[Game] World Coins Time Machine… Counting Backward by Year! (Plus Prize Coin)

1637 TRANSYLVANIA Georg Rakoczi I 6 groschen

 

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I will have to wait till 1636....

 

The last voyage, wreck, and salvages of the Concepcion have a very rich history. If you continue to read my account of the wreck and many salvages, keep in mind that this coin was there through it all … only to be plucked from the sea during the last episode.

1636P-T(1) Bolivia 8 reales cob, Potosi Mint Bolivia, P mint mark. Assayer T, Tracey Bowden Salvage from the 1641 wreck of the Nuestra Señora de la [Pura y Limpia] Concepción (Our Lady of The [“pure and clean”/Immaculate] Conception). KM#19a. Krauss lists the 1636P-T as rare.
(1)Only a small bottom portion of the date numerals appear on the cob. The last digit has two possibilities, 0 or 6. However, the 3 character on this cob (i.e. the 3 die punch used for the die) does not match that of three 1630P cob examples I found so far. I found one 1636P example. It’s a poor example, but what can be seen of its 3 character, agrees with my cob. Based on these examples, I believe the 1636P date is probable. A detailed account of the examples is given below. I periodically search for new examples to surface.




About cobs: The following is a good description of the process of minting cobs.
{1} … process involved pouring a long bead of silver on a flat surface, then after it cooled, hammering it into a flat strip. From this strip or bar, two-inch-long pieces were cut off and weighed, then small bits chiseled off the corners until the weight of each piece corresponded with its denomination. … {The} blank, was sandwiched between two dies and struck … with a heavy mallet. Because the die designs were slightly larger than the coin, and the edges of the blanks had been hammered {the author doesn’t say why the edges were hammered}, the resulting impression was never a complete one. Europeans called these coins “cobs”, from the Spanish cabo de barra, cut from the bar.

I purchased this coin in 1996 after reading the July National Geographic article “Gleaning Treasure From the Silver Bank” about the Concepcion wreck and salvage. I bought the coin from the author’s company Silver Bank Treasures, which was the salvage company.

A history of salvage of the Concepcion: The Concepcion has a marvelous history of failed salvage attempts, at least 3 historical successful salvages and many undocumented successful salvages. My cob was found during the last of the historically successful salvages (that I know about).

The Concepcion set sail for Spain from Havana on 20 September 1641 in a fleet of 21 ships. The fleet was caught in a hurricane and hopelessly scattered. The Concepcion heavily damaged and alone limped-on trying to reach port in Puerto Rico. On 2 Nov 1641 (approximately 6 weeks at sea) she would sink on the Silver Bank Shoals, named after her sunken treasure, about 75 miles north of Hispaniola (todays Dominican Republic).

A detailed account of the Concepcion’s last voyage: Built in Havana in 1620, the Concepcion was a veteran of many trans-Atlantic voyages to and from Spain. She was built as a nao, a large merchant vessel, but she was upgraded to a galleon for this trip from Spain. She received a complete overhaul, including new masts and rigging. Her decks were reinforced so she could carry 40 cannon.{2} She was the one of two galleon charged with protecting the fleet on its voyage to Mexico. She was selected to be the Capitana of the two galleons, the flagship of the fleet. The fleet left Spain on 21 April 1640, her destination being Vera Cruz Mexico. It arrived at Vera Cruz on 24 Jun 1640.

The initial plan was to hold the fleet until the spring of 1642 before returning to Spain. This would allow time for a more substantial number of escort galleons to be added to the returning fleet. Early in July 1641 the plans changed. The fleet would now return without the additional escorts. The fleet would return with 2 galleon escorts, as it had arrived. For this trip, the Concepcion was the Almiranta galleon, the number 2 galleon charged with protecting the rear of the fleet. A new commander for the fleet had selected a different Capitana, flagship. This possibly had dire consequences for the Concepcion for the most experienced pilot sailed on the Capitana, which was no longer the Concepcion, and pilot error ultimately caused the sinking of the Concepcion.

The fleet was now hurriedly loaded, as it was late in the season. It was generally thought to avoid the risk of hurricanes, the fleet should leave Havana Cuba for Spain no later than 20 September.{2} The fleet would make one stop on its voyage to Spain and that was in Havana to take on supplies and more treasure and passengers.

The Concepcion was loaded with silver for the crown, gold and jewels of the archbishop of Mexico (who was a passenger), and porcelain and silk from China.{1} The China cargo had journeyed on Manila Galleons, via the Philippines, to Acapulco, and from there, carried on donkey train to Vera Cruz for shipment to Spain.

