Review Hunt for Gold: Sunken Galleons in the New World by John Fine

[covediver]

I just finished reading Hunt for Gold by John Fine. The book is a series of vignettes that primarily focus on Bob "Frogfoot" Weller. Fine presents a biographical sketch of Weller's life starting with his youth, continuing through his tours of duty in the US Navy, his techical career, on various treasure salvage projects. While the book concentrates primarily on the salvage of the. 1715 Plate fleet on the Florida east coast and the 1733 Spanish Treasure Fleet in the Keys, it contains stories of the various salvage projects that Weller worked. Fine also profiles some of the treasure salvors and researchers such as jack Haskins, Mel Fisher and family,Bob Weller, Bert Kilbride, Robert Marx, and Lee Spence. Their is an extensive althouh non-technical review of tools and techniques used in treasure hunting. The book has many contemporary color photos of treasure and the salvors. Unlike many books of this genre, it has a very extensive index. What the book lacks is a series of maps that puts the various locations he references in the book into geographic context. Not all the readers will be familiar with the geography of greater Florida, the British Virgin Islands and so on. What magnifies the absence of these details is the description that Fine provides of Lee Spence's work as a cartographer. Fine is not alone in his neglect of geographic illustration, many of the books I have read on treasure salvage are short on these types of illustration. Also, perhaps an artifact of the number of people he profiles, the book seems disjointed, without a sense of continuity.

I suspect that some of Fine's material trigger differences of opinions among readers. These folks are larger than life characters.

Bottom line: If you are interested in the what I will call the "sociology of treasure hunting" this book is one that you will want to read.