By Megan Specia from Mashable

More than $1 million in gold that has sat on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean for nearly 300 years has finally resurfaced, thanks to a team of Florida treasure hunters.

The shipwreck has been excavated before, but this particular find uncovered 60 gold artifacts from the area where eleven Spanish ships sank on July 31, 1715. Previous excavations have turned up other important pieces, giving the stretch of Florida coastline the name Treasure Coast.

Florida-based company Queens Jewels owns the rights to the exploration of the wreck and announced the find on Monday. The gold treasure was discovered by the Schmidt family, who were subcontracted to salvage valuable pieces from the wreckage.

Treasure hunter Brent Brisben of Queens Jewels told Mashable the gold was discovered on June 17. The state of Florida is entitled to up to 20% of the treasures and the rest is split between Queens Jewels and the treasure hunter who discovered it — in this case, the Schmidt family.

Eleven ships packed with treasures from the New World set off from Havana, Cuba, to Spain on July 24, 1715. But the ships were caught up in a hurricane on July 31 and wrecked on Florida’s Atlantic coast.

Nearly 1,000 people died, but another 1,500 were able to swim to shore. Nearly 1,000 people died, but another 1,500 were able to swim to shore. Salvage efforts on the ships began immediately, and officials at the time reported that the treasure had been fully recovered, halting Spanish recovery of the treasure.

The most important piece in the gold haul is a single coin called a “Royal,” dated 1715, which was designed specifically for Phillip V. King of Spain, according to local news outlet TC Palm.

The Royal was destined for the king aboard the Europe-bound ship when fate intervened in the form of a hurricane, and the coin — along with countless other pieces of treasure — sank to the ocean floor. There are only a handful of Royals from shipwrecks that have been discovered.

Eric Schmidt (of the Schmidt family, not Google fame) can be seen in the video below at the moment the Royal was discovered.

“These finds are important not just for their monetary value, but their historical importance,” Brisben, the treasure hunter, said. “One of our key goals is to help learn from and preserve history, and this week’s finds draw us closer to those truths.”

The gold pieces were found in about 15 feet of water, and the salvage operation recovered 51 gold coins and 40 feet gold chain, according to Queens Jewels.

The salvage on the 1715 Fleet began in the late 1950s, after an Ohio man found a piece of eight on the beach after a hurricane and decided to find out where it came from, according to Queen Jewels’ website. Using a metal detector, “he located the original Spanish salvage camp and unearthed coins and period artifacts… he realized that just beyond the breaking waves must lay one of the long forgotten treasure ships of 1715.”

The 1715 fleet site has been passed among several different salvage companies in the decades since, but Queen Jewels and its team of subcontractors has been working to recover more artifacts since 2010.

IMAGE:
In this 2008 photo, diver Keith Sonnemann runs a metal detector along the sand as he crew looks for remnants the 1715 fleet off the Treasure Coast, Florida.IMAGE: WILFREDO LEE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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