The condition of the Concepcion hull had deteriorated during the 18 months since it was last overhauled. Her hull was being prepared to be serviced before the journey to Spain, but with the change in plans, there was no time. She would leave with the fleet with a leaking hull. The neglected hull would be critical to the fate of the entire fleet.

The Concepcion, in a 21 ship fleet, left Vera Cruz Mexico for Havana on July 23 1641, beginning her voyage to Spain. The fleet arrived in Havana on August 27 1641. On September 13, the fleet embarked for Spain. Shortly after nightfall, a large leak sprung on the Concepcion. She signaled the fleet, and the fleet returned to Havana. The repairs were completed and on September 20 the fleet again left Havana for Spain (one month after the latest target date of 20 August for a hurricane risk free voyage). This 7 day delay would lead to the demise of the fleet because it put them in the path of a hurricane.

On 29 September the fleet was east of St Augustine Florida when they were caught by a hurricane. The Concepcion was carried northward in the hurricane. In the aftermath, she was heavily damaged, dismasted and leaking badly, but she survived. She was alone at sea, as the fleet was scattered. Of the other ships in the fleet, 9 sank and several others ran aground.{1}

The crew had jury-rigged a new mast using a spare yardarm when she was dismasted, and she was able to limp along under this meager sail. Plans were made to sail to Puerto Rico for repair, and they set a south-west course.

With an astrolabe, the two ship’s pilots could determine an approximate latitude to be north of Bermuda (i.e. north of Georgia). In those days longitude could not be measured, but was estimated by dead-reckoning. So no one knew for sure what their longitude was because of their chaotic journey in the hurricane.

They limped along for over 3 weeks. On October 23 the two ships pilots incorrectly believed they were north of Puerto Rico, and recommended a southerly course. The captain, Admiral Villavisenzio, correctly believed that they were not that far to the east, and believed that they were north of Hispaniola (todays Dominican Republic). He argued that going south from this position would put the ship in danger of hitting shoals approximately 75 miles north of Hispaniola. The ships pilots by rule had the authority to guide the ships course, and overruled the captain.{1} The captain had a silver bowl of water brought to a gathering of crew and passengers and washed his hands of the decision. They turned south, and ran into the Silver Bank Shoals on October 31 1641, approximately one month after the hurricane hit.

The ship’s hull was not damaged by the initial impact, but she was held in a maze of mushroom shaped corals extending 50 feet from the seafloor to the surface. Now, they determined their longitude by matching charted reefs to latitude measurements. Efforts to free the ship failed. On the second night on the reef, another storm broke. After an anchor rope failed, she slipped farther into the coral mushroom heads, and her hull was now torn. They again were held by mushroom corals. Now her stern was perched between coral heads, her bow was under water to the mainmast, the afterdecks remained above water. Planks were now torn off the ship to make rafts. Eight to ten rafts were constructed.{1, 2}

On November 2, 1641, 3 days after striking the reef, another storm hit. In the hours of dark, the bow suddenly lurched further under water. Now, only the lofty quarterdeck (officer’s quarters) was above water.{2} This caused a chaotic scramble for the longboat and rafts. In the end approximately 190 of 500 persons survived. The captain and officers were among those on the longboat and survived. The pilots survived on a raft, and later disappeared to avoid prosecution.

Historically documented salvage attempts of the day failed to find the wreck.

The 1st historically documented successful salvage was in 1687 by William Phips, of the Massachusetts Colony, sailing out of England financed by English investors. Before this, Phips made an unsuccessful salvage attempt financed by Charles II of England. For his second attempt, he hoped for financing from James II but was denied. However Phips did convince other investors to finance his second attempt. This time Phips was wildly successful. The Tower Mint tallied his treasure as: 450,000 pieces of 8 weighing 37,538 pounds, 459 silver bars weighing 27,556 pounds, 25.7 lbs. of gold objects and jewelry. In all he brought back 32 tons of treasure. In currency, the treasure was valued at £210,000.{2} King James II was given a portion of the treasure, as was required of all British treasure hunters, and responded by knighting Phips.

