Our featured treasure for August is from a collection of documents, records, and photographs which the Fleet Society recently acquired from a private source.
This image is a group of eight escudos from the colonial mint of Lima, Peru. Recovered in 1988 from the Douglass Beach WreckA 1715 Fleet wreck site located a few miles south of the Fort Pierce Inlet. It is often referred to by its old name, “Colored Beach.” In some early Real Eight Company correspondence, it was referr... site south of present day Fort Pierce, these coins represent a small fraction of the over 800 coins found at that time. Note the “fresh from the sea” appearance of these coins.
Upon close observation, one can identify a “run” of dated pieces from 1707 to 1714. For other images of this same group, see The John de Bry Collection Captions 1 and 27.
