The
Mel Fisher Story
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The greatest help in actual
location of the 1715 shipwrecks was a development by Fay Feild, electronics
wizard and enduring member of the team. Feild's sensitive instrument called a
proton magnetometer successfully found portions of ships of the hurricane doomed
great fleet.
But the treasure hunters inability to see underwater was crippling their
shallow-water efforts. Finally, engineer Mel Fisher, who had also learned
practical skills such as welding, developed a device that, because of its shape,
they called a ''mailbox." Lowered from the vessel stern over the propellers,
the mailbox" would send a layer of
clear water near the surface downward to the bottom so the divers could see. In
that spring of 1964, testing of the "mailbox" did more than bring clear water to
the bottom. Just as their year was nearly ended, the " mailbox" parted the sands
and revealed 1,033 gold coins. Mel Fisher exclaimed "Once you have seen the
ocean bottom paved with gold, you'll never forget it!"
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The Fisher team of Treasure Salvors,
Inc., with the Wagner team of the Real Eight Company, originally recovered more
than $20 million in treasure from the 1715 Fleet shipwrecks during the 1960s.
Discoveries of much more treasure from 1715 Fleet wrecks have continued through
decades. Fisher's "golden crews" later found treasures worth more than $400
million on the sister "golden galleons," Atocha and Santa Margarita, lost in the
same treasure fleet in 1622.
Over the years many millions of
dollars in treasure have been recovered from both the wrecks of the 1715 Plate
Fleet, and the 1622 combined Spanish treasure fleet lost off the Florida Keys.
Work of the Fisher teams will continue through the turn of the century.
Thousands of Spanish gold coins many never seen before; tons of silver coins,
many of them rare and in amazing condition; period and earlier amazing Spanish
objects and wares, rare intact K'ang Hsi porcelains, exquisite jewelry set with
precious stones, gold chains, discs, and other objects of antiquity!
Mel Fisher Story ->
