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The newest museum on Sanibel Island would certainly have impressed legendary Gulf Coast pirates of the 17th century and 18th centuries with its phenomenal loot. Boca Grande’s Gasparilla, Sanibel’s Black Ceaser, and Esteros Calico Jack would probably have died to know that treasure from one of the richest galleons ever lost off the coast of Florida is now on display on Sanibel. Given their reputed desire for notoriety, they might also be happy to know that the new museum gives credence to their legendary existence. “Certainly pirates existed around here,” says Lee Fisher, veteran treasure hunter and president of the new exhibit. In fact, Fisher urges area fisher folk or others who have come across old anchors, cannonballs, or other artifacts to stop by the museum. |
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Legend has it that those pirates frequented hideouts around local waters with treasure they had ransacked from silver and gold-laden ships that were traversing the Caribbean back to the Old World. In Fisher’s mind the possibility that sunken treasure exists in local waters is hardly farfetched. Local historians and archaeologists prefer to downplay that possibility because treasure seekers in the 1970’s destroyed Calusa Indian shell mounds in their searches. Therefore, you wont find mention of pirates at many other island historical venues. Fisher certainly doesn’t advocate reckless, amateur digging. Having been in the business since the late ‘70s, she has learned a thing or two. ‘There’s an entire protocol for working the waters off Florida and we’ve already got that set up because that’s what we do,” she says. “So if anybody thinks they’ve got something old and wants to check into it more. We can send somebody and offer a professional opinion.” |
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| The Mel Fisher Treasure Exhibit located behind Winds at
the intersection of Palm Ridge Road and Periwinkle Way, opened last spring
and then closed at the end of November for a few months while Fisher took
over its administration. Daughter-in-law of the famed treasure hunter Mel
Fisher, Lee Fisher also overseas the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key
West.
The Sanibel museum brings to life an era gone by as well as the fascinating story of a devoted treasure hunter who hit the mother lode. Shawn Cowles curator of the Sanibel museum designed the exhibit with his passion for treasure hunting ad discovery intact. The result is a winding display that takes the visitor on an exciting voyage through time. Cowels who grew up the Berkshires in Massachusetts, became enraptured by notions of swashbucklers and sunken treasure at the age of 11. By 12 he was a certified diver “My peers didn‘t even know what diving was,” he recalls. His visions of buccaneers and shipwrecks led him after college to Key West where he hooked up in 1993 with the Mel Fisher team. |
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Mel’s Dream “Today’s the day!” was Mel Fishers morning greeting to his divers. After 16 years of making that daily exclamation, he realized his dream with the discovery of the treasure—laden galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha. It was July 20, 1985 -exactly 10 years to the day after he lost his son, Dirk, and his son’s wife, Angel, to the hunt--that his divers hit upon the mother lode off of Marquesas. The museum exhibit designed by Cowels chronicles the sequence of events over nearly 400 years that merges the two fascinating stories. After five years of taking the treasure exhibit in road shows all over the country, in between diving seasons, Cowles learned what People wanted to know. “People asked the same questions no matter where you were,” he says. “So when I designed the museum, I designed it with all those questions in mind.” When Mel Fisher passed on a Few years ago, his son Kim took the helm of the treasure, company. Even now, divers are still discovering more emeralds, silver, and gold along the 14—mile trail of treasure left by the wrecked Atocha. |
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Two Tales To Tell “We came up and checked it out and Sanibel fit the bill. It’s a small island with a small community like Key West,’’ says Lee, who personally oversees the museum from the Keys. The Fishers relied on Cowles to create an exhibit that would capture the excitement and cultural significance of what they do. “We start out, as we do in Key West, with a movie theater that shows an eight - minute video to set the stage,” says Cowles. The video takes viewers back to the year 1622 when the Atocha set sail with a 28—ship fleet from Havana. Spain’s dominance as a world power is also explained, as well as how much the country was relying on receiving the 42 tons of silver aboard the Atocha, to help pay off its debts. ‘‘From the video, you exit directly into the Potosi mine’’ in South America, says Cowles. Potosi is really where it all began. The Atocha was a Spanish silver galleon. It was transporting massive amounts of silver. Established in 1573, the Potosi mine and mint were operated by enslaved Incan and Aztec. peoples. A veritable mountain of silver, Potosi was most likely where some of the First coins were minted in the New World. The reason we start looking there is because there’s such a significance to Potosi and the treasure we look at. Most of the coins we have are from there and the markings are very significant says Cowles. The storyboard points out what all the markings mean-- what the cross means, what the line means, what the castle and all the writing mean. |