Phips went again for a third trip. He had stopped his successful second salvage early, for a variety of concerns, and had planned to return. This time he found the wreck site crawling with 32 small boats, all treasure hunters from British Colonies. Phips attempts to keep the location of the wreck secret had failed. The successful salvors, having seen Phips royal ship, immediately set sail, lest they be boarded and inspected. The rest left soon after. Some of these boats were operating with permission of their colonial governments. Salvors from Jamaica and Bermuda declared treasures worth over £100,000 (combined) to their colonies (about 50% of Phips’ initial haul). Other colonies lesser amounts.{2} Its probable that not all treasure was declared to the colonial authorities, and one estimate of the day was that the colonial salvage was twice the declared amount, or approximately equivalent to Phips’ salvage.{2} Phips worked the wreck for 4 months, finding only scattered silver. By the end, less than a pound weight of silver a day was recovered. Phips left with a disappointing 3300 pounds of silver, valued at £10,000. This was 1/10 of the value declared by salvors from Jamaica and Bermuda, and about 5% of his earlier find. These funds would pay only about half the cost of the salvage. Phips concluded that all the easy treasure had been found.{2} He did not return.

After reading the account of Phips treasure hunts, and the disclosure of the sites location in other British possessions, I would think the story of the Concepcion treasure should end here. But remarkably it goes on.

The 2nd historically documented successful salvage occurred in 1978 by treasure hunters Burt Webber and Jack Haskins. In modern times, the site of the Concepcion wreck was not known, other than it sank at the Silver Bank Shoal. Jacques Cousteau, and Mel Fisher (known for finding the Atocha) were among those that failed to find the Concepcion. Prior to the Concepcion find, Webber had spent 17 disappointment years treasure hunting. {1}In 1975 Burt Webber’s friend and associate Jack Haskins suggested, as Webber recounted: ‘Burt have you ever considered the Concepcion on Silver Shoals?’ I replied … I certainly read about it. Many of the treasure books I’d read as a teenager told the story of the Phips galleon. And I knew that everybody had looked for it and failed, that Phips and others after him had cleaned out the wreck. But then Jack told me he felt the wreck was significant because he found documents {old Spanish documents from the archive in Saville Spain} telling of tons of treasure … that Phips never found.

Webber thought that with modern equipment and new location data from Haskins’ Saville searches that they could find the wreck and salvage what others missed, and agreed. His first effort to find the Concepcion failed after 5 months in the field and after finding 13 non-treasure bearing wrecks.

Then a chance encounter between Haskins with Victoria Stapells-Johnson at the Saville archives would prove to be fateful. Johnson was an aid of Professor Peter Earle, an economics professor at the London School of Economics. Earle was writing a book {2} about the sinking of the Concepcion and its salvage. Johnson had spent 6 months researching the archives for Earle’s book when she met Haskins, who was there searching for information on new treasure sites. Haskins would contact Earle, and they agreed to keep in touch. Earle in a later correspondence told Haskins that he located the logbook of one of Phips ships in a small provincial library in England, and arranged for Webber and Haskins to see it.{2} Descriptions of the location and compass readings, corrected for modern times, from the Logbook narrowed the search site, and they found the Concepcion in 1978 on their second voyage to the Silver Bank, in a matter of 5 days. Burt Webber then carried on a successful modern salvage of the wreck site.

As Webber was working the wreck, Hastings, who joined the search after the wreck was found, noticed ballast stones somewhat away from the wreck. He surmised that part of the wreck, the missing bow section, which was assumed to be under the coral as the salvage began, was in the distance. The bow was indeed located 125 yards from the stern. They would find that Phips had discovered the bow and only salvaged it, believing that the missing stern was buried beneath the coral, and he was unable with the methods of the day to penetrate the coral. Webber initially found the stern and believed the bow was under the coral.{6}

In all, Webber’s salvage uncovered 60,000 coin, and 1000 artifacts. The artifacts were valued at $13 million dollars. {6}

The 3rd historical successful salvage of the Concepcion occurred in 1993 by Tracey Bowden. This is the salvage that produced the cob seen in this post. Bowden was granted the rights, by the Dominican Republic, to salvage the wreck site in 1993. Bowden used more powerful suction pumps connected to his salvage ship, which uncovered an average of 5 feet of sand, to find treasure others had missed. Suction pipes 1600 ft long extended to the wreck site.

At the publishing of the National Geographic article, the salvage was still underway. An abstract of the article on the Natural Geographic site lists the following treasures: Suction tubes reached 1,600 feet from the ship into a 50-foot deep cave to recover a 14-pound silver ingot, 3,000 silver coins, a perfectly preserved Ming jar, three gold-and-diamond pendants, silver plates, and 32 pieces of jewelry shaped like flowers, whose gold petals center on a diamond.

