Above: Petty Officers Brett Weaver, Ian Callahan and David Patnaude from U.S. Coast Guard Station Wrightsville Beach watch as
Pat Murphy (left), representing Blue Water Venture, and Ray “J.R.” Darville Jr., representing Endurance Exploration Group, display
cataloged coins and artifacts while the Blue Water Rose was docked at Bridge Tender Marina. Right: Keys recovered from the Pulaski.
sand and shell. The crew blasts holes in the ocean floor with huge blowers attached to the stern of the Blue
Water Rose, then use metal detectors to search for artifacts.
“We blow for an hour or two to really clean things up, and then we’ll go down there and search through the
sand and the shell to find coins and whatever else,” says Jimmy Gadomski, one of the four divers in the crew.
The boat stays on site from two to five days, depending on weather and supplies. When they get back to
the marina, Murphy and Darville, representing the two companies, catalog the finds and record the GPS
coordinates.
“This is all documented,” Darville says. “Me and Pat both — no one else touches it — we tag it and put it in
a document. He keeps a record and I keep a record.”
The coins are cleaned up, certified, and prepared for sale in the lucrative collecting market by affiliated companies
Numismatic Conservation Services (NCS) and Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC).
“I keep them locked in the safe until somebody’s ready to take them off my hands, and we do chain of custody
forms,” Murphy says.
The Pulaski is significant because it contains early American coins. The crew has recovered half dollars and
half eagles from the 1830s as well as several earlier issues.
“There were not a lot of coins minted in that period,” Webb says. “That’s why this shipwreck is so special.
We’re going to find a percentage that are very rare. A certain $5 piece could be worth $170,000.”
The crew had recovered more than 150 gold and silver coins through the first couple of weeks of June, but
those were all believed to be personal items. The real treasure trove, safes that held most of the passengers’ valuables,
were yet to be found.
Blue Water Ventures and Endurance Exploration Group are publicly traded companies. Webb is leery of running afoul of
Securities and Exchange Commission regulations and is cautious in what he says. Still, he can’t help but dream of what lies
beneath.
“There could be $20-25 million in coins,” he says. “There’s no indication how much jewelry the women had. If we found
$20 million, we’d be happy as a lark.”
ALLISON POTTER
ALLISON POTTER
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