| Blue Water Rose Strikes Gold! |
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Aug 16, 2006 -- R. Duncan Mathewson, III
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Mel Fisher would always say “Gold Shines Forever”. Our boat captain, Glen Jackson and his crew, Mike Piranio and Chris Rackley, have just experienced a little bit of what he meant by this with their first gold strike on the Margarita site. Last week, Chris Rackley, found his first gold on the site by reaching out quickly and grabbing a gold flake as it swirled out in front of him as he carefully searched one of the holes excavated near the “cannon ball clump”.
This was not to be the only gold Chris found that day. A short time later, he found his first 4-reale silver coin and a six-pointed gold floral setting which may have once held an emerald or other precious gem. Over the years, a number of these wardrobe decorations have been found on both the Atocha and Margarita sites.
Over this last 5-day trip to the site, time was divided between excavating undug areas around the “cannon ball clump” known to be an area of concentrated material along the main 005° 006° axis of the site and a new area which has been producing a lot of artifacts particularly ceramics and ballast up to the north around “Cluster A” anomaly identified by the magnetometer survey.
Some 300 yards southwest of “Cluster A”, a couple of holes were excavated into the side of a sand dune which rose up from the bottom in 22’ water to only 12’ from the surface. Excavations in this sand dune uncovered some ceramics including a ubiquitous olive jar rim and other pottery sherds not fully examined yet.
Congrats to our dive team for a job well done! Not only did they find the first gold and silver treasure of this summer’s expedition but they remain hot on the trail of the shipwreck scatter pattern up among the large sand dunes in the northwest part of the site. When our boat returns to the site, they will return to this big 10’ sand dune to continue the excavations in search for more shipwreck material down deep into the lower levels of the stabilized sand dune. For it is in this type of deposit, our projections tell us, we will eventually finds signs of the “Mother Lode”.
Some recent pictures are included below.
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