Pay dirt in the eye of the storm

BY JANIE GOULD

When Hurricane Jeanne approached the Treasure Coast in September 2004, anyone on the barrier islands with any sense headed west, like they did three weeks earlier before Hurricane Frances hit. Incredibly, though, there was a guy who rode out Jeanne’s fearsome winds and rain in his truck near the beach in Indian River County. He saw flying roof shingles and tumbling patio furniture while he waited for the worst of the storm to subside. Then he ventured out in winds estimated at 80 miles per hour. The story makes a little sense when you learn he is a treasure hunter.

Greg Bounds, a diver with the late Mel Fisher’s Sebastian-based operation, wanted to be first on the beach after the hurricane, because he knew that’s when gold and silver coins might be uncovered by the shifting sands. His target was loot from the fleet of Spanish galleons that sank off Florida’s east coast in a 1715 storm.

His account appears in “True Stories of Sunken Treasure,” written by Bob “Frogfoot” Weller, a veteran of the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Units who served in the Korean War. Since 1978, Weller has also been salvaging the 1715 fleet.

Hurricane Jeanne came ashore in the middle of the night, in Martin County. Bounds stayed on the beach in Indian River County, north of Wabasso, until about 8 p.m., when the winds got really dangerous. He got in his truck and fell asleep, but was awakened when roof shingles hit the
windshield.

At dawn, Bounds decided to walk to his target at Corrigan’s Beach about 4 miles south. “After beating his way along the beach for almost 2 miles, somewhere near Summerplace there was a house ripped apart at the edge of the dune line, furniture, TV, household goods exposed and being swept out to sea,” Weller writes. When Bounds was nearly struck by a log that was being tossed around in the surf, he decided to walk on A1A to his expected “gold hole,” between the Seagrape and Turtle Trail beach accesses.

Armed with his metal detector, Bounds hit paydirt when he finally reached his destination. Buried under just a few inches of sand was a 1714 gold Mexican coin that was “as crisp and clear as the day it was minted,” Weller says. Then he found another gold coin, and then a silver coin “almost as an afterthought.” He went back the next day and in what Weller described as a great gold rush, found several more gold coins before deciding to call it quits.

Weller’s book, his ninth about treasure hunting, deals mostly with Florida’s east coast, the Keys and the Bahamas. It’s full of well-told stories that should interest new residents of the Treasure Coast and old-timers alike.

But there could be huge and largely untapped stores of sunken treasure off the coasts of Cuba. For centuries, Havana Harbor was strategically important for Spanish ships returning from the New World, Weller writes. The ships stopped there for provisions and also used it as a place to hide from Dutch, French and English enemies.

“Every salvager that is still afloat has the same dream that I have, to work a few of the hundreds of shipwrecks that litter the dragon’s teeth along Cuba’s northwest and southwest coasts,” Weller writes.

Maybe someday, if political conditions change, that part of Cuba will be known as the Costa de Tesoro.