Shipwreck Treasure - Coin Beach and The Faithful Steward, Delaware

[smokeythecat]

I first "figured out" where "coin beach" was back in the summer of 2011. The old bridge at the Indian River Inlet was being demolished and that summer I headed out to the beach and found very little. Then came Sandy and everything changed. I won't do a whole lot of elaborating here, but about 5 weeks after Sandy I started detecting coins from the shipwreck in the dry sand. I have almost thirty now, but these days they are quite hard to come by as it's all sanded in now and the Corps of Engineers has dumped millions of tons of sand on the beach. Of course, one really good winter storm, and the coins will reappear again. The State of Delaware has put up a new marker in the the last year, so here is a photo essay of some of the finds. Enjoy.

 

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[smokeythecat]

Ryano, one of the big dealers in NJ and I were talking about how in heck did Roman coins wind up in the great state of NJ. They were found not too far from the ocean. The Romans did not come to this continent. When I dug in SC we found Roman and Byzantine coins from a home site that ha d burned probably by 1800. Apparently that homeowner (a big mansion for the time), well, he was a coin collector and the coins were lost when the house burned. That cause and effect were apparent.

The NJ finds were perplexing. The dealer told me about some local NJ history. Our transport ships would go unload troops and supplies especially in 1943-45 in Italy, North Africa and around the Mediterranean. They took in ballast, in their case, beach sand, especially from the country of Tunisia (my dad served there). In that sand were Roman coins, as the Romans were all over the place and all these places were part of the Roman Empire for a long time. So they pumped up the little coins with the sand, and when they got back here, offloaded the excess ballast for more cargo, and wherever this fill was used, the coins were deposited. I know other folks have found Roman coins here, and they didn't put themselves here. I have also heard early ships' captains especially would collect odd coins from places they had visited, long before the day of the airplane, and would bring them here, and some of course were lost. Neat piece of history.

 

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[sprailroad]

This thread is just for fun. it is a public beach. Apparently detecting is allowed, just not at the dune line or in the dunes. They have big fines for that.

And I'll never understand why, meaning the dune line or dunes, but it is what it is. Really nice finds smokey. Location, location, location!

 

[smokeythecat]

Location matters. I was highly embarrassed in a nice way when my digging partner pulled an 1852 US $1 gold coin from my front lawn! (note to self: dig your own property!) We have since found a lot of nice old stuff, never thought that would happen. It blew me away. I should have figured it out, as property on one end is 1780ish and on the other end 1880-1890ish.

 

[steelheadwill]

Thanks for the great story and pix!
The owl, the recoveries and the story are great

 

[smokeythecat]

Bumped for someone. I haven't been in awhile. It's kind of tough going by yourself...

BTW this past year I did find a worn out hammered Spanish maravedis, at least 50-100 years older than the coins first pictured here. It is pretty well shot, but I'll take it.