1715 Treasure Fleet - Sunken Treasure
This is a current and ongoing treasure expedition to recover treasure from the famous 1715 Treasure Fleet. I have been diving on these sunken treasure galleons and recovering treasure since 1988. These famous shipwrecks have been the subject of numerous books and major motion pictures including, The Deep, Fools Gold, and the hit TV show Black Sails. There is still a vast amount of sunken treasure waiting to be found
Upon Spain’s conquest of the “New World” (Central and South America) Spain quickly amassed and continued to amass a fortune in silver, gold, emeralds, etc., from the conquest of the Aztecs, Incas and other indigenous people of Central America and South America. Each year Spain would send a fleet of ships to gather the vast wealth in treasure continuously being produced in the New World. However due to the war of the Spanish Succession, Spain was unable to send a fleet for several years. Each year the wealth of silver, gold, emeralds and jewelry continued to pile up. In 1715, at the end of the war, Spain was finally able to send a fleet to gather all the treasure which had been amassing for several years, including the famous Queen’s Jewels. The ships were loaded with as much treasure as they could carry and were sailing along the coastline of Florida when a devastating hurricane came upon them and drove all the ships carrying treasure onto the Florida reefs. Over 800 people lost their lives and the treasure, an estimated 950 million in today’s market, in gold, silver, emeralds, jewelry, etc., went to the bottom in the shipwrecks. And to this date much of the treasure is still there waiting to be recovered.