Sunken treasure or just a good story?

An historic shipwreck with some silver coins amid the debris allows us to begin the week with dreams of sunken treasure.

An online report posted by the British newspaper, the Daily Mail, says that the wreck of the Pulaski possibly has been found.

It sank 40 miles off the coast of North Carolina June 14, 1838.

This date just happens to be during the year the Charlotte, N.C., and Dahlonega, Ga., minting facilities were being set up by the United States.

Their purpose was to strike gold coins.

Unfortunately, unlike the 1857 wreck of the Central Amerca, which sank laden with California gold, the Pulaski so far has yielded only silver coins dated no later than 1836.

Sea water is not kind to silver, but with modern conservation methods, numismatists might be treated to a future sale headlined by recovered Pulaski treasure.

We’ll see.

Firstly, the ship has not yet been confirmed as the Pulaski.

Secondly, coins in the story are described only as early U.S. coins and Spanish coinage.

The latter was in common usage in the United States until 1857.

In fact, the U.S. dollar is based on the Spanish 8 reales coin.

There are two recovery groups involved.

One is Blue Water Ventures International.

The other is Endurance Exploration.

The ship was an ocean-going sidewheel steamer with a steam boiler.

It was en route from Savannah, Ga., to Baltimore, Md.

What was then the latest technology unfortunately is what sank the ship.

The boiler blew up.

Going down with the vessel were approximately 128 victims.

Wickipedia says only 59 persons survived.

According to the Daily Mail, some of the passengers were the cream of society of the time.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog for the third time in 2017 . He is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."

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