Mel Fisher and the 1715 Fleet in Sebastian, Florida

Fisher started his Florida treasure career on the 1715 Fleet wrecks, and his museum on US Highway 1 in Sebastian still features that fleet (Mel Fisher museum locations; Mel Fisher museum, Sebastian).

The museum's own history says that in 1963 Mel Fisher moved from California to Vero Beach with his wife, Dolores, and their four children to begin a full time treasure hunting career, and that over the next six years Fisher and his team salvaged the 1715 Fleet, later earning the region its nickname "Florida's Treasure Coast" (Mel Fisher museum). The wrecks themselves lie close to Sebastian: NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory says eight ships of the fleet were driven onto the Florida coast from present day Fort Pierce to Wabasso, north of Vero Beach (NOAA AOML).

Fisher arrived after the local groundwork was done. A 2013 Florida Park Service history lesson says Kip Wagner organized the Real Eight Company in 1959 and obtained a nonexclusive salvage lease from the State of Florida covering a 50 mile stretch of coast south of Sebastian Inlet, with 25 percent of what he found going to the state. By 1964 the company had teamed up with Mel Fisher's Treasure Salvors, Inc. (Florida Park Service history lesson, 2013).

Fisher joined under a May 20, 1963 agreement with the Real Eight Company, which the 1715 Fleet Society says helped to launch his career in Florida as a major player in the recovery of shipwreck treasure (Real Eight documents archive).

The Society's archive reproduces the paperwork. The Real Eight was incorporated in 1961 with eight members, Kip Wagner among them. The archive notes that the circumstances of the May 20 agreement are told in Wagner's book "Pieces of Eight," published in 1966.

A second contract, dated August 8, 1963, was signed between the Real Eight and three individuals and called for the company to search a location where two of them had found gold coins. It is called the "second contract" because the first agreement, prepared the same day, failed to mention where the treasure hunting was to take place. The contract called for the Real Eight to salvage a shipwreck now known as the Nieves, and the company sublet the site to a friend from California, Mel Fisher. A 2005 statement by one of the original parties, printed in the same archive, says the digging was sublet to Fisher without their knowledge (Real Eight documents archive).

Fisher's crew found 1,033 gold coins at the Douglass Beach wreck on May 24, 1964, the find remembered as the carpet of gold (1715 Fleet Society).

The Society's Fort Pierce dateline calls it by far the best recovery of 1715 Fleet gold coins up to that time (1715 Fleet Society), and its Real Eight archive says the crew struck it just before they were about to give up (Real Eight documents archive). The wreck lies a few miles south of the Fort Pierce Inlet and is often called by its old name, Colored Beach. Early Real Eight letters called it the Gold Wreck, and some 3,376 Spanish colonial gold coins came up there in the first two months of the 1964 salvage season (1715 Fleet Society glossary).

The partnership's totals grew quickly. By the end of 1964 the Real Eight and Treasure Salvors partners had reportedly recovered more than $3 million of gold, silver, jewelry and artifacts, and the Park Service notes that salvage companies under contract with the State of Florida continue to find material from the fleet (Florida Park Service history lesson, 2013).

Around 1969 Fisher relocated from Vero Beach to the Florida Keys to hunt the 1622 fleet, and on July 20, 1985 his team located the Atocha motherlode (Mel Fisher museum).

The museum's history says the 1622 fleet included the Nuestra Senora de Atocha and its sister ship, the Santa Margarita, which went down carrying more than 40 tons of gold, silver and copper bullion. During a 16 year search Fisher's crew found the Santa Margarita and an English merchant slave ship, the Henrietta Marie, before the Atocha motherlode, which the museum calls the greatest underwater treasure recovery in history in both archaeological and commercial terms (Mel Fisher museum).

Both chapters are on show in Sebastian. The museum page lists the 1715 Fleet and the 1622 Fleet among its shipwrecks on display, so a single visit covers the Treasure Coast wrecks Fisher started on and the Keys galleons that made him famous (Mel Fisher museum).

Mel Fisher's Treasure Museum is open Monday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday noon to 5 p.m., and general admission is $8 (Mel Fisher museum).

The museum lists admission of $6 for seniors 65 and over and military, $4 for children 5 to 12, and free entry for children 4 and under. Its theatre closes at 4:15 p.m. daily. The remaining 2026 closures are Thanksgiving, November 26, and Christmas, December 25; for 2027 it lists New Year's Day (January 1), Easter (March 28), the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving (November 25) and Christmas (December 25). The page also offers a $5 off admission coupon to present at the admissions desk, and the gift shop rents coastal metal detectors (Mel Fisher museum).

The museum and treasure store sit at 1322 US Highway 1, Sebastian, FL 32958, and the phone number is (772) 589-9875 (Mel Fisher museum locations). It is one of two Fisher showrooms; the other is in Key West at 613 Duval Street.

The museum's fleet summary does not match federal figures, which is worth knowing before quoting it. Its page says the fleet set sail from Havana on July 24, 1715 and that the storm took 700 lives (Mel Fisher museum); NOAA says the twelve ships did not leave Havana until July 27, 1715, and that of the 2,500 sailors and passengers, 1,000 perished (NOAA AOML). The Florida Park Service dates the hurricane to July 31, 1715 (Florida Park Service history lesson, 2013).

The museum also takes part in the fleet's anniversaries. For the 300th anniversary of the loss of the fleet in 2015, the Mel Fisher Museum joined the Sebastian River Area Chamber of Commerce, the Indian River County Chamber of Commerce and the McLarty Treasure Museum among the groups behind Commemoration Week, which ran alongside the 1st International Conference on the 1715 Plate Fleet in Vero Beach on July 27 and 28, 2015 (1715 Fleet Society).

1715 Fleet-Queens Jewels, LLC holds exclusive salvaging rights in a federal admiralty case after Cobb Coin's successor in interest assigned them to it in 2010, an assignment approved by the district court and by the State of Florida (U.S. Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit, 2017).

The Eleventh Circuit's July 5, 2017 opinion in case No. 16-11246 sets out the history. Cobb Coin filed an in rem admiralty complaint on August 17, 1979 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida against the remains believed to be the Almiranta of the New Spain group of the 1715 Plate Fleet, which rests off the coast near Vero Beach, and retrieved a cannon from the site on August 20, 1979. The State intervened, claiming ownership under the Florida Archives and History Act, Fla. Stat. ch. 267.

In 1982 Cobb Coin was awarded exclusive salvaging rights to the wreck off Vero Beach, a short way south of Sebastian, and the district court has held a yearly distribution hearing to decide title to recovered artifacts ever since. Cobb Coin and the State settled on June 3, 1983, and the court entered a consent judgment on August 29, 1983. The State often appears at the hearings to reserve a portion of the recovered artifacts for display in museums (U.S. Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit, 2017).

By 2010 the wreckage had spread along forty one miles of coastline. The custodian works with subcontractors: Gold Hound, LLC salvaged an area under a 2011 contract, and in the 2015 season the custodian recovered approximately four hundred gold coins from an area Gold Hound said it had been salvaging, which led to the appeal. Salvage on these offshore 1715 sites is therefore done under the court's 1982 order by the rights holder and the divers it contracts (U.S. Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit, 2017).