Don't clean your coins - Ha !

I did that too Green - didn't get rich

 

Boy Howdy don't I wish ! He's my favorite author by the way. Has been for decades.

 

Been to Alaska too, but fishin, not gold mining. And that's another whole story all by itself. Ya see, I had this run in with a 900 lb. Alaska Brown, he wanted to get on the rock I was fishin from. And I wasn't about to let him - was my dang rock ! After 'bout an hour of him getting poked in the eyes with the wrong end of my flyrod, and having a hook ripped through his nose - he finally saw the wisdom of giving up the battle

And no Dave, that's not embellishment. I had about 50 witnesses, and got pictures !

Well yeah, research has always been a big part of my life. I could read and write before I ever went to school. Used to read whole sets of encyclopedias for fun, and to learn how to do fun things. By the time I was 8, I had learned how to make nitro, from scratch. 'Course there was that one accident, the house and its roof took the worst of that. But the whole dang thing was my mom's fault - never woulda happened if she hadn't called me away to find out what the stink was.

But finding that wreck, that was an accident, no research involved really, just blind luck. Ya see, I was sittin on the bowspirit of the boat because I made a bonehead mistake and lost a stainless steel hose overboard, and we were lookin for it. I was lookin, the Capt. was driving the boat. And as we were cruising along with me watching the bottom I saw a pile of ballast stones (knew what they were of course because the Capt. had taught me). So I threw a marker overboard and yelled at the Capt. to turn around. Long story short, I had found a wreck. Spent 10 days in a row digging out the anchor with an airlift, got my right hand broke for my trouble. In later weeks we recovered a couple of the ships cannon, some coins, few pieces of jewelry, odds and ends.

That anchor's still down in the Keys someplace, it aint where we left it anymore because I went and looked a few years ago. But it's got my name on it, well on a plaque attached to it anyway.

Ya beginning to get an idea why people would never believe it Dave

 

Took me a minute to figure out what prompted that question. Then I realized you must be asking about my hand. No, it wasn't the anchor itself, if it had been the anchor I probably would have lost my hand as the anchor was 14 ft. long, 12 ft. wide at the flukes, and had a 14 in. square shaft. But yes it was natural causes.

Ya see, given the size of the thing there was of course no way that we could ever get it out of the water - we were on a 41 ft. boat. So the only way we could move it was to float it. It took eleven 55 gallon barrels, chained to the anchor and then filled with air to float the thing. Then we could tow it to shore. While I was chaining up the barrels a rip current came through. One of the barrels (as of yet unattached) rolled down on me (I was in the hole) and crashed into the barrel I was working with at the time - with my hand in between the two.

 

We tried 8 first - wouldn't budge. I went back in and got 3 more - did the trick.

Nahhh, never did. I left the Keys not long after we brought in 2 of the cannon, didn't go back for 25 years. To the best of my knowledge it's still never been identified. BUt somebody did else did find it in '82, 6 years after I did. All they found were bits and pieces for the most part if I recall correctly.

You can probably Google the wreck, it was about 4 miles off Duck Key, in an area known as Coffin's Patch.