 | A family has discovered $300,000-worth of 300-year-old Spanish gold chains and coins during a sea scavenge off the Florida coast. The Schmitt family and a diver, Dale Zeak, found three pounds of thin gold chains, five gold coins and a gold ring just 15 feet below the surface 150 yards off the coast of Fort Pierce this weekend.
The family runs a company named Booty Salvage but this is the biggest loot they've ever found.
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 | Florida will get 20 per cent of the gold and it will be displayed in museums. The rest will then be evenly split between the crew and the company. But Schmitt said he's happy with whatever they earn from the stash.
'I'm happy as hell to find it,' he said. 'I don't care if I got one per cent of it. Finding it is 90 per cent of it for me.' |  |
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2410051/Florida-family-finds-gold-Treasure-hunters-discover-300k-300-year-old-Spanish-gold.html_____________________________________________________________________  | 48 gold coins from the 1715 treasure fleet have been discovered off the Florida coast.
Brent Brisben, who owns the shipwreck salvage company 1715 Fleet – Queens Jewels LLC, discovered the coins with a four-member crew as part of his excavation quest Saturday. A half hour into their quest, the crew was only 100 feet away from the shore when they discovered the coins.
Brisben is estimating the value of the coins at $250,000, but says his archaeologist has to come in and provide the full value. He estimated that each coin is worth $4,000 to $5,000. The oldest one dates back to 1697, and the newest one 1714, he said. |
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/07/treasure-hunters-find-gold-coin-trove-off-florida/____________________________________________________ | On July 31, 1715 eleven of the twelve Spanish ships sailing from Havana to Spain with royal treasure were wrecked by a violent hurricane on the east coast of Florida from St. Lucie to Cape Canaveral.
Seven of these Spanish Treasure laden ships were scattered over the reefs from south of Fort Pierce to the Sebastian Inlet. Spanish coins of all types (gold and silver) started to be found on the beaches in the 1950s after strong nor'easters or a violent hurricane. This part of Florida's Atlantic east coast quickly became known as the Treasure Coast. |
 | The (El Senor) San Miguel - was a 22 gun NAO Class(Fast Carrack). It very likely contained a significant portion of the treasure. It is believed the ship separated from the fleet the day before the storm struck and the wreck has never been found.
It is believed only a small fraction of the treasure of the lost 1715 Treasure Fleet has been recovered. |  |
1715 Fleet ships believed to have been found are:
1 - Nuestra Senora de la Regla
2 - Santo Cristo de San Roman
3 - Nuestra Senora del Carmen
4 - Nuestra Señora de La Popa
5 - Nuestra Senora del Rosario
6 - Urca de Lima
7 - Nuestra Senora de las Nieves
| - | Ships of the 1715 Fleet never located are the:
8 - Maria Galante
9 - El Senor San Miguel
10 - El Cievro
11 - Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion
12 - Griffon made it safely and went on to France
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VERO BEACH — Bonnie Schubert couldn’t believe her eyes when, about 1,000 feet off Frederick Douglass Beach near Fort Pierce, she came face to face with a solid gold statue of a bird that had lain under the Atlantic Ocean exactly 295 years and 15 days.
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“I remember asking myself, ‘Is this real?’” Schubert recalled Wednesday as the 5.5-inch-tall statue she found Aug. 15 was revealed to the public at her home in the Vero Shores neighborhood of Vero Beach.“The Bird,” as it’s come to be known, is real all right.
So is it’s $885,000 appraised value.
The statue was aboard one of 11 Spanish ships laden with treasures from the New World that were bound from Havana to the court of King Phillip V before encountering a hurricane July 31, 1715, and sinking off the Treasure Coast. |
