In 1822, according to author W. C. Jameson, a Spanish ship laden with gold and silver had encountered a hurricane along the Gulf Coast. To avoid sinking, the captain had navigated the vessel into Copano Bay and sailed into the adjoining Mission River, only to run aground in a tributary. The crew was surrounded and slaughtered by the Karankawa,but no one ever found the treasure. “Somewhere in or near this creek, covered only by a thin layer of prairie soil, lies one of the greatest lost treasures in the history of the United States." “Experts suggest it may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”
One morning in October 2006, Nathan Smith, a 38-year-old musician from Los Angeles, and his friend Kathryn Brown, had been at a Borders bookstore not far from his West Hollywood apartment when he spotted Lost Treasures of American History on a discount shelf.
As Nathan started flipping through the pages, he walked to a nearby Internet cafe, rented a computer, and went to Google Earth. On a whim, he decided to investigate a shipwreck that occurred near Refugio. Nathan studied a picture of it online, he noticed that the creek didn’t connect to the Mission River, as the book had said. So he jumped over to the Web site for the General Land Office, which posts early maps of Texas. Looking at an 1851 map of Refugio County, he spotted Melon Creek, about twenty miles away, which did connect to the river.
He returned to Google Earth, hunted down Melon Creek, and noticed that it made a sudden turn to the right and then back to the left. He zoomed in closer, to a spot where the creek flowed into Melon Lake. To his amazement, he saw a large, dark, shoe-shaped image where the water made its turn. Nathan was convinced he was looking at the outline of a ship. He immediately drove to Texas, to claim his treasure. Upon arrival the owners of land and Texas begin to battle for the rights.
According to federal maritime law, Nathan has argued that the spot is considered publicly accessible “navigable waters,” and anyone who finds an abandoned ship in such a location has the right to dig it up and keep the spoils. For the past several months, a parade of attorneys have been showing up at a federal courtroom in Houston to make heated arguments about just that....
READ THE STORY HERE
