Miami Herald
Oct.19, 2001
BY JENNIFER BABSON
jbabson@herald.com

KEY WEST -- Treasure hunters working near Key West said this week they have retrieved massive gold chains that were nestled at the bottom of the sea for nearly 380 years.

The four five-foot chains and a six-foot ``wedding chain'' -- with handmade spiral and circular links about a half-inch in diameter -- were discovered Tuesday by divers working for Mel Fisher Enterprises.

``We haven't found anything like this in about 17 years,'' said Pat Clyne, senior vice president of the Key West-based salvage firm. ``I'd say all the chains that we found would be appraised in the future at over $1 million.''

Clyne believes the items came from the shipwreck of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, a 110-foot Spanish galleon that sank off the Keys during a September 1622 hurricane. The four-mast ship took 365 people to their saltwater grave. Amazingly, five people survived by lashing themselves to a mast.

Fisher and his family spent more than 16 years hunting for the Atocha, and Fisher became a national celebrity after discovering the ``mother lode'' of the ship -- said to have been worth $400 million -- in 1985. He died in 1998.

Fisher's divers have said that there are still many millions of dollars' worth of the Atocha's treasures still hidden at the bottom of the sea, scattered over a swath of shifting sand that moves with each storm season.

The gold chains are significant, according to Clyne, because they may indicate that divers are getting closer to finding more of the contents of the Atocha's elusive sterncastle, an area of the ship where the riches of the nobility and clergy were kept.

A team of six salvors on the vessel Dauntless found the chains after digging through more than 10 feet of sand with a device that shifts large amounts of sand by blowing water through tubes placed over a boat's propellers.

``After we removed the sand, I dove down and they were right in front of me,'' said Jim Smith, the diver who discovered the chains.