upright for effect—stood some seven or eight feet above the bottom like sentinels. 
Art found a number of gold coins on the site, and he advertised them on the signs in front of the museum, facing US Highway #1 which traced its way southwesterward towards Key West. The signs read “Gold Doubloons and Pieces of Eight.” Art’s gone now, his museum a page in the history books. His treasures also mounted up and rode off in all directions, so it is difficult to nail down the dates, mints, and denominations of the coins he had on display in his “treasure room.” But there is no mistaking the thousands of visitors he had pass through his museum who were able to personally see the coins. So they were there, recovered from the capitana, El Rubi. 

Martin Meylach, a salvor who later wrote the book Diving to a Flash of Gold, had success in recovering a portrait 1-escudo, dated 1732, from the capitana. A photo of the coin is on page 184 in his book. 

In 1972, I had the pleasure of assisting Jack Haskins and Richard MacAllaster in salvaging the 1733 Angustias. The wreck lay in eight feet of water in the middle of Long Key Channel, some 2/3 of a mile east of the bridge carrying US Highway #1. We often heard the bus drivers pointing us out in passing, “To your left is a treasure salvage boat bringing up gold and silver coins from the Spanish galleons!” We would laugh, but continue searching. We did locate a Mexican cob 2-escudo, undated but circa 1732, in the second test trench we dug before the state gave us permission to salvage the site. 

At the end of the salvage operation, after we had meticulously gone through every ballast stone of the 85-foot by 35-foot pile, we were raising the last of the three cannons we had found on top of, or under, the ballast when our greatest recovery happened. Jack Haskins was checking out the little holes and crevices located towards the bridge within 50 feet of the ballast when he caught that glimpse of gold at the bottom of a little pothole. It turned out to be a 4-escudo portrait, 1732, which later sold at auction in California for $17,500. Jack still has the lease on the Angustias and hopes to check out the rest of the holes and crevices between the pile and the bridge. Coins have a habit of squirreling away in odd places. 

Geoff Zitver has also had the luck in recovering two similar 4-escudo portraits dated 1732 more recently. He advised that they were recovered on the site of the San Ignacio off Coffin’s Patch. He recently sold one at auction for $32,000 and promptly bought a sailboat that he hoped to sail around the world. 
 

These are the gold coins I am personally familiar with that have become collectors’ items. It is true that this was not the gold bonanza that we have been able to recover from the 1715 fleet, but keep in mind that the 1733 hurricane was not nearly as devastating as the one that hit the 1715 fleet. The 1733 fleet hurricane had only eight- to ten-foot waves that drove the galleons onto the Florida reefs, where they bilged their bottoms but were still pretty much intact after the hurricane. They were almost completely salvaged by the Spanish. What we are finding is only pocket change, the cargo was pretty well accounted for in the salvage documents. Hopefully this will record, for the time being, the fact that there WERE gold coins—both cob-type and portrait—carried on the 1733 Spanish treasure fleet! 

"Frogfoot" 
September 1999