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Oregon Coastal Treasure From 1694?


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This long article details a possible treasure on the Oregon coast.

https://magazine.atavist.com/the-ghost-hunter-galleon-shipwreck-oregon-goonies-philippines 

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I could only get a few pages into it, until I began to throw up.   It's a typical ghost story camp-fire legend. I can spin the very-same-stuff about beaches in my area of Monterey CA.  Eg.:  wax globs on the beach, crockery shards that (gasp) show up after storm erosion, etc....   And like any good treasure story yarn, there's always the curses, mysterious disappearances of persons, "he said she said".  Shadowy government conspirators, blah blah blah.  I couldn't take one more bit of it.   All the same hallmarks as the Oak Island and Lost Dutchman sillyness.

 

Besides :  The Manila galleons (even if any DID make landfall on the coast that far north) were NOT laden with silver & gold ("treasures", as the fanciful tale goes).  Instead, it was trade goods.  Eg.:  Wax, porcelain, mercury, spices, silk, etc......    The silver & gold they would have carried , from the mother country of Mexico, would have been traded for trade-goods in the Philippines, BEFORE setting sail back to Mexico.   Good luck on getting ANY value out of any of those goods.   This is NOTHING like the Atocha lore type "treasure", despite where the tone-of-the-article is clearly trying to send the reader.   

 

Sorry to be a kill-joy, but I'm not buying any of it.

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Tom,

You got me at Oak Island!

Thanks for the review.

Mitchel

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Sometimes it requires reading more than the first few paragraphs (in this case, a prologue) to understand what a piece of writing is really about.  This main body of this article is about an eccentric researcher who wasn't after tangible treasure (i.e. the kind we seek) but rather searching for information on the sailors who were cast ashore so she could write an epic poem about them.  (I don't even remember tales of gold bounty in this article -- just shows how captivating the story of the research was to me.)

The lengths she went to in search of information on the ship and its crew is pretty impressive.  I suspect it's this kind of dedication that the most ardent (and successful) sunken treasure searchers of today share.  She uses some of the same resources that they do.

Here is a brief synopsis of what is thought to be the ship that wrecked.  (Some of the documentation mentioned in the Wikipedia article are directly from the work of the woman in the article Mitchel linked.)  Interesting that there was a recorded/documented earthquake and tsunami in the year 1700 (~5 years after the shipwreck is hypothesized to have occurred) which is thought to have resulted in the beeswax from the ships cargo making it high up on the Oregon shore.

Thanks, Mitchel, and you've reminded me that I have a book on my shelf chronicalling the history, research, and eventual recovery of the SS Central America's San Francisco shipment including the now famous gold coins.  (This book was mentioned in a post by Steve H. several years ago.)  Good cold weather bedtime reading awaits!

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1 hour ago, kac said:

Geez Tom ya had to... ruin it for everyone 😞

Not everyone.  Geof and I delved into it and came out the other end with an appreciation for the work involved (research into the ship, and at least in my case, the effort involved in chronicling that deep 'dive').

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The research involved is good but I have my doubts on the treasure chest being dragged off somewheres bit.

Be nice if they showed some images of the wreck or samples of evidence. Without that it's just a cool story.

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20 minutes ago, kac said:

...I have my doubts on the treasure chest...

It's unfortunate that some authors (including this one) and TV show promoters feel they have to sensationalize to gain audience.  The prologue (~5% of the article) highlights the belief (most overvalued word in the English language) of some treasure searchers.  Besides drawing in fringe (in terms of knowledge, interest, and particularly veracity concern, i.e. the lack of it) audience it provides fodder for dissers who already believe it can't be true and now have justified that belief.  A classic example is the use of 'curse' on about every major possible large treasure.  Who needs 'curse'? -- the people who no longer read fiction because there are stories based on fact that provide the same titillation in an easier medium.  But it requires sensationalism to draw them in, and thus the rest of us with sincere interest in finding truth are 'cursed' by this new curse.  (Actually, it's not the modern media that invented this ploy.  Just read the old hardcopy treasure magazines from the 1960's --> their recent disappearance.  I guess it's deep-seated.)

If we recognize it for what it is and look past it, we have a better chance of sorting out evidence from belief.

It's kinda like crime investigation.  The detectives get hundreds of 'clues' from the public in high profile cases, most of which are at best unrelated but at worst maliciously fabricated.  They don't just throw their hands up and say "with all this misinformation the crime never happened."  Sorting through reports, etc. to find meaningful evidence is their duty.  In the story Mitchel linked in the initial post of this thread, if you read past the stories of the treasure seekers' beliefs and get to the recounting of the research part, you will have earned a view of the evidence.  Disagreeing with that is still an option, though, but at least you've sorted out the (potential) wheat from the obvious chaff.

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