So, there you go. Applying Occam's razor, that's your explanation, right there.
Saying 1733 Spanish ships were copper alloyed fastened because "they could be and experts know nothing", in spite of not a single example ever having been found, either from documentation or from archaeological sites its like saying that 1733 Spanish ships had center board engines because, well, because they could be and experts know nothing.
There have been hundreds upon hundreds of these recovered... they have been consistently found near or on MULTIPLE wreck sites dating from 1715 THROUGH 1733...
I find it VERY hard to swallow the theory that multiple wrecks produce these AS A RESULT of multiple wrecks of this period ALL BEING contaminated by multiple OTHER wrecks ... ALL locations nowhere near each other ALL producing these.
They have been found from the 1960's and are still found today... heck I think last week someone found one... heh... I find it VERY odd and a very narrowed vision that is LACKING to think anything from this period of time is "absolute".
Researchers are still learning new things everyday about this time period... let alone "exactly how" every time everything was done... Researchers have been and are the first to admit when asked about this and MOST time periods... "how little they really know in the grand scheme of things".
To say something is "empirical fact" when so little is "absolute knowledge"... is almost like someone wearing horse blinders...
The REAL fact is... archeological data is re-written everyday... but yet the possibility of it being re-written here is out of the question.
I am a firm believer that change is the only constant... and it was never limited to ONE place or time.
Look... I am not saying that an entire ship was made using these... I am just pointing out the fact that they are there... and must have been used in some capacity.
And do not believe the "contamination" of multiple wrecks o the same period in different locations with the same type of spikes.
I could see a "few spikes" "here and there"... OR maybe one wreck having some "spike contamination"... BUT hundreds at various locations ? I mean come on... :/
Also... I don't see these spikes coming up on other wrecks. of various time periods...
unless they were made using the spikes in question to begin with.