A group of Florida-based treasure hunters recently recovered hundreds of coins from a fleet of 300-year-old shipwrecks off the Atlantic coast this week.
One of the divers called the find late last month “almost numbing.”
“You don’t expect that,” boat captain Grant Gitschlag told FOX 35 on Friday. “You always hope for it, but you never expect it.”
Fellow treasure hunter Corinne Lea agreed that it wasn’t expected “at all,” but that’s “how the greatest finds come about.”
Finding the 214 coins and other artifacts they salvaged from the Spanish shipwrecks known as the 1715 Treasure Fleet, is rare, they explained, because they have been salvaged for decades.
“To get this kind of quantity in a period of a couple of days, is a very exciting start,” Gitschlag told the station.
The group contracts with Sal Guttuso, who owns 1715 Fleet Queen’s Jewels LLC, the exclusive salvor of the shipwrecks and the US District Court’s custodian.
The hunters are now working on cleaning 300 years of sea dust off of the coins to make them shine once again and then are ready to head back out to see what else is waiting for them.
The fleet set sail for Spain from Cuba in July 1715 loaded with cargo and treasure from the New World, but much of the fleet sank during a hurricane a week later, according to the 1715 Fleet Queen’s Jewels LLC.
“It’s the find. It’s all about the find,” Lea said. “I love the history, being the first person up in 309 years to find what was once lost in a tragedy.”
