2/14/2024 0 Comments Atocha silver coins valueMathewson now compares the hunt for the Atocha to a murder mystery. That was enough to send Fisher and his entire operation to Key West in 1970. Lyon visited the Archive of the Indies in Seville, Spain, where he learned that 18th Century attempts to salvage the Atocha had centered not on the Metecumbe Keys, as was previously thought, but on the Marquesas Keys 32 miles west of Florida`s southern tip. He also had hired Eugene Lyon, an expert on Latin American history. In 19, Real 8 divers discovered thousands of gold and silver coins among the shipwrecks of 1715.īy the late `60s, Fisher had formed Treasure Salvors and had begun to search for the Atocha. (it looked like one, and the name stuck) simultaneously pushed down clear water to improve divers` visibility and blew the sand off a shipwreck-thus revolutionizing treasure salvaging. In 1963, he moved his family to Florida and became a partner with Real 8, the company salvaging ships of the 1715 Spanish silver fleet that had run aground near Vero Beach.įisher soon built the first ''mailbox,'' a large metal elbow that fit over a salvage boat`s prop and directed the wash straight down. He grew up in Gary, Ind., and, after serving in the Army in World War II, bounced around the country before settling for a time in Redondo Beach, Calif., where he owned one of the first dive shops in the state. ''Treasure of the Atocha,'' and opened a bookstore that subsequently failed.įisher himself had already made his mark in treasure hunting well before the Atocha discovery. ![]() Uncertain what to do with the sudden success, Mathewson wrote a book, To do so, he had to learn to dive and to earn the trust and confidence of the divers, who would act as archeological assistants as well as treasure hunters. ![]() Throughout the search for the Atocha, he sought a middle ground between treasure hunting and archeological excavating. After hitting the jackpot, she took off for nine months and traveled around the world.ĭuncan Mathewson III, an archeologist excavating 16th and 17th Century Spanish colonial sites in Jamaica, risked his career by signing on with treasure hunters. Bleth McHaley, another vice president and the company`s director of public affairs, battled for years with Florida state officials antagonistic to the company over its salvage methods and recordkeeping.
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