Queens Dowry...

How far down were those chests found? In the scheme of things, there has to be some layer, since the chest weight and size are roughly the same, that they stop. Every stratigraphic layer has different settling properties but even if you have 20 feet of sand till bedrock, the pressure and resistance would have to make a line of artifacts with different specific gravities correct?
theoretically
 

Theoretically, sure! I'd really like to hear Greg's take on the question too...but we are off topic again.

I personally have found very little stratification in the distribution of artifacts in the sand column. When using mailboxes to blow the sand away you destroy the evidence though. This is because we have liquified the sand column underneath the artifacts, they naturally make their way downward. Silver and gold do this naturally anyway because they have a heavier specific gravity than the sand and shell. Emeralds basically have the same SG as sand, so they can be found anywhere in the column. When using a dredge, iron artifacts often fall out of the sides of the hole half way down, so they obviously stopped along the way.

Unfortunately, I have found very few coins using a dredge, but most were down very low in the sand column, not specifically on the hard pan, but very low. I have limited experience with silver and gold in this respect, and in reality this could be another interesting thread all by itself.

Once on the 1715 sites we found iron and pottery on top of the coquina rock, but also got a metal detector hit from below the coquina. I've never heard why or when the coquina layer formed on the treasure coast, but to have metal artifacts above and below it in the same area tells you something. We were near both the 1715 Corrigan's site and the 1618 San Miguel site, so its possible that the 1618 artifacts were deposited before the coquina formed, and the 1715 artifacts after.

In reality, I believe the answer to your question is "it depends on the area, the depth of the sand, average sea conditions, etc." I've been in a high-energy environment where all but a foot of sand had been removed naturally, and there was a constant surge. Here all of the artifacts had collected in holes and pits in the hard pan. Other places there was 20 foot of sand in a protected area, and coins were found just inches under the surface. Often, artifacts will be distributed completely different on opposite sides of a reef line due to the different conditions seen on the two different sides.

Confused yet? LOL I really would like to hear Greg's take too though, he's moved a LOT more sand than I have!
 

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ScubaFinder said:
Theoretically, sure! I'd really like to hear Greg's take on the question too...but we are off topic again.

I personally have found very little stratification in the distribution of artifacts in the sand column. When using mailboxes to blow the sand away you destroy the evidence though. This is because we have liquified the sand column underneath the artifacts, they naturally make their way downward. Silver and gold do this naturally anyway because they have a heavier specific gravity than the sand and shell. Emeralds basically have the same SG as sand, so they can be found anywhere in the column. When using a dredge, iron artifacts often fall out of the sides of the hole half way down, so they obviously stopped along the way.

Unfortunately, I have found very few coins using a dredge, but most were down very low in the sand column, not specifically on the hard pan, but very low. I have limited experience with silver and gold in this respect, and in reality this could be another interesting thread all by itself.

Once on the 1715 sites we found iron and pottery on top of the coquina rock, but also got a metal detector hit from below the coquina. I've never heard why or when the coquina layer formed on the treasure coast, but to have metal artifacts above and below it in the same area tells you something. We were near both the 1715 Corrigan's site and the 1618 San Miguel site, so its possible that the 1618 artifacts were deposited before the coquina formed, and the 1715 artifacts after.

In reality, I believe the answer to your question is "it depends on the area, the depth of the sand, average sea conditions, etc." I've been in a high-energy environment where all but a foot of sand had been removed naturally, and there was a constant surge. Here all of the artifacts had collected in holes and pits in the hard pan. Other places there was 20 foot of sand in a protected area, and coins were found just inches under the surface. Often, artifacts will be distributed completely different on opposite sides of a reef line due to the different conditions seen on the two different sides.

Confused yet? LOL I really would like to hear Greg's take too though, he's moved a LOT more sand than I have!
Click to expand...

So the 1618 artifacts were found below the 1715 artifacts?
And, I've always wondered, what about the hard pan, or hard pack, how fast does it build up over time, or does it?
 

I don't claim to know which wreck each artifact came off of, we never even got to the item under the coquina rock. We were in a 1618 area that sometimes also produces 1715 artifacts. Just saying it was one possibility.
 

As for the hard pan, it seems to have been created LOOONG ago and doesn't change much. THe levels of sand covering a particular area can change quite drastically over time, but the hard pan remains mostly the same.
 

Now....about that Queens Dowry..... :-)
 

Hmm thats interesting. I figured the Queens Dowry had dwindled out quite well. I guess its just about any treasure on board and see where it goes.

As far as the coquina rock formation..its the part of the Anastasia formation and I studied it a bit ago but cannot for the life of me remember when it formed. Also took geology of florida. Ill figure that out tonight, its in my notes somewhere.

Thats interesting where it is all found though, that intrigues me
I wouldnt mind hearing Gregs take on this at all either.

Thank you for the response scuba, really appreciate it.
 

