Mysterious shipwreck discovered along historic Florida Shore

[G.I.B.]

Daily news article

In part:

[h=1]Mysterious shipwreck discovered along historic Florida shore[/h]

LIGHTHOUSE ARCHAEOLOGICAL MARITIME PROGRAM​

[h=4]A shipwreck has been unearthed by St. Augustine's tides where European settlers and Spanish explorers, searching for a legendary Fountain of Youth, once sailed.
[/h]There's a mystery lying within the sand of a historic Florida beach that has left local archeologists and residents scratching their heads.
A massive shipwreck has been unearthed by St. Augustine's tides, where European settlers and Spanish explorers, searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth, once sailed.
The ship's bony hull — estimated at being a little more than 80 feet long — unveiled itself in Ponte Vedra Beach Tuesday after years of sitting nearly completely covered.

 

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[gsxraddict]

They think it has a steel hull, if so it's not very old.

 

[Diver_Down]

It is a steel hull that belonged to a schooner that sank in the '40's. That same area, there was a large mine (depth charge) that had to be detonated by the Navy a couple of years ago when it was exposed by shifting sands.

I was somewhat right, but for more clarity - http://www.blogstaugustinelighthouse.org/blog/lamposts/mapping_the_micklers_landing_w.php#more

 

[LM]

That depth charge turned out to be nothing.

There's all kinds of local legends about stuff buried in the dunes "somewhere in Vilano/PV".
Rumor was that a large wooden storage vault was dug into some random dune on Vilano that was used during prohibition as a transit point for rum bootlegged by shrimp boats from Cuba up the coast. It would make sense since that area was totally, totally remote back then and St. Aug was a huge transit point for that stuff. There's also supposed to be one or more .50 caliber machine guns buried in the dunes, recovered by locals from an aircraft that went down somewhere in the vicinity but supposedly never retrieved.

Of course, the ultimate jackpot would be running across the German Navy hats and landing raft buried by the saboteurs in Operation Pastorius, although that's probably disintegrated by now, assuming someone didn't find it already and just have no idea what it was.

 

[ECS]

The U-584 landed four Nazi agents on Ponte Vedra,June 16,1942.The agents were dressed as American civilians,and buried four boxes of explosives in the dunes,then boarded a bus to New York to meet with another saboteur team.Two members of the NY team betrayed the operation to the FBI,who captured the entire cadre of Nazi saboteurs.The informers were sent to prison,the others were executed August 8,1942.

 

[LM]

The U-584 landed four Nazi agents on Ponte Vedra,June 16,1942.The agents were dressed as American civilians,and buried four boxes of explosives in the dunes,then boarded a bus to New York to meet with another saboteur team.Two members of the NY team betrayed the operation to the FBI,who captured the entire cadre of Nazi saboteurs.The informers were sent to prison,the others were executed August 8,1942.

Yep. The FBI recovered the boxes of explosives but apparently (per my limited research of the trial transcript) didn't bother looking for- or didn't locate- the raft and German hats they wore ashore in case they were captured while landing, they would be considered POWs and not spies. Everything the FBI recovered- including stuff as benign as swim trunks- was pretty well itemized in the evidence exhibits in the Military Commission trial. The raft and hats should still be out there, assuming they haven't disintegrated or washed away during any one of the storm related tidal events that have occurred 70+ years since they were buried.