A crew of Florida treasure hunters came upon a startling discovery in a 300-year-old shipwreck last month. And there may be more where it came from.
Captain Grant Gitschlag and his mate, Corinne Lea, told Fox 35 Orlando that they've been investigating sunken shipwrecks for forgotten treasure for several years. But nothing prepared them for the find they made late in May while plundering a Spanish vessel in what is now Brevard County.
Over two days, Gitschlag and Lea unearthed roughly 214 silver coins that have been undisturbed for 300 years. The ship they were searching for is part of the 1715 Treasure Fleet, a duo of Spanish vessels which sank in a fierce hurricane while bringing treasures back to Spain from the New World.
"I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t expecting it at all which is how the greatest finds come about," Lea recalled.
"It was kind of numbing in a way,” Gitschlag agreed. “You don’t expect that. You always hope for it, but you never expect it,” he marveled. "To get this kind of quantity in a period of a couple of days, is a very exciting start.”
The coins are currently in the possession of Sal Guttuso, who operates the 1715 Fleet Queens Jewels LLC, the U.S. District Court’s exclusive salvager and custodian of treasure from the 1715 Fleet. Guttuso is overseeing the cleaning of the coins, which had accrued three centuries worth of encrusted sand and shells.
The discovery, especially in such quantities, is remarkably rare. "Those ships, a lot of them, were just broken to bits and that treasure went everywhere," Guttuso explained of the 1715 Fleet.
The crew is planning to return to the wreck in the hopes of finding even more treasure. For them, the search is the most exciting part of the mission.
"It’s the find. It’s all about the find," Lea said. "I love the history, being the first person in 309 years to find what was once lost in a tragedy."
