Claire and I were born and grew up in North Palm Beach, Florida. Our family never had a lot, but it was a wonderful place to be kids due to the excellent beaches and rugged forests. Dad had a pool cleaning business which might have been adequate, but most of the profits went towards his obsession, finding the wreckage and treasure from a lost Spanish galleon. The galleon was one of the eleven ships carrying a huge Spanish treasure to Spain that went down in 1715 off the east coast of Florida during a major hurricane.
Dad was convinced that the treasure ship went down off the coast nearby and that there was still a wealth of gold and silver coins awaiting discovery in its wreckage. Most of the ships in that treasure fleet went down further north towards Vero Beach and Sebastion and had been located and salvaged. But dad found Spanish pieces-of-eight coins while diving off Jupiter Island and was convinced that the galleon must have been lagging the rest of the fleet when the hurricane hit and went down between Port Salerno and Singer Island. He said, “Probably between Hobe Sound and Jupiter,”
We had a small boat and the rest of the family, including mom, learned to scuba dive. We would take the boat out of the Jupiter inlet just about any time the weather allowed. Research consumed much of dad’s time when we couldn’t take it out. It was fun when we were young, but Claire and I started finding excuses for not going along as we got older. Mom must have grown tired of it too. She eventually ran off with another guy leaving us with dad. Dad’s dream never panned out and his obsession became pretty much a joke. Claire and I left dad, the house, and the treasure hunt as soon as we could. Claire moved to Fort Lauderdale, and I put myself through college, and being sick of the weather, ocean, and sand, moved to New Mexico. Dad passed around ten years ago after spending some time in an assisted living facility. Claire and I visited him when we could, but I wish I had spent more time with him in those later years.
It came as a shock when I received an unexpected text from Claire that said that I needed to drop everything and meet her in Boston ASAP. She didn’t say why but ended the text with the phrase: “Treasure Awaits.”
Well, I thought it was strange, so I gave her a call and she said that we needed to meet with dad’s old friend, Roy. I was reluctant after all dad’s treasure crap that never went anywhere, but we ended up coordinating a meeting with the guy. We both flew to Boston, met at a hotel, and then rode together the next morning to his house.
Once Claire and I arrived at Roy’s place, we exchanged pleasantries and talked some about dad. Roy said, “I visited your father in Florida while he was in the assisted living. He told me that his big failure was not being able to pinpoint the treasure for his family and that he regretted not focusing on the two of you instead of lost treasure.”
Roy continued, “I gave it up recently, but for many years I owned and ran the Maritime Museum and Bookstore on Broadway here in Boston. That’s why your dad first contacted me while doing research. We became good friends and collaborated on the search for one of the galleons from the 1715 Spanish treasure fleet. I’m sure you know that a hurricane sank eleven treasure ships off Florida. He said that you two helped him look for one of the galleons at first, but later, I helped him with the search.”
“Yes, we know about it and helped him search for the wreck site. But we had to get on with our lives,” Claire said.
I was having mixed feelings about my dad but wondering why we had to travel all the way to Boston. “Is there anything new?”
Roy then said, “When I visited your father before he died, he passed along information he got from a visit to the University of Florida before his stroke. Then I did additional digging on a trip to Spain and found a narrative from a Jobe Indian transcribed by a Priest in St. Augustine. The narrative ended up in Seville when the Spanish left Florida. The native said that a ship was pushed into reefs by angry winds near their dwellings. He and the other warriors killed the white men and salvaged the silver and gold. They burned the bodies with much of the ship’s wood on the sand to hide signs of the wreckage. A portion of the treasure went to the Calusa people and then they hid the rest nearby.
“Rivers shift so it took a lot of effort, but based on the Indian’s clues, I found a sizable amount of silver and gold coins hidden within a shell mound along the Loxahatchee River. Per your father’s request, half of it is yours to split.”
Claire and I both gasped, our eyes popped open, and our lower jaws headed towards the floor.