Ask Margaret
by Margaret Word Burnside
Could there really be pirate treasure
hidden in Florida, as I’ve heard?
S.C., St. Petersburg
There certainly is buried treasure in our state. In fact,
although other coastal states report findings of long lost
precious cargos, Florida is our country’s leading source for
sunken and buried treasure. This valuable booty hauntingly
awaits discovery both under our ground and beneath our
waters.
The majority of Florida’s treasure was at one time aboard
Spanish ships that began sailing to the New World’s La Florida
in the 1500s. Their fleets later visited this new land that they
had discovered and claimed in order to bring supplies to their
settlers, rest, and get water for their trip to South America,
where they loaded gold, silver and jewels on board, before
returning to Florida on the way back to Spain. The Spanish
galleons were the perfect targets for plundering pirates, who
frequented Florida and the Tampa Bay area. The uneven
shorelines and hidden lagoons here provided protection from
weather, as well as from detection by their enemies and by the
Spanish ships they were hoping to attack.
Florida’s hidden treasures are primarily the result of
pirates’ stashes and the sunken Spanish galleons and other
sailing ships. These vessels, which may or may not have been
carrying treasures that were legitimately their own, often had
the misfortune to be wrecked and eventually sunk due to
reefs, inclement weather or warfare. They also often fell prey
to their own disabling physical damage, or to their captains’
and crews’ poor health or inept navigation of Florida’s shallow
and often unknown waters.
While the valuable cargos, for the most part, went down
with the ships, portions of them were sometimes carried by
survivors, who escaped and were able to reach the shore in
longboats, or by other means. They in turn, may have buried
their spoils for safe keeping.
Members of the Native American tribes and early settlers,
who sometimes cared for the wrecked ships’ survivors, were
among the first to salvage whatever they could find aboard
Florida’s partially or completely sunken ships. Years later,
coins, doubloons and pieces of eight, which probably were
once aboard those and other lost boats, have been found
along our beaches, both randomly and with the help of metal
detectors, especially following inclement weather, when the
wind, rain and tidal surges of storms have displaced the sand
on the shore, as well as underwater.
In 1969, a stash of gold coins was discovered among the
sand dunes near Port Canaveral on Florida’s East Coast. In
another instance, thirteen chests of vintage coins were dug
up by road construction workers in South Florida’s Brevard
County.
In 1985, Mel Fisher, probably Florida’s most legendary
treasure hunter, discovered the partial remains of the Nuestra
SeÃtora de Atocha. The Atocha, a Spanish galleon that sank
in 1622, yielded an estimated $450 million worth of gold
124 TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016