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“We’re selling coins and we want people to understand what’s behind them and how rare they are and how they’re all so individual.” After learning about Potosi, which possessed enough silver to mint coins for 375 years, the exhibit leads viewers to an outline of the immense wealth aboard the ill-fated Atocha. Protected from pirates by their strength in numbers, the 28—ship flotilla, which included the Atocha set sail on Sept. 4, 1622. But it wasn’t skull and crossbones that threatened the vessels. Rather, the fleet was hit by a raging hurricane that destroyed eight of he sailing ships. Rescue ships picked up some survivors and identified the wreck site. A few weeks later, however, while the Spanish were putting together salvage crews in Havana, another hurricane even stronger than the first--ravaged the remains of those vessels. |
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That second storm ruined the chances of salvaging the Atocha as the Spanish lost track of the ship. For about seven decades more, Spain sought its fortune but failed to find it. From there, we pop you out about 340 years later when Mel starts looking for Atocha, says Cowles “Here you learn about a guy with no money and a dream, who’s focused enough to accomplish his dream of a lifetime and all the trials and tribulations he went through. The exhibit outlines the perseverance of the famed treasure seeker, from the deaths of family members to fighting court battles over rights to the treasure from the state level to the U.S. Supreme Court. It then takes viewers through a display of some of the artifacts that were discovered. |
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“I think it’s very important for people to realize how much goes into conservation. This is an archaeological site: this is not rape and pillage,’’ says Cowles. “That’s why it’s 30 years later and we’re still working on it. You don’t just go down there with a clam bucket and pull everything up.” Another display explains the various technologies that have been used over the years and how methods have, increased in sophistication through computers and satellites. One of Cowel’s favorite creations in the museum is a miniature reproduction of the mother lode essentially as divers found in 1985. “A lot of people don‘t have a concept. They just think there was a ship on the ocean floor with sails flapping in the current. Of course, that’s not all the case,” he says. “It doesn’t look like Hollywood would make it. That’s why were still out there today and why we think were finally on the stern castle, because were finding lots of personal effects and religious artifacts.” The main pile, or mother lode, that divers discovered hardly looked as though it would be worth the $400 million that it has produced. “It looked like a pile of rubble or a little reef. It was only five feet tall, about 35 feet wide, and 75 feet long. It was definitely more overgrown than our exhibit, but I wanted people to get an idea of what it was,” says Cowels. After getting a glimpse of the pile of rubble that divers had to sift through to find treasure, visitors exit into the gift shop. “Now, you come out and you look at all these coins in front of you as an educated person,” he says. “Original coins start at about $500, but we have artifacts worth as much as a half a million.” For Cowels, setting up a museum has been quite an interesting adventure; however, he’s still a treasure seeker and diver at heart. When giving lectures at the museum or in the community, he shares tales of his most fascinating underwater discoveries.
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One of the best days of his diving career was a big hit in Guam. “We had gone a long stretch without finding anything and morale was down. It was the last day of season and we went over the edge with these metal detectors to about 260 feet and it was like, ‘bleep, bleep, bleep,’” he recalls. We were just loaded with hits and we started fanning away the sand and there were all these musket balls. That was one of the best days of my life because it told us we were back on the trail. “That s what treasure hunting is all about; it’s the thrill of the chase. It doesn’t always have to be this incredibly valuable piece monetarily speaking. Those musket balls were just as exciting as the 26.6-carat emerald we found on the Atocha site.” |
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However, last summer, while diving on the Santa Margarita—the sister ship to the Atocha—Cowels was extremely moved by a curious gold piece he discovered. “The amazing thing about gold is it looks just like you put it there yesterday even though it’s been in there for 400 years, because nothing corrodes or adheres it,” he says. “So, I saw this flash of gold and thought, ‘Wow!’ and I fanned it and it was a very rich, buttery gold, very high carat. I picked it up and it was a beautiful ring.” For the next 10 days while out on dive site, Cowels became enamored of the ring, which had a large, square, perfectly clear stone with what appeared to be sand stuck inside. Back on shore, the ring was turned over to the museum for processing. After official examination, Cowels found out that he had discovered, to date, the only white sapphire on the wreck site. More amazing, the sand he thought was lodged in the stone was actually thought to be the ashes of a saint. “It turned out to be a beautiful reliquary,” he says, adding that the ring, valued at about $37,000, went to one of the investors. “To me, that was one of the nicest pieces I’ve found because it was so personal and it had a real story.” To Lee Fisher, the stories that underlie the treasure are the real loot. “The purpose of the exhibit is to educate. The ship sank 400 years ago and there’s a lot of cultural resources and information. We’re still studying it and we’re still working the wreck in Key West and bringing it up and learning daily new information,” she says. “To have a centralized place for that information to come to and to be available to the public, that’s what this is all about.” Freelance writer and Sanibel resident Barbara Linstrom-Arnold is always on the lookout for island treasures. |
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From The Archives Of
The Search For The Atocha |
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