ScubaFinder said:
I don't claim to know which wreck each artifact came off of, we never even got to the item under the coquina rock. We were in a 1618 area that sometimes also produces 1715 artifacts. Just saying it was one possibility.
Click to expand...

I remember that day I was the diver next to you.....We were about to get hit by a storm and had to leave with out finding out what was giving us such a big hit on the MD.....
 

What i have found is that on the 1715 fleet and probably most "High Energy Environments" is that everything is on the same level. The sand is liquiafied and really is a solution so anything with a higher specific gravity will sink and it all falls to bedrock. There is some areas out there between the exposed coquina rock that we call soft coquina but the coins and artifact rest near the surface of this too.

When you get farther offshore the sand decreases and the mudd increases and this hard mudd holds the artifacts from sinking more than a foot or two into it but man is it hard to dig in.


There is an area near the 1618 wreck that you can find 1715, 1618, 1810, Beer Cans, fishing weights and everything else that people throw into the ocean all resting on the bedrock next to each other. The inshore is really a big melting pot!!!


That hit was probably a BEER CAN! Those damn things fall to pieces and get everywhere on the bottom. They get in the most precarious places and you would swear its something good!!!
 

Oh well then my inshore adventures are going to be full of fun. Im trying to see if I can get hold of a geophysics device from a few of the professors Ive worked with here to drag behind the boat and figure out just exactly what the bedrock is doing. Basically get a graph of the line/heights of the bedrock. that would truly take away a lot of guess work
 

Kinda like this?


Its a little rough because i havent processed the tide but it gives the idea of the bottom topography.
 

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Is that just the topography of the surface? I was going to get a visual of where bedrock lies beneath the sand as to figure out how deep your holes must be blown in certain areas. I like that picture though. Very nice.
 

This is just bathymetry using my 200 khz sounder but most of the bottom in this area is exposed bedrock so in a since its what your looking for.... Problem is with trying to image the bedrock over the sand areas is that sub-bottoms will not penetrate through sand. Sand in sea water creates a perfect acoustic reflector and the sound wave bounces right off of it. There is other technology but it cant give the resolution that we would need to really map the bedrock in high detail like the 200 khz does. The only place where there is deeper sand is right at the beach and thats such shallow water that sub-bottoms are useless there because the first 5- 10 feet of a sub-bottom is masked from the sound pulse of the unit itself.


Hope this helped..
 

Greg, its no secret why you find so much treasure on the 1715 fleet. Hard work combined with using your head. Nice bathymetric data...I see a few low spots there tht I'd like to detect. Thanks for you input, it is always valuable.

Chagy, that day still haunts me....even if it was just a beer can, I'd still like to know. I thought Brad was going to kill us, but we weren't giving up our dig. That storm came in quicker than most, and in hind sight I'm glad we had Capt. Brad using his head that day. I would have stayed down until we found the target, but then we would have been stranded at anchor in a nasty lightening storm. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. :laughing7: I miss the ARRG days on the 1715 fleet, we had some great times and somehow we all lived to tell about it.
 

GOHO, that does help, thank you very much.
How long did it take you to aquire all of that data? What GIS program are you using to tweak it around? Delorme or Arcmap?

and from what I am getting, the sand a bit offshore doesnt act like sand in any way on land does it. It seems to acquire its own properties that somewhat go against general physics that would be applied on land..liquification, hard pack concentrate, how things sink and settle, etc etc
I havent done much digging offshore so this is all new to me
 

It took me about two days to do a med resolution bathy study on a 1 mile X 1/2 mile area. I recorded my depth sounder with GPS postion at 1hz. If you dont have a special program for doing this you can use Hyperterminal. You can bring the data into any GIS program that imports XYZ data and creates geotiff surfaces or point clouds. To get the best results you should record your data with position, depth, (time day/hour/min) that way you can use other software like Nobeltec's tides and currents to generate a tide file. Use the tide file to correct your depth and then import into your software of choice. The more points the better.


I also work with a Hydrographic company and they just purchased a Reson 7125 Multibeam sonar.... This is what you want to scan your site with!!!! This unit has a swath width of up to 140 degrees (thats 5 times the water depth) and 512 (400khz) beams at .5 degree. You can also focus all those beams to a small area to really get some detail on an oblect. We have it connected to a RTK sub centimeter GPS wich allows use to measure every object we travel over with pin point accuracy.


I Cant wait to see the 1715 fleet wreck sites with this thing......
 

Greg thats legit. I find all that stuff just amazing. Certified in GIS and worked with a geophysicist on a few things so that whole realm interests me alot. Thats not fair you get to work with such good (and expensive) equipment haha
The wreck site is going to just look ridiculous after you scan it.
I might beg you for a snapshot picture if you can manage to get one haha

Im kind of speechless and just drooling at the moment of what that image is going to look like with such accuracy haha
 

Hard to understand how the survivors saw boats breaking up during the hurricane when I can't see another boat 100ft away during a summer rain storm
 

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