Great story Dan. It brings back a lot of good memories of that area. I lived in Melbourne in the middle 60s and fished at Sebastian Inlet often. It was a great area for hunting and fishing. I can only imagine what the developers have done in the 37 years since I came back north. They were going full bore when I left. I heard on the radio today the recent hurricanes have scoured the beaches and people are finding Spanish gold on the beaches in Brevard County. I used to go down to the beach around the Inlet after a storm and poke around. Every once in a while someone would find a gold coin.

Indeed they do! A bit of history on the gold issue.

In 1715 the Spanish Plate Fleet(no, we're not talking Lennox) departed from somewhere down in Central America laden with silver, gold and jewels for the King. Also, at about the same time a hurricane was born in the low latitudes east of the Leeward Islands.(What is it with Florida and hurricanes? ) Wouldn't ya know, they met off the coast of Central Florida and had a whoppin' good time!

12 of the 13 vessels were lost in the area from Ft. Pierce to Sebastian Inlet, and of those, the only vessel not verified to be found(as of my last reading) was the Admirals Flagship. One was lucky enough to flounder a very short distance south of Sebastian Inlet in the vicinity of where the McClarty Treasure Museum is located.

The basic drill for sinking in that fashion is this: Your wooden hulled, worm eaten ship of the main draws 16-19 ft. of water. Waves in that scenario and locale can reach 20' or so, and when the boat(which is incapable of tacking to windward) settles into a trough, anywhere from a few hundred yards to a 1/4 mile off the beach, it will land with a good solid thump on the bottom. Your vessels ribs and planking fail, your ballast stays on the bottom. Now freed of all that weight, and grossly top heavy, the vessel rolls with the wind, dumps all of its cannons in a pile(and a lot of other stuff as well), and proceeds to wash inshore with the strong southerly current. Along the way, all the Kings teasure is scattered willy nilly, all the way up onto the beach in some cases.

The rest of this is suspected but not verified.

Then comes the rescue and salvage efforts. Believe it or don't, they didn't do too badly in recovering this stuff. Perhaps 50% by some accounts. There were surviviors afterall, they knew where they'd washed up on the beach and all. And they were HUNGRY! The Spaniards thus became one of the first western cultures to embrace kitty cuisine when they used golden baubles to tweek the cats curiosity by hanging escudos by leather thongs from the trees and letting the spin in the breeze. Cat and Swamp Cabbage was a bit hit, as was Cat and Crab Souffle'.

"Well," you ask, "...where did the cats come from? At the risk of turning this into a major read, liberal historians have actually rewritten history in America. You all know that Columbus or one of those fellas discovered the new world right? What they neglect to tell you is that it was people from Ohio that discovered Florida. It was a group vacation and somebody took a wrong turn in the Winnebago not far from Miami, Ohio. Next thing you know, the whole lot of them is camped out down at South Beach having a whale of a time! And they never once thought to keep their crats under control! When they left to return home just after Easter there were so many damn crats they left some at every rest stop along the way. I suppose the Spaniards owe them...

Dan

Pres., TYHC

www.YaFat.Bastards !

Dan ,please keep all Buckeyes down there with you.
They pass thru W.Va. on the way down and drive real slow in the fast lane,usually in large Winnabagos.
These 'other beings' are very talented at tying up the Toll Booths on the turnpike. We even gave them their own lane. We call it Rest Area.