LIVING HISTORY
significance as a global power. Not until the mid-20th century
did serious interest resume in treasure hunting off
Florida’s east coast. Along came Kip Wagner’s Real 8 company
and Mel Fisher’s Treasure Salvors enterprise, and the
boom began.
Lyon, a scholar specializing in North American history
during the 16th century Spanish occupation, met Fisher in
the late 1960s when both men and their families were charter
members of Christ by the Sea Methodist Church in Vero
Beach. Lyon was working on his doctoral dissertation about
the life of Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the founder of St.
Augustine, and told Fisher he planned to go to Spain to do
research at the Archives of the Indies in Seville, near
Menendez’s birthplace.
Fisher needed some research, too. For years, he had
been searching for the site of the Atocha, a treasureladen
Spanish galleon that sank in a 1622 hurricane
somewhere between Havana and the Florida Keys.
He thought the Atocha was near the Upper Keys, but
asked Lyon to see what he could learn in the Spanish
archives.
“I was going through accounting papers and found
a bundle wrapped in a pink ribbon,” Lyon said, and
those records indicated the Atocha rested far west of
the Upper Keys, near the Marquesas 40 miles west of
Key West.
“Fisher immediately moved everything to Key West
and immediately found the big anchor from the
Atocha,” Lyon said.
That was in the early 1970s. Years went by without
discovery of the mother lode. Legend has it that
Fisher announced every day at the start of a dive,
“Today’s the day.” Finally, a mid-summer day in 1985
actually became the day his crew found the Atocha’s
main pile of riches. He and his crew brought up an
estimated $400 million in silver and gold bars, silver
coins, emeralds and artifacts. They also recovered $40
million in treasure from the Atocha’s sister ship,
the Margarita.
There’s still plenty to be learned about the 1715
fleet, Lyon said. A couple of the ships have never
been located.
“The Concepcion has not been found. It’s somewhere
north of the Sebastian Inlet,” he said. “There
are people working there now. The SanMiguel also
hasn’t been found. It’s believed to be off Amelia Island.”
He said there’s treasure to be found in all the 1715
wrecks, including the Capitan, which rests offshore
from the Riomar golf course in Vero Beach. In the last
decade, divers have brought up lots of jewelry from
the Capitan, he said. They’ve found thousands of gold
coins at the Nuestra Senora de Las Nieves, another
1715 galleon that rests off St. Lucie County’s Frederick
Douglass Park.
“I think they’ll be working on the 1715 wrecks, like
they did this summer, for years to come,” Lyon said.
Lyon is the author of “The Search for the Atocha;” a
book about 16th century St. Augustine titled “Richer
Than We Thought,” and numerous articles for the
National Geographic and other publications. He
serves on the board of Fisher’s company, Treasure
Salvors, Inc. and Mel Fisher’s Maritime Heritage
Society, which operates a museum in Key West.
He’s sure there are hundreds of undetected shipwrecks out
there somewhere.
“Thousands of ships sailed and certainly 5 to 10 percent
were lost by collision or leaks or hurricanes or some type of
military action,” he said. “More were lost in deep water
because they did most of their travel in deep water.”
Lyon once owned some gold bars from the Atocha but
found them slimy and unappealing. “I thought, so many
people have died for these things, and for what?” For him,
the fun is in the seeking and finding.
“Who could ever believe you could go to the middle of the
ocean and find a shipwreck?” he said. “But you can.”
Treasured History 18
Through researching a bundle of records in Spain, Eugene Lyon helped
pinpoint the wreck of the Atocha off the Florida Keys. The discovery yielded
some $400 million in treasure.