Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

When he searched for clues about the Santa Margarita on the Internet and opened the first entry, Liang En was shocked because the information marked on this entry proved the existence of a huge treasure.

According to information on the Internet, the Santa Margarita was one of the five treasure ships that sank in the Florida Straits in August 1622, so it naturally carried a large amount of gold and silver jewelry.

The five sunken ships came from a Spanish treasure fleet composed of 29 sailing ships. The Spanish treasure fleet refers to the Spanish treasure fleet organized by the Spanish Empire from the 16th to the 18th century, which regularly traveled between Spain and its overseas territories. Between the colonies, large fleets of ships carried European goods to the American colonies and carried colonial products, especially gold and silver, back to the mother country.

The cargo transported is in addition to gold, silver, gems and other valuable items. It also includes a series of local specialties and trade goods, such as spices, dyes, tobacco, silk, etc., and the Spanish royal family can take a fifth of the goods.

From the 1660s, Spanish treasure fleets began sailing regularly. Every year, two fleets consisting of 30 to 90 ships set sail from Seville, the most important port in southern Spain.

A small fleet headed to Veracruz, Mexico, in the spring, with some ships heading to the West Indies and Honduras on the way;

The other, called the Grand Fleet, went to the ports of Cartagena in Colombia and the port of Belo in Panama in August. After completing their missions, the two fleets will rendezvous in Havana the following spring and return under escort of warships. And he brought a huge amount of gold and silver treasure with him on his return journey.

This was quite tempting to the hostile British, Dutch and French sailors. In 1628 and 1657, two fleets were destroyed by the Dutch and British fleets in the waters of Cuba and the Azores Islands respectively.

However, its lineup is often intimidating to raiders. By the 18th century, Spain had been able to control the sea routes relatively tightly, so it allowed free trade in Spanish and American ports.

As the situation changed and time passed, the Grand Fleet was decommissioned in 1740 and the Small Fleet was decommissioned in 1789.

In addition to this treasure fleet operating in the Caribbean and the east coast of America, there is another similar fleet that plyes between the Philippines in Asia and Acapulco on the west coast of Mexico, known as the Manila Fleet.

This fleet is responsible for delivering goods from Asia to Mexico. The goods from Asia are then transported to Veracruz and eventually shipped back to Spain on the Caribbean Treasure Fleet.

There is no doubt that the influence of this system is world-class. For example, the fact that China is not a silver-producing country but has been a silver-standard country for a long time is related to the Manila fleet.

At that time, these Spaniards came to China with silver from the Americas and purchased various specialties from the Chinese, such as silk, ceramics or handicrafts, which in turn allowed a large amount of silver to flow into China and even changed the Chinese currency.

The demise of the Ming Dynasty was also related to this route. The Thirty Years War broke out in Europe at the end of the Ming Dynasty. During this period, Europe's demand for silver surged, and it had no time to consider trade with China.

At that time, the Ming Dynasty was in an inflationary period with rising commodity prices and falling silver prices. The demand for silver surged. At this time, there was a large outflow of silver, and Japan's lockdown also restricted the flow of silver into China, which immediately caused severe deflation.

Therefore, during the Chongzhen period, there was a "silver shortage". The Ming Dynasty, which used silver as a tax tool, found it difficult to collect money, so the shortage of silver indirectly caused the financial collapse in the late Ming Dynasty.

"In other words, there are definitely a lot of various treasures carried in this fleet?" After listening to Liang En's brief explanation of the history related to the shipwreck, Joan of Arc asked a core question.

This is not to say that she is not interested in that period of history, but for them who are preparing to carry out large-scale salvage activities, what she wants to know most now is how many things can be recovered in the next salvage.

"There should be quite a few, because the Spanish Treasure Fleet, the fleet where these five sunken ships were located, is a ship that returned to Spain from Havana, and there must be a lot of treasures on it." Liang En said with a smile.

"The most important thing is that one of these ships is called the Lady Atoka. It was the largest and most powerful ship in the fleet at that time, and it was also the ship carrying the most treasures."

"According to the records found at the time, the ship was loaded with 40 tons of gold and silver treasures, including 8 tons of gold and 500 kilograms of gems. Most of the gems are top-grade emeralds from the Muzo mine."

Having said this, Liang En had to be grateful for the slight difference in different worlds, because this difference prevented the famous treasure ship Lady Atoka from being discovered in this world.

In Liang En's original world, the discovery of the ship was legendary. A salvager named Mel Fisher set his sights on the ship after becoming famous.

In order to find the sunken ship, Mel gave up his management job in the company and went into the water with his wife, children and children to search for the Lady Atoka.

Beginning in 1969, Mel and his family spent 16 years of continuous exploration, exploring almost every possible place on the seabed, and finally discovered the sinking site of the Lady Atoka in 1985.

The remains of the wreck lie in 22 feet of water and are spread across an area of ​​sand about 11 miles long and 100 feet wide. In order to salvage this sunken ship, the Meyer family paid a heavy price.

On the one hand, the annual cost of salvage is 3 million U.S. dollars. In the past few decades, he has consumed a huge amount of wealth. On the other hand, due to the salvage work, his eldest son, eldest daughter-in-law, and best companion all died in a shipwreck. was killed.

Because of his unremitting search for more than ten years, the story of Fisher's search for the Lady Atoka has become a Chinese "iron pestle ground into a needle" story in the United States, and "looking for Atoka" has become a commonly used phrase, meaning If you persist in your dreams, you will succeed.

The treasures on the Lady Atoka are entirely based on quantity. The tons of gold and the 30-year transition of a family have made it a legend in the history of treasure hunting.

In this world, the Fisher family still exists, but they did not target the Lady Atoka, but the equally famous sunken SS Republic.

This ship was a paddle steamer during the American Civil War. She encountered a strong hurricane and sank during a voyage from New Orleans to New York on October 25, 1865.

The passengers and crew all escaped successfully, but the large amount of belongings carried in the cabin-including many kinds of daily necessities for Americans in the mid-19th century-sinked to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and then completely disappeared from history.

After ten years of searching, Fisher in this world finally found the missing ship and recovered more than 51,000 U.S. gold and silver coins and about 14,000 other artifacts.

Unlike the situation in another world, although the entire treasure hunting process took a long time, the Fisher family only spent about 10 million US dollars, but obtained treasures worth 75 million US dollars. More importantly, no one was killed.

So it can be said that the Fisher family in this world is no worse than their counterparts in another world. For Liang En, the best thing about this change is that it creates an opportunity for him to hunt for treasure.