After the Storm: Where the Treasure Coast Gives Up Its Silver

Storms strip sand off the Treasure Coast, and the silver of the 1715 Fleet, lying in shallow water from Sebastian Inlet to Fort Pierce, moves with it. Go the first morning after a blow, at low tide, hunt the cuts and the black sand, stay above the water line, and know the rules before you dig. That's the whole hunt. The rest of this is why it works and where.

Why silver still washes up on the Treasure Coast

Eleven Spanish ships left Havana on July 24, 1715, riding low with the silver of Mexico and Peru, a year's worth held back by war. A French ship, the Grifon, sailed with them. Seven days out, at about two in the morning on July 31, a hurricane put all eleven Spanish ships on the Florida coast between what is now Sebastian Inlet and Fort Pierce. The Grifon, farther out to sea, made it home. Somewhere between 700 and 1,500 people died, depending on whose records you read.

The wrecks lie in shallow water along roughly thirty miles of beach. That is the whole secret. The Spanish knew it too: they built a salvage camp on the dune where the McLarty Treasure Museum stands today and worked the wrecks for years, until a privateer named Henry Jennings sailed in during the winter of 1715–16 and took somewhere between 87,000 and 120,000 pieces of eight off them, depending on which account you trust, without firing much of anything. We claim no relation. We are not denying it either.

Coins have been coming up ever since. Bernard Romans, surveying this coast in the 1770s, wrote that his crew walking the beach "repeatedly found pistareens." In the early 1950s a Sebastian builder named Kip Wagner started hearing the same thing and went looking. On January 8, 1961, his group brought up more than 2,000 silver 8 reales from a wreck off Sebastian, and the Real Eight Company was born: eight partners, pieces of eight. In May 1964 Mel Fisher's crew, working with Real Eight off Fort Pierce, found what they called the carpet of gold: 1,033 gold coins, by the count that stuck. That is when people started calling this the Treasure Coast.

It has not stopped. In 2010 a company called 1715 Fleet – Queens Jewels bought the salvage rights from Fisher's heirs. Over two days at the end of July 2015, three hundred years almost to the day after the sinking, their crew brought up 350 gold coins, nine of them the rare royals struck for the king, about $4.5 million. That was off a beach you can park at.

When to go

After a storm, and sooner than you think. A hurricane gets the headlines, but the winter nor'easters do most of the work on this coast: three days of onshore wind and heavy surf cut the beach face back and expose the older, heavier layers underneath. That cut, the little cliff of sand the surf leaves behind, is what you are looking for. Walk its base at low tide, the first morning you can get there. You will not be alone; the whole Treasure Coast reads the same forecast.

Look for the black sand. Heavy minerals settle together, and a silver cob is heavy for its size, so it settles with them. Silver that has spent three hundred years in salt water is black, not shiny; a cob on the beach looks like a flat lump of coal with corners. Most people step over them.

Which beaches are best after a storm?

The wreck sites that give up coins sit off a stretch of A1A with public access at each of them. North to south:

• Sebastian Inlet State Park, south side, and the McLarty Treasure Museum two miles down A1A. The Cabin Wreck lies off this stretch; the museum is built on the Spanish camp.
• Ambersand, Treasure Shores, Golden Sands and Wabasso Beach Park: the Corrigan's Wreck stretch, the most productive beach for silver in living memory, and where the 350 gold coins came up in 2015.
• Turtle Trail and Seagrape Trail, the two small accesses north of Vero Beach, where the sand comes off fast.
• Vero Beach, Jaycee and Humiston parks, for the Rio Mar Wreck, which lies off the golf course to the south.
• Round Island Beach Park, at the county line, for the Sandy Point Wreck.
• Pepper Park, Fort Pierce, for the Wedge Wreck.
• Frederick Douglass Memorial Park, Fort Pierce: the Douglass Beach Wreck, the carpet of gold.

Can you metal detect the Treasure Coast beaches?

Yes, with three rules that are not suggestions.

In the state parks, detecting is allowed only between the toe of the dune and the high-water line, in the stretch the park manager designates, and nowhere else. Nothing in the water, ever. And anything over fifty years old belongs to the State of Florida even if you find it on the approved strip: park rules say so, and a 1715 cob is three hundred years old. Enjoy the hunt at Sebastian Inlet; the coin you find there goes to the ranger.

On the county and city beaches, the ones on the list above, the rules are local and worth a phone call; on most of them a coin that washes up on the dry sand is yours to keep. Check the ordinance for the beach you are standing on before you assume.

Below the high-water line and in the water, everything belongs to the state. The wreck sites themselves are under state lease to 1715 Fleet – Queens Jewels, and the boats you see working close to shore in summer are theirs. Do not dig in the wash, do not swim out to the wrecks, do not bring a scoop into the surf. The beach is the hunt. The water is somebody else's.

What should you do if you find a Spanish coin?

Photograph it where it lies before you pick it up, with the beach in frame, and write down the date and the access. Do not scrub it; a cob's surface is the evidence, and black is fine. Get it identified by someone who has held a thousand of them: the McLarty museum staff, the 1715 Fleet Society, or a cob specialist auction house, of which Florida has the best in the country. If it is old and it came off state land, the Bureau of Archaeological Research is who you call, and calling is what separates a hunter from a looter. Then start a log. Every coin on this coast has a story, and yours starts the morning you found it.

Is The Sunken Real a real 1715 coin?

No. The Sunken Real is a one-ounce .999 silver round we struck in tribute to the fleet: a Florida Man three nights into dreaming silver, the tide pulling back to bare an old Spanish wreck, one blackened real coming up in his hand. It is edge-numbered 001–150 in a First Tide Release of 150, entered in the Official Registry, and it ships Treasure-cased in a holder built to be opened, black glove on. It is for the mornings the beach gives you nothing, which is most of them. Call your number on the Registry and it's held for you while you check out.

Bookmark this page. The storm log at the top updates the week a storm touches this coast, and the Crew hears first. The Gulf gave us every legend. The Atlantic keeps the receipts.