The Shipwreck Corner

SS New York.
I was really pleased to be successful with my bid on this coin. I’ve long wanted a piece from the SS New York, and to bag a British coin was both unexpected and welcome. Unlike the SS Central America, gold coins from this shipwreck are numbered in hundreds rather than thousands. While the real attraction for most is the rare American gold from the Southern Mints—Charlotte, Dahlonega, and New Orleans—I was hoping this 'foreign' coin might be overlooked amongst the Atocha and 1715 Fleet material.

It was no bargain in the end, but I managed to secure it for less than the usual price of a standard 1830 sovereign, which is a result. I’ve always been a fan of the bare head portrait of George IV; my very first non-ancient coin, which I still treasure, is an 1823 shilling given to me by my grandfather, who actually had it in his pocket change back in the 1930s.




Item: 1830 Great Britain Gold Sovereign (George IV)

Grade: AU55 (NGC Certified)

Pedigree: SS New York Shipwreck (Sunk 1846)

Acquisition: Heritage World Coin Auctions, Showcase Auction 61598 (Feb 2026).


The Tragedy of the SS New York

The SS New York was a 160-foot, wooden-hulled sidewheel steamship that epitomised the luxury of mid-19th-century Gulf travel. Built in 1837, it regularly shuttled passengers and cargo between Galveston, Texas, and New Orleans, Louisiana.

On 5 September 1846, the ship departed Galveston with 53 souls and approximately $40,000 in gold and silver coins—a staggering sum at the time. Two days into the voyage, the vessel was intercepted by a ferocious hurricane. By the early hours of 7 September, the storm’s intensity had torn away the smokestack and wheelhouse. As the hull breached, the rising water extinguished the boiler fires, leaving the ship powerless. The SS New York rolled and sank in about 60 feet of water, taking 17 lives with it.





For over 140 years, the wreck lay forgotten, known only to local shrimp fishermen as a "snag" that tore their nets. It wasn't until 1990 that a group of Louisiana amateur divers and oilfield workers—Avery Munson, Craig DeRouen, and Gary and Renee Hebert—located the site.

The recovery was a painstaking, multi-year process. Initial efforts yielded little, but in 2007, a full-scale salvage operation finally reached the main treasure hoard. They recovered over 2,000 silver coins and several hundred gold coins. The find was historically significant because, as mentioned previously, it contained a high concentration of rare gold from the short-lived Southern Mints (Charlotte, Dahlonega, and New Orleans), alongside international gold like this sovereign.

In total, 297 gold coins were recovered; this sovereign, a circulating currency coin at the time, serves as a testament to the wealth and internationalism of the ship’s passengers.

This one isn’t my coin but shows the obverse and reverse style more clearly than the Heritage image of my coin.




I’ve just ordered this book from Thrift Books in Illonois on EBay and hope to see it in the next two weeks.

I recommend them and have bought several books from them with no issues and a fraction of the cost of Abe Books or Amazon. Apparently they have sold 160 million books on Ebay since 2015!

I hope to learn more about this ship and the salvage from this book.

 

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There are thousands of shipwrecks off and around coast of Madagascar. Mostly Portuguese ships going to and returning from India, Spice Islands (Moluccas) One Swiss treasure hunter, salvaged cannon, artifacts, coins at his leisiure, wife and kids were in on it too! All on shallow crystal clear tropical waters.

 

Pirates at the beginning and pirates at the end...
This is my latest “Shipwreck” coin and it comes with an interesting if somewhat depressing story.

When you spend enough time considering shipwreck coins, you start to realise that "treasure" is rarely about the gold and silver itself. It’s about the chaos that follows the discovery. The Lucayan Beach "Pirate Treasure" of 1964 is a textbook example—a story of four friends in ten feet of water who accidentally unleashed a monster, ruined their friendships, and in my opinion left behind some of the most charmingly packaged numismatic history you’ll ever find in auction room.


In the summer of 1964, four divers—Jack Slack, Gary Simmons, Dick Birch, and Walter Schicht—were messing about near the Lucayan Beach Hotel on Grand Bahama Island. They weren’t looking for a Spanish galleon; they were just diving. But only 1,300 yards from the shore, in water so shallow you could practically stand in it, they found an anchor. Then they found a cannon. And then, they found the "silver carpet."

The seabed was littered with over 10,000 silver "cobs"—hand-struck pieces of eight, mostly 4 and 8 Reales from the Mexico City mint. Because they were found in the Bahamas, the romantic legend immediately pointed to pirates. Specifically, the Dutch privateer (and national hero) Piet Heyn.



Piet Heyn ( Hein)
In 1628, Heyn had pulled off the ultimate heist: he captured the entire Spanish treasure fleet in Matanzas Bay, Cuba, without shedding a drop of blood. He headed home with half a billion Ducaton’s worth of loot, but reported losing two of his captured ships on the way back to Europe. The Lucayan wreck, dated up to 1628, is almost certainly one of those lost prizes.

The Piet Heyn story is worth some focus in itself in connection with this coin. This is what I learnt online. I have checked the story.

Piet Pieterszoon Hein—often anglicised as Pete Heyn—remains the only commander in history to successfully capture a massive portion of the Spanish "Silver Fleet" in a single engagement. This 1628 victory in the Bay of Matanzas, Cuba, wasn’t just a victory it was a geopolitical earthquake that almost bankrupted Spain and funded the Dutch Republic’s independence for years.

Born in 1577 in Delfshaven, Hein’s early life was defined by the very Spanish empire he would later dismantle. Unlike the aristocratic naval officers of his day, Hein was a working-class sailor. At twenty, he was captured by the Spanish and forced into four years of brutal labour as a galley slave—an experience that left him with a lifelong hatred for the Spanish Crown and, crucially, a fluent command of their language.

By the time he joined the Dutch West India Company (WIC) as a Vice Admiral, he was known as a "silent, stern man" who led by example. His capture of the silver fleet in 1628 was the culmination of his technical mastery of the Caribbean's currents and his deep understanding of Spanish naval psychology.

In September 1628, Hein intercepted the New Spain fleet (the Mexican wing of the treasure convoy). Instead of engaging in a traditional broadside battle, he used his superior numbers to herd the Spanish vessels into the shallow Bay of Matanzas.

The Spanish, terrified and cornered, ran their own ships aground to prevent them from being boarded. It backfired. Hein simply sent in his small boats, and the Spanish—seeing the futility of their position—surrendered with almost no bloodshed. The haul was astronomical and included;

177,000 pounds of silver (in bars and chests).

Thousands of chests of indigo, cochineal, and sugar.

The total value exceeded 11.5 million guilders (roughly £1 million in 1620s currency).


If you want to get a perspective regarding the human cost of treasure hunting, you have to read Jack Slack’s 1967 memoir, "Finders Losers." It is a brutally honest, often bitter account of how finding millions of dollars is potentially the worst thing that can happen to a group of friends. This was the only title I could find on the subject. The book arrived before the coin and it was not what I expected and dissimilar to anything else I have read about shipwrecks and salvage.



Slack describes how they went from being four good friends with a shared secret to "minority holders in their own dream." They were besieged by hucksters, con men, and "percentage seekers." They fought with the Bahamian government, they fought with their backers, and eventually, they fought with each other. They even invented a fictional villain named "Patcheye" to blame for their bad luck, but as Slack noted, the real curse wasn't a ghost—it was the greed that followed the silver. Slack ended up being fired by his partners and eventually they all turned on each other. It is a miserable story.

By the time the legal dust settled in the late 1960s, the treasure needed to be sold. This is where it gets interesting for the modern collector. To market the coins, the salvagers partnered with the prestigious London firm Spink & Son Ltd. They sold the coins to Spink to realise what they could as quickly as possible and at a fraction of the estimated value.

Spink decided against auctioning the coins, instead they decided to package them into what are now iconic white leatherette "clamshell" boxes. If you find one today, it should look like this:


The Exterior: A white, hinged leather-effect box with "Lucayan Beach Pirate Treasure 1628" printed in gold leaf on the lid. Unfortunately, these cases tend to “yellow” with age as is this one has begun to, but I have seen much worse and very happy with this case.

The Interior: Lined with rich blue velvet.



The Certificate: A small, square paper certificate from Spink & Son Ltd. specifying the provenance.



These boxes have become a "brand" in their own right. A Lucayan coin on its own is worth a reasonable amount but a Lucayan coin in its original Spink white box with the certificate is a different coin entirely. It represents the first "mass-marketed" shipwreck treasure of the modern era. Kip Wagner preceded this salvage with his identification of the 1715 Fleet losses and recoveries in Florida and Mel Fisher followed soon afterwards with his famous finds, but the Lucayan beach recoveries put these once unappreciated coins within the reach of every collector. Spink marketed them at the time for between £12 and £25 about $28 to $60 in 1968.

Spink did the right thing. “Dumping” 10.000 previously uncommon coins into the market at an auction would have massively devalued them to probably $10 each. “Packaging” them with a slow release achieved much better value but nowhere near the millions that had previously been anticipated. The original four divers ended up with between $75 -$100,000 each.

The Lucayan Beach find was a turning point. It proved that you didn't need a million-dollar expedition to find a fortune; you just needed to be looking in the right place at the right time. But more importantly, through Spink's slick marketing, it turned "dirty old silver" into a high-end luxury collectible and a link to Pirates and their treasures.

This coin is not full weight but still a respectable 25.9 g and has not been blasted by chemicals to make it bright. It is just how I like them.

The coin was minted in Mexico and the assayer mark is D. This indicates that the assayer was Diego de Godoy who was the dominant assayer at the Mexico City mint between 1618 and 1634. In my limited experience, Mexican cobs are struck in more uniform shapes that their Bolivian counterparts.

An interesting coin with all kinds of history attached to it over 400 years. Pirates at the beginning of its life and pirates at the end….

 

A great story! I also like that the coin looks like a 400 year-old coin should.