Problems that are difficult for scientists to understand

Chapter 9 Treasure Quest (3)
In its heyday, the Spanish Navy assembled 100 ships and made annual crossings of the Atlantic until the 18th century.At that time, Britain and Holland were competing with France, and their glorious heyday was also a thing of the past.

The combined fleet assembled in Havana in 1715 was only 11 ships, which was pitifully small.Moreover, the quality of the ships themselves is not good, and almost none of them are suitable for long-distance voyages.The best of the five warships led by General Ubia was the original British warship "Hampton Palace", which was captured by the French army and donated to Spain by borrowing flowers to offer Buddha.But these ships all carried treasures.Among them are a batch of colored porcelain products made by Chinese craftsmen, transported across the Pacific Ocean to America, and then transported to Mexico by mules.These objects are priceless art treasures.

After loading in Havana, 11 ships suddenly appeared in danger.They were all overdrafted, and water was leaking from the seams. We set sail on July 7th, and it was almost the hurricane season, and every ship might sink to the bottom of the sea at any time.But the fleet still sailed north of the Bahamas.In the first few days, the weather was fine and sunny, and it was a warm and harmonious scene.After a few days, the weather suddenly turned cloudy and the vision was blurred.After nightfall, the strong wind blows, the sea is full of huge waves, and the boat is like duckweed, shaking with the wind.Passengers and cargo rolled around in the cabin.The next morning, the sky was still clear and the heat was unbearable. Suddenly, a purple cloud gushed out of the sky—the storm was coming!
The fleet sailed into the Florida Straits with difficulty, but the wind increased sharply.The fleet sailed between the steep coral reefs on the flat coast of Florida and the dangerous shoals of the Bahamas. The fate of the ships was only a moment away.

During the voyage away from Havana, the hurricane blew violently, the hull was heavy, the head was big and the tail was small, and the ships were already difficult to control in the wind and waves. When they were blown to the Straits of Florida, the mast was broken, and the deck was full of broken planks and soaked ropes .

Those who were not washed overboard knelt on the deck and prayed to heaven.But Ubia's flagship hit the rocks first, and the others followed. Ten battleships were sunk, except for the Griffin, which escaped the storm because her captain disobeyed orders and continued to sail northeast.

More than 1000 people were killed, and about 2000 million U.S. dollars was lost in gold, silver and other goods.Some lucky survivors washed up on the coast and headed inland with a small amount of drifting treasure, whereabouts are unknown.Others drifted on a raft to St. Augustine on the west coast of Florida.

The Spaniards immediately dispatched eight ships from Havana and St. Augustine to engage in large-scale salvage work.They set up a camp at Cape Canavera and built three warehouses to house the recovered treasure.

Divers speeding down with heavy stones brought up millions of Spanish silver coins.

News of the shipwreck reached Jamaica, which was dominated by British pirates.Among the pirates, Captain Tichi, nicknamed Blackbeard, and another Captain Jennings attacked the Spanish camp. Jennings alone robbed thousands of Spanish silver coins.Even so, the Spaniards returned to Havana in 1719 with only one-third of the original treasure.The rest have been buried under the sea for nearly 1 years.The wrecks have since become one of the longest and most rewarding treasure hunts in Florida.

Until now, there are still people hunting for treasure.Wagner, an amateur treasure hunter in Florida, became famous for it.Wagner moved to the Florida coast in 1949 and became interested in sunken Spanish ships after hearing stories of friends finding coins on the beach.He used 15 yuan to buy a landmine detector from the army surplus, and found it between 12 and 1715 on the beach between Sebastian and Wabasso, about 1949 kilometers southeast of Canavera. A large number of coins were minted.From where the coins were found, he had a theory of where the shipwreck was.Coins were concentrated in small waterways at various points along the coast, and at each point, he guessed, there was a shipwreck.

Wagner and a colleague Kelso conducted extensive research in various libraries and research institutions in the United States. Kelso found an important book "Introduction to the Natural History of East and West Florida" in the Rare Book Collection of the Library of Congress: Published in 1775 , which describes the wreck of a ship in the Spanish fleet in 1715, and mentions that "in the wreck there may still be many Spanish ones and twos, sometimes washed ashore by the tide".

The pair got in touch with the curator of the Spanish Naval Museum in Seville, who offered them 3000 microfilms of ancient documents.After studying and translating, I learned the whole process of the shipwreck and salvage work in 1715, as well as the approximate location of many wrecks.

It looks as if Wagner has found a clue about the Spanish shipwreck, but it will take many years of work to salvage the treasure.The harsh climate off the coast of Florida makes fishing only a few months a year, making the job even more difficult.

Wagner first searched the camp and warehouse of the Spanish salvage team in Canavera. After many days of careful searching on the high ground behind the beach with a mine detector, he found a large iron nail and a shell on a ship.He excavated on site and mapped the ruins.More shells, shards of Chinese pottery, and a gold ring set with seven diamonds followed.