This is the only tally I found for the Bowden salvage.

When I bought this coin in 1996, I thought it was undated. The COBs were offered in 2 grades, sight-unseen. This is the better grade, 1. Then in 2015, I found the book Cobs, Pieces of Eight and Treasure Coins, by Sewell Menzel at a Library. With this reference, I found that my coin was dated. The date was not previously apparent to me because only a small bottom portion of the date appears on the cob. The 3 most significant numbers of the date were apparent - 163 - from the mint mark “P” and assayer “T”, but the last digit required investigating.


My quest to determine the last digit.
The 163( )P-T 8-reales were minted from 1630 thru 1636, of these dates only the 0 and 6 have the rounded base of the last digit on my cob (below) (the 5 is made from four approximately straight segments, 2 looks like Z). So how could I determine if the last digit is a 0 or 6?

I hoped that by comparing die punches I could differentiate the years. (Die punches were steel rods with characters or elements of the design engraved in relief, and used to impress these elements manually into soft dies that were later hardened and used.)

The base of the last digit of my cob does conform to the outline of the 6 on my cob. This means the last digit can be a 6, but not necessarily so because the base of the 6 and 0 of 1630P could match also. I think it would be hard to make a case for the date based on the last character alone.

I think my best chance for determining if my cob is a 1630P or a 1636P is from the 3 die punch. I found three examples of 1630P cobs, and they all show a 3 digit that is consistent and different from that of my cob.

I have only one example for a 1636P 3 punch, and it is a poor one. This example has a long shadow along the base that fits well with my 3 digit (see below). It looks encouraging.

I keep adding the P on the date because I confined my study to Potosi cobs. Punches at each mint are likely to be different.

{A} There is an interesting insight from the reverse that has clues to how the cob was struck. The reverse shows evidence that the cob was struck in one position, and then the hammer die was moved to a second position and struck again. However, because of the irregular thickness of the blank neither of the strikes imprinted on each other.


{1} The Lost Treasure of the Concepcion, by John Grissim, 1980, William Morrow and Company.

{2} The Treasure of the Concepcion, by Peter Earle, 1980, Viking Press

{3} Cobs, Pieces of Eight and Treasure Coins, by Sewell Menzel

{4} http://www.silverbank.com/company.html

{5} National Geographic Magazine, July 1996, Gleaning Treasure From the Silver Bank

{6} This is a video account of the wreck of the Concepcion and Webber’s salvage. It includes interviews with major players. It’s very well done. The video is corrupt at times, but the audio is fine.

 

Great writeup! I learned a lot

 

Now, I do have a 36!
Rostock
AV Dukat 1636 Rostock Mint
Emperor Ferdinand III

 

GERMANY Town of HERFORD Copper 2 Pfennig 1636 with city arms (horizontal bar) countermark.

Herford grew up around its Benedictine Abbey but became a free imperial city in 1631. However, when Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg, took possession of the county of Ravensberg which included Herford, in 1647, the town lost its free status. Friedrich Wilhelm had the 1636 coinage countermarked with either a shield with the Herford arms or the Brandenburg electoral sceptre or both to reflect the change in regime.

 

Sweden.
1/4 ore 1635.

 

1635 -- Austria, 3 kreuzer:

 

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY Here's a 1635 Taler from the same emperor, struck at the Nagybanya mint in Hungary

 

Sweden.
1/4 ore 1634.

 

1634 -- Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, 2 mariengroschen:

 

I have a 1635....France
AV Ecu d'or au soleil 1635-B
Louis XIII 1610-43

 

I guess it's time for 1633 -- Livonia, 1 solidus:

 

Nice....I have nothing from Livonia!

 

Great....I have 3 examples from 1633

#1 Hungary/ AV Dukat 1633 K-B (Kremnitz Mint)
Ferdinand II as Holy Roman Emperor

#2 Austria/ AV Dukat 1633 (Vienna Mint
Ferdinand II Holy Roman Emperor

#3 Bohemia/ AV 10 Dukaten 1633 (Prague Mint)
Ferdinand II 1619-37

 

1633 BRUNSWICK-LUNEBURG-CELLE Christian the Elder Death Taler

 

only a few left for me

 

Nice Taler I will have to wait till 1630....

BUT....I can go back to 700AD if we are allowed to post Arabic coins dated in AH calender.

 

1632 -- Bavaria, 2 kreuzer: