Diving treasure hunters are most interested in shipwrecks during Spain's heyday. From 1492 to 1830, the Spanish discovered 5 billion pesos of gold and silver in America. On the way home, about110 galleons sank into the sea. Most shipwrecks are located in the Caribbean, Bahamas and Florida. In the East, the Spanish used the Manila galleon, which weighed 1 1,500 tons, three times as much as the Spanish galleon (carrying 5- 10 times). From 1565, there was a long and dangerous voyage between Acapulco and Manila in Mexico every year for the next three centuries. In addition to gold and silver, the ship is also loaded with precious ivory, jade crafts, porcelain and jewelry. Some people found fragments of ancient porcelain in the gravel along the coast of Drake Bay. It was verified that it was from a galleon named "San Ergste". It sank in Drake Bay near San Francisco on 1595. It is estimated that the sunken ship is thousands of meters away from where the broken porcelain pieces were found.
During the 300 years of Spanish rule in America, about 2000 Spanish treasure ships sank to the bottom of the sea. 95% of ships sank in shallow water with a water depth of less than 50 meters. Although this depth is safe for both professional divers and amateur divers, few sunken ships are actually salvaged.
Spanish colonial treasures attracted Germans, Portuguese, French and British. They rush headlong into it and carve up and plunder the treasures under the sea. At the same time, pirate ships and smuggling ships appeared in large numbers. At the beginning of18th century, only 600 non-Spanish ships passed through the Caribbean every year. By 1785, it increased to 1300, and in 1800, it exceeded 2,500. With the development of shipping industry, the number of sunken ships is increasing. By 1830, about 500 ships sink in the Caribbean and the east coast of the United States every year.
Even today, with modern navigation, shipwrecks continue to happen. It is not difficult to imagine that in that era when only the compass was used to determine the orientation, and there were no charts or only inaccurate charts, wooden seagoing ships were extremely vulnerable to tropical storms, and it was common for them to hit the rocks and sink. All shipwrecks, whether Spanish galleons, British merchant ships in the19th century or cargo ships in World War II, will double in value once they see the light of day.
As early as the17th century, when the British moved to Bermuda, a large number of ships wandered along the coast of the West Indies, and people began to salvage the sunken ships here. /kloc-In the 9th century, Bahamians took diving for treasure as the most effective means to get rich. In the Cayman Islands, many wealthy families are treasure hunters who dived into the seabed in the first two centuries. In the 20th century, scuba diving began to be used for treasure hunting. Under the temptation of underwater treasures, many people take hunting underwater treasures as their profession.
For amateur divers, they can get lucky occasionally. 1906, a fisherman fished lobster in Zhoupei Reef in southern Jamaica without diving equipment and found a large number of Spanish gold bars. 1958, a young couple spent their honeymoon in Nassau, a coastal city in the Bahamas, and stumbled upon 300 pounds of gold ingots while diving by the sea. However, the sudden happiness made them rashly sell the gold ingot at the price of gold without considering it. They didn't sell the price they deserved. 1963, two teenagers wearing light diving suits were looking for lobsters in the shallows near Vero, Florida, USA, and found the seabed shining. The two little guys looked carefully in fear and found American double eagle gold coins worth more than 200 thousand dollars. It took them only two hours to salvage all the gold coins. More discoveries are made in 1969. A diver and his wife came to Grand Cayman for a holiday. One day, the couple picked up shells at the seaside and came across a gold cross embedded with precious stones at the bottom of the sea less than 1 m. He kept silent, quietly took a diving device and dived into the sea. When he pulled open a layer of sand and gravel, the cabin of a sunken ship was exposed below, full of gold and silver treasures! After salvage verification, there are 152 1 gold bars and silver bars, 1 gold plate weighing 3 kg (1 kg ≈0.45 kg), a gold bracelet inlaid with emeralds, 300 golden statuettes and other valuables in the cabin. Incredibly, this beach is in front of a hotel where thousands of professional divers live. They often look for sunken ships in these waters.
But as a diver, persistent efforts will eventually pay off. An American diver used his vacation to find a19th century shipwreck off the coast of Florida and salvaged 50,000 small copper coins. Another American diver insisted on amateur diving for three years and found gems, fireplaces and so on. In the Spanish shipwreck, the net income was 50 thousand dollars.
More sunken ships were salvaged by some professional salvage companies. 1955, an American salvage company salvaged a19th century sailboat with 3,000 gold coins and thousands of bottles of whisky on board. By 1950, more than 60 sunken ships have been found and salvaged almost every year. On the one hand, this uncontrolled salvage will destroy the cultural relics on the seabed, on the other hand, it will gradually exhaust the "gold mine" on the seabed. Therefore, the regulations on treasure hunting under the sea were formulated. 1964, only 109 treasure hunting organizations along the coast of Florida are legal. By 1972, there are only six such treasure-hunting organizations left.
Today, the application of diving equipment has greatly improved the diving depth and underwater residence time; Underwater metal detectors will enable amateur divers not to miss opportunities. More and more people fall in love with diving, a meaningful activity, and many of them will become lucky underwater.