A photo from open sources
It’s always nice to find a treasure. Anyone so lucky has a chance make good money on your find. Some are enriched in several tens of thousands of dollars, some hundreds, some even millions. Mel Fisher is considered the “king of the treasure hunters”: he found a treasure worth 450 million dollars – almost half a billion.
How a farmer became a treasure hunter
For a long time, Mel Fisher was a farmer and raised chickens. Millions business didn’t bring, but enough for bread and butter, the family didn’t in poverty. In 1963, Fisher decided to drastically change his fate. is he sold the farm, moved to the California coast, registered Trazers Salvors Incorporated and became a professional treasure hunter. Treasures of sunken ships – that is what attracted former farmer.
Already in the next 1964, fate presented him with a gift – for the bottom of the ocean Fisher stumbled upon the remains of the Spanish galleon and beyond the first two days he lifted gold coins from the bottom of 1933, among which there were rare specimens. In total, the treasure hunter collected more 2,500 gold doubloons totaling about $ 45 million. If until this moment Fisher had any doubts about the correctness his decisions, now he put an end to them.
In search of the Golden Galleon
Fisher set himself an ambitious task: to find the sunken in 1622, the Spanish galleon “Nuestra Senora de Atocha”. Ship was part of a caravan of 28 ships departing from Havana to Spain in the fall of 1622. September 6 off the coast of Florida ships caught in a storm, 8 vessels went to the bottom, including Atocha.
According to archival documents on it was the main part treasures: gold and silver bullion, coins, weapons, jewels worth more than 2 million pesos – fabulous wealth! In 1970, Fisher began his search for the Golden Galleon.
Fisher’s preliminary partner historian Eugene Lyon for almost a year Sifted through dusty documents in the Spanish archives. Almost 50 he looked at thousands of written testimonies to draw on the map area of the alleged shipwreck.
In the summer of 1971, Fisher began work and in a year the expedition surveyed more than 120 thousand square meters. miles of sandy bottom of the ocean. Found cans, barrels, scraps of metal nets, unexploded torpedoes and other garbage, but there was no gold.
Found it! … but not that
Finally in 1975 they found the skeleton of a ship. Raised five guns muskets, navigational aids, coins, inlaid spoons and gilded boatswain whistle. But the members are especially happy the expedition called a silver bar with the number 4584 knocked out on it. It was under this number that the ingot appeared in the cargo manifest Atochi. Coincided and weight – 286.2 kg. Now all the finds acquired “history” and their value immediately increased several times.
However, the fabulous wealth that should have been on ship, they did not find. Fisher has expanded the search area, despite the fact that it would seem Atocha was right under them. As it turned out subsequently, he was absolutely right: the ship broke into three parts that are spaced apart. The expedition found the bow the part, where alas, there were almost no treasures.
450 million dollar find
On July 20, 1985, a search boat magnetometer revealed at the bottom of a large mass of metal. Scuba divers descending saw flat sandy bottom black rock. One of them took out a knife and scratched – on a brown-green background a white strip flashed: the rock turned out to be a heap of silver bullion. Scuba divers boarded a boat and they gave a flare that meant “found!”
Treasures rose for almost half a year: jewelry, brooches with emeralds, pendants, rings, bracelets, 150 thousand silver coins, over 200 gold and 1,000 silver bullion weighing 40 kg each. Enjoyable a surprise were several thousand amethysts and the rarest in beauty Colombian emeralds not listed in cargo documents (The Spaniards, it turns out, were still those smugglers).
The total value of the treasures found exceeded 450 million dollars and to this day Fisher’s find is the most a large treasure recovered from the bottom of the ocean.
A photo from open sources
Fisher himself was always offended when he was called “lucky”: “I I’ve been looking for treasure for 15 years – and this is what you call luck ?! Treasure search is labor, labor and labor again. We found the bow and the middle Atochi. Somewhere at the bottom there is still feed, where the main part of the wealth transported. Everyone who believes that gold lies at the bottom and waiting for him to be lifted, he can start searching even now. Only let him first be patient for 15 years. ”
Posted by Klim Podkova
