VOLUMES
23
ricane, because he knew that’s when gold and silver coins
might be uncovered by the shifting sands. His target was loot
from the fleet of Spanish galleons that sank off Florida’s east
coast in a 1715 storm.
His account appears in “True Stories of Sunken Treasure,”
written by Bob “Frogfoot” Weller, a veteran of the Navy’s
Underwater Demolition Units who served in the Korean War.
Since 1978, Weller has also been salvaging the 1715 fleet.
Hurricane Jeanne came ashore in the middle of the night,
in Martin County. Bounds stayed on the beach in Indian
River County, north ofWabasso, until about 8 p.m., when the
winds got really dangerous. He got in his truck and fell
asleep, but was awakened when roof shingles hit the
windshield.
At dawn, Bounds decided to walk to his target at
Corrigan’s Beach about 4 miles south. “After beating his way
along the beach for almost 2 miles, somewhere near
Summerplace there was a house ripped apart at the edge of
the dune line, furniture, TV, household goods exposed and
being swept out to sea,” Weller writes. When Bounds was
nearly struck by a log that was being tossed around in the
surf, he decided to walk on A1A to his expected “gold hole,”
between the Seagrape and Turtle Trail beach accesses.
Armed with his metal detector, Bounds hit paydirt when he
finally reached his destination. Buried under just a few inches
of sand was a 1714 gold Mexican coin that was “as crisp and
clear as the day it was minted,” Weller says. Then he found
another gold coin, and then a silver coin “almost as an afterthought.”
He went back the next day and in what Weller
described as a great gold rush, found several more gold coins
before deciding to call it quits.
Weller’s book, his ninth about treasure hunting, deals mostly
with Florida’s east coast, the Keys and the Bahamas. It’s full
of well-told stories that should interest new residents of the
Treasure Coast and old-timers alike.
But there could be huge and largely untapped stores of
sunken treasure off the coasts of Cuba. For centuries, Havana
Harbor was strategically important for Spanish ships returning
from the New World, Weller writes. The ships stopped
there for provisions and also used it as a place to hide from
Dutch, French and English enemies.
“Every salvager that is still afloat has the same dream that I
have, to work a few of the hundreds of shipwrecks that litter
the dragon’s teeth along Cuba’s northwest and southwest
coasts,” Weller writes.
Maybe someday, if political conditions change, that part of
Cuba will be known as the Costa de Tesoro.
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“True Stories of Sunken Treasure:
The Best of Bob ‘Frogfoot’ Weller”
Publisher: Crossed Anchors Salvage 2005
Pages: 112
$12
Treasured History