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| My old treasure hunting partner, Kevin Reilly, in 1986, may he rest in peace. |
I was informed, a few years ago, by a rather irritatingly rude archaeologist, who worked that area with Mel Fisher, that we had been...trespassing on the Marquesas. "That was ours, that was ours!!" she kept repeating to the point I almost decided to drop their memoir of treasure hunting with Mel Fisher back onto the table. As much as it pains me to say, it was an exceptionally good read! Still, I replied that she and her "group" had left piles and piles of rusted iron theodolite towers all over the islands, 27-years ago as well as most of their trash, and if it was indeed "...their's" than maybe they ought go back and clean it up! Marc Hoover knows who I mean, right Marc? It was a good read though, darn it!
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| I shot this photo of one of the countless shallow shipwrecks found in the Florida Keys in 1987, no telling how old it is. |
The weather was beautiful as we left Key West, with all of us gawking as we passed the moored and famous "Bookmaker," one of Mel Fisher's blower-equipped salvage boats. This was the time of the Spanish fleet's Atocha, and only a few days before Mel's guys finally hit the main pile of treasure that went down with the doomed galleon. We were totally oblivious to all this as we sliced through the crystal blue-green waters, westbound for the uninhabited Marquesas Keys. This is a group of small islands that looks like a tasty shrimp from the air, with a central "lagoon" and separate islands surrounding it.
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| Shrimp-shaped Marquesas Keys |
After several days of metal detecting and scuba diving scored us a few artifacts, I was using an original hip-mounted Teknetics 8000 Coin Computer with, I think, an 8" concentric coil, which was a pretty good setup for the time. One of the big problems with this detector was if you used it regularly in a marine environment, the mounting hardware rusted up, as it was all unprotected steel. And the rust got all over everything! I got a strong ping on one of the many uninhabited beaches and pulled up a rather worn 1841 Seated Liberty half-dime below a few inches of sand.
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| My 1841 half-dime perched on the wooden railing of the Lil Aubrey |
Everyone aboard the Lil Aubrey were feeling quite free in making up stories on just how the 1841 half-dime had made its way to the island. Everything from a sailor brought a prostitute out to the semi-tropical island from Key West and when he threw his pant's over a tree branch 145-years ago, it fell out onto the sand, to a seagull picked up the then shiny coin off the 19th Century streets of Key West and accidentally dropping it as they flew over the uninhabited key.
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| Enjoying fresh-caught seafood on the fantail of Lil Aubrey laying off the Marquesas Keys in 1987 |
We even had a confrontation later the next day with the very same Bookmaker we had seen on the way out of Key West, who hove us over, seeing the metal detectors on board the fantail of the Lil Aubrey, to make sure we were not on their lease. We weren't but they still glared at us, not trusting us, and for good reason. There was a lot of poaching activity around the area, as it was no secret that Treasure Salvors had hit it big before, with the Margarita, and were hot on the trail of the Atocha.
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| Inside The Pass, Marquesas Keys. I lost the film so it was not developed until 28-years later, hence some light-leakage on the negatives after such a long time in the can.
The captain of the Lil Aubrey, Jon Gerung, a German oceanographer by trade, fishing boat captain by necessity, asked me late one afternoon, if I wanted to go ashore with him and take my metal detector along while he did a independent survey of the on-shore vegetation. No one else wanted to go, so Captain Jon and I pushed off in the little skiff and motored to shore, about 3-miles away. Jon made notes, while I scanned the shore with my machine and came up with a few pieces of rusted iron fragments, not much to write home about.
The small, painfully biting "no-see-um's" started to get bothersome, so Captain Jon and I jumped aboard the small skiff; it was getting dark and we needed to get back to the Lil Aubrey. Jon gave the starter rope a good yank and nothing but a muted putter. We checked the fuel was on and Jon gave the starter another mighty pull. The engine just would not start. The clouds of "no-see-um's" were getting so bad, we pushed away from the shore regardless. Jon picked up a small broom in the bottom of the skiff, and I tightened the screw on my search coil, and we used both as makeshift oars, as we paddled away in the growing darkness. The wind was picking up, which we were paddling against. A few more tries on the outboard produced nothing...it was dead. Jon and I glanced at each other, feeling the southbound wind, and thinking if we don't figure this out real quick, we might end up in Cuba!
We were having a hard time locating the Lil Abrey in the darkening anchorage, as no one was aboard who knew how to turn the running lights on. As we paddled on, we passed an large, anchored, sailboat. A big white dog suddenly showed up on it's bow and started barking at us, bringing a rather pretty woman in a white bikini to the bow, watching us pass. Suddenly, a guy appeared on the bow holding a drink. He shouted at us, "You guys okay?" whereas Jon yells back, "Our outboard quit...we are trying to get back to our boat!" We paddled over to the sailboat and the guys says, "Isn't that the skiff from the Lil Aubrey?"
We were dumbfounded. As we reached the side of the sailboat, the guy climbs down into our skiff, and he pulls off the cover of the outboard. "Yea, I'm Jerry. I used to be the captain of the Lil Abrey about seven-years ago, and this sonofabitchin' outboard was always a problem!" He had a pair of Craftsman pliers in his hand, and grabbed a spring in the motor and pulled it tight onto a component. He closed the cover, and gave it a pull. The outboard sputtered a bit, the roared to life. Jon and I had our mouths open...still just dumbfounded. Jerry handed us a flashlight, and off we went, finally getting back to the Lil Aubrey. Jon turned on all the running lights, and we told the story to everyone aboard, who thought we might have been killed by drug smugglers, which was a danger at that time.
The coincidences were simply staggering; we broke down 22-miles from Key West, a dog just happened to bark at us from an anchored sailboat along our course, alerting the owner, a former captain of our fishing boat, who had intimate knowledge of our busted motor, and knew exactly how to fix it!
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