Sunday, June 27, 2010

By Reviewed by David and Nancy Beckwith

"Following the Lure of the Galleon Treasures"

By Ronald E. Molinari & Theresa R. Molinari

Reef Rat Salvage, $19.95

How many of us have dreamed of hunting treasure? Before reading this book, we knew very little about the nuances of treasure hunting. Our concept of it involved either visions of Mel Fisher and his crew exploring the ocean bottom for treasure from sunken ships or else of an amateur salvager walking along a beach with a metal detector seeking Spanish doubloons or pieces of eight (and instead finding a Budweiser beer can).

We had no idea of the degree of planning, the amount of research or the extent of manual labor involved in being a successful treasure hunter.

In April of this year we participated in the first Key West Author's Book Fair. Among the many interesting people we met there were Ron and Terry Molinari. They recently published a book about every aspect of treasure hunting entitled "Following the Lure of the Galleon Treasures."

It's a chronicle of four decades of treasure-hunting experiences in the Keys. The story is the fulfillment of Ron's dream of shipwreck treasure that fueled his imagination as a child in Lake Worth in the 1950s, where he began diving. Today Ron is a retired dentist living in Tavernier. Over the years, as he pursued his passion for treasure hunting through his company, Reef Rat Salvage, he also drew his wife and three children into the venture.

Despite a busy professional life and the responsibilities of being a husband and father, Ron has devoted endless hours to the planning and mental sleuthing necessary to conduct successful excavation projects.

We were fascinated by the book's description of what it takes to get the salvage rights to a site. In 1983, Ron Molinari concluded negotiations begun in 1969 to get salvage rights to the site of the 1733 wreck of the Spanish galleon, San Jose y las Animas. This was not a virgin wreck site; it had been worked by another treasure hunter, Tom Gurr, for 13 years but he apparently became so demoralized dealing with the state bureaucracy and its ever-changing demands that he eventually dumped much of the treasure he'd found at the site back into the sea. (The dumping trip was documented by CBS and reported in the Miami Herald.)

But such frustrations did not deter Ron, who believed the site had untapped potential. He negotiated an annual, renewable contract with the State of Florida for a large area running from Pickles Reef to Tavernier. The terms of the contract included giving the state 20 percent of all artifacts found, plus any "unique" items that might be wanted for the state's collection. As we read this intriguing book, we'd get excited with Ron's description of a rare or unusual find only to learn in the next paragraph that the item had been chosen for the state's collection. As defeating as this was to us in terms of treasure hunting, it must have been devastating to Ron to be diving for the state at his own expense.

Yet Ron continued to follow his passion for treasure hunting and one would think that, with a contract in hand from the state, any future dealing with the government would be straightforward. But that was not the case. The state continued to change the rules. In 1986, the Department of Environmental Regulation decided that all treasure salvage work within the three-mile jurisdiction of state waters would be subject to "dredge and fill" regulations. This halted his operations for almost a year as he worked through the mandate.

The treasure hunting continued but so did the government's intrusion. In 1992, NOAA imposed the regulations of the newly formed Key Largo National Marine Sanctuary, which prohibited him from removing any sea grass and limited him to running his engine for the blower at only 1,100 rpms at a distance beyond 100 feet of the excavation. This not only impacted his ability to find artifacts but also secure archeological data, per agreement with the state, that would show artifact dispersion patterns.

In ensuing years, when the state archeologists asked for conclusions for his excavation reports, he could not provide them since he had been prohibited from gathering the necessary facts to make any conclusions.

Molinari writes: "It seemed that the more complicated and burdened diving became with regulations and supervision, the more elusive was the great sense of peace and freedom that I had experienced in early years."

We found Molinari's descriptions of the equipment and methodology used to excavate a site very creative. For example, the San Jose's treasures were not readily found lying on the ocean floor. More often than not, they were in 2 to 10 feet of sand or encased in hard or semi-hard marl. Ron devised a blower similar to the one invented by Mel Fisher that, when attached to the stern of his boat, is the primary excavation tool. This blower took the prop wash from the surface and sent it downward to move sand; but at 1,100 rpms, it was not strong enough to move marl. Marl had to be explored via a water pump.

The trick of the treasure hunter is to uncover treasure while keeping disruption of sea life and the environment at a minimum. And much of the work had to be done with hard physical labor. If you secretly harbor dreams of finding historic artifacts, we highly recommend you read Ron and Terry Molinari's book.