Striking gold in the rarest of ways — divers gave us a closer look Thursday at a treasure trove of coins found in a 300-year-old shipwreck.
One by one, gold coin after gold coin was plucked from the sand just six feet deep off the coast of Vero Beach.
The gold was discovered by the group Queens Jewels, LLC during a salvage operation of the 1715 Treasure Fleet on their ship, the S/V Capitana.
"I turned off my detector and I just started fanning the sand, and all these gold coins just started to appear," said diver William Bartlett. "They were everywhere."
"We opened it up on the deck, and gold coins — out of every fingertip — just stacked with gold coins," recalled the ship's captain, Jonah Martinez.
In all, the divers found 350 coins valued at a total of $4.5 million in a spot that had never before been searched.
(Virgen Fantauzzi, Staff)
"There is an energy that pervades these shipwrecks," said Brent Brisben, the salvage company's owner. "I truly believe these shipwrecks wanted their story to continue."
It's a story 300 years in the making — nearly to the day. Eleven Spanish ships perished in a hurricane in July 1715. Thousands on board the ships died.
The bounty of gold coins was headed to King Philip V of Spain, including nine Royals worth $300,000 each.
Each coin was minted for King Phillip himself, and the Queens Jewels team of treasure hunters said they exist for days like this.
"It's indescribable, it's something different, it's something special — but when you have these finds, you realize that it's there," said Brisben.
The latest discovery of Spanish gold off Florida's coast comes just weeks after the Schmitt family, of Sanford, found $1 million worth of gold coins in one of the shipwrecks off the Treasure Coast.
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The state of Florida is entitled to up to 20 percent of the artifacts found in these expeditions for display in the state museum in Tallahassee.