From the records Wagner knows that there is a sunken ship opposite the highland site.He spent many days floating on a car inner tube wearing a homemade mask, poking around in the mud and seaweed until he found a pile of shells.After diving down, another large iron anchor was found, and finally the first sunken ship was found.Now that he knew what these antiquities looked like from above, he immediately rented a special plane to look at the reefs and shoals one by one from the air, looking for other sunken ships.His aerial searches were successful, mapping the location of many wrecks.

In 1959, Wagner called together several friends who were good at diving and established a "Ba Rui Company". At that time, 1 peso in Spain was equal to 8 riels, pesos were large silver coins, and riels were small silver coins.They applied to the state of Florida for a 75% right to the find.Using an old motorboat and a homemade dredger, they toiled for six months with no success.

Their enthusiasm faltered and the company was close to bankruptcy, but finally a diver surfaced clutching six silver wedges.The others were overjoyed and dived into the water to see what treasures they could find on the bottom of the sea.

Fifteen more wedges of silver were found over the next few weeks, and Wagner decided to lure the men to another wreck site.Since then, his treasure hunting dream has finally become a reality.

On the first day of working at the second shipwreck site, a surprising amount of silver coins was found, estimated to be worth $11.Then one day after the storm, Wagner took his nephew to the beach to investigate carefully.While Wagner was picking up the coins, his nephew found a gold chain, 3.8 meters long.The chain has a total of 2167 gold rings held together.An exquisitely crafted golden dragon is attached to a gold chain. The dragon's mouth is open, which is a whistle that can be blown. A gold toothpick is hinged on the dragon's back, and the dragon's tail can be used as an ear pick.This treasure was later identified as belonging to General Ubia himself, and it was sold for $5.

Excavations continued for several years and the organization of the company expanded.Perhaps the most astonishing discovery of the undersea treasure hunt was the nearly intact 30 pieces of Chinese porcelain they recovered.The Spaniards packed these exquisite bowls and cups with special "Baidunzi" porcelain clay to prevent them from breaking.

On May 1965, 5, they used a machine they invented to spray a powerful water flow from the propeller of the ship downwards, which could blow away a layer of sediment on the seabed without blowing away the precious treasure they believed to be sunk on the seabed. .When the sea water was clear, Wagner and his colleagues looked at the bottom of the sea. As far as they could see, there were gold coins everywhere. They were dumbfounded. In 31, Wagner auctioned off the treasure and received more than 1967 million US dollars.

Coco Island Treasure Mystery

In the eastern Pacific Ocean 480 kilometers away from the southwest coast of Costa Rica, there is an island with a radius of 30 square kilometers.There are many hidden reefs around the island, and there are 60-180 meters high hanging rock cliffs in the east, forming a natural barrier. There are only two small bays that can accommodate small boats to land.This deserted island with treacherous terrain and far away from the waterway hides many treasures. This is the world-famous treasure island Cocoa Island.

Before 1821, Lima was the activity center of the Spanish colonists in South America. The colonists gathered the looted gold bars, silver bricks, treasures, and jades in Lima one after another, preparing to ship the treasures back to China.The Peruvian national hero San Martin led the rebels to attack Lima, and the Spaniards hurriedly carried their treasures on board the brig "Malidi" driven by the Scottish captain Thompson, and headed for the Spanish port of Cadiz.Captain Thompson was obsessed with money, so he had evil thoughts and became a pirate who wanted money and killed himself.He drove the boat to Cocoa Island, carried all the treasures ashore, and buried them in Cocoa Island.Later, all the crew members involved in the theft were captured and hanged. Only Thompson survived by paying a lot of money in bribes. Before he died in 1844, he revealed the treasure secret to his friend Keating, and left a treasure map.

The picture hints that an eagle shadow is reflected on a steep peak under the setting sun, and the treasure is hidden in a cave marked with a cross between the eagle shadow and the setting sun.As shown in the picture, Keating explored the treasure three times successively, and took out treasures worth more than 3 million francs in total, but a large amount of treasure hidden by Thompson has not yet been found.Keating died unexplained on his fourth trip to Coco Island.Keating had told this secret to his friend Nicola Fitzgerald before his death.Now the Australian "Seafarers and Tourists Club" still has a secret letter left by Fitzgerald during his lifetime that hints at the location of the treasure.Information and secrets about Thompson's treasure were passed down from generation to generation, adding even more mystery to it.Many treasure hunters followed the clues in the picture to explore Cocoa Island, but they failed to get their wish.So far, where Thompson hid the giant treasure is still an unsolved mystery.

Two other pirates hid their looted treasure on Cocoa Island.

One is Edward Davis. He has more than a thousand people under him. His base is Cocoa Island. All the gold and silver treasures he plundered are hidden on the island. In his later years, he disappeared on the way to Cocoa Island. The location of the treasure has become a mystery. mystery of.

The second is Benito, who was the leader of Caribbean pirates in the early 18th century. He was chased by British ships because he often attacked British ships and changed his activities in the Pacific Ocean.He hid gold worth 1100 million U.S. dollars in the gold ship he robbed on Cocoa Island, but was later killed due to internal strife, and the whereabouts of this batch of gold became a mystery.

(End of this chapter)