Mike, Mel Fisher searched for years in the wrong area for the Atocha because of one small error in the archives. You would think with all this research you reference that someone would have finally discovered the San Miguel by now. Okay i know how elusive something as small as a sixteenth century shipwreck laying under the sand could be. Heres the common sense approach to this: What I FOUND AND BROUGHT TO LIGHT was for sure a ship carrying the Kings treasure. Hard to refute that claim. Then the Spanish silver discs had the only one tax stamp. Here is why that is important: (and i have posted this before but will do it again for your sake) The ordencia of 1552 was laws handed down by the king changing how treasure ships needed to conduct themselves. No more free for all and anybody with a ship could transport treasure. They made a law that made sure each ship had sufficient armament and soldiers and not so many passengers that could hamper their ability to fight off privateers. There had to be qualified pilots and navigators. Along with that law they changed how the silver and gold would be transported. All silver needed to have the Kings tax stamp proving that had been paid. Now each piece of silver and gold needed to have purity stamps owner marks, mint marks. The Padre Island fleet sailed when these new laws were being implemented. All the silver recovered from them ships had all these new mint marks. Our ship didn't. But because our ship had identical items on board and the ship fittings were also identical to that of the PI shipwrecks that i am certain our ship was from the exact same era. Minus the new mint marks. So obviously our ship set sail previously to these new laws but not much earlier. The San Miguel lost its rudder and drifted ashore in the year of 1551. The padre is ships wrecked in 1554. Three years difference. What other known Spanish Kings treasure transporting ship was lost on the north coast of Hispaniola? Only one i know of is the San Miguel. So how did all these researchers miss that little tidbit of info. How come i discovered a wreck-site that was absolutely positively carrying the kings treasure lost in any archives or overlooked by researchers? See what i am getting at. Any one of these people you mention in earlier post would have immediately claimed they found the San Miguel had they discovered it. One Christmas party at the subatico office Burt Webber stands up and congratulates Alejandro and DBM and myself for the discovery of the San Miguel. His theory was that the records show that the position may have been wrong had they believed the tall area of rocks near Cabrera was that of Cabo Cabron. However that doesn't prove much but could be right. Now our biggest concern was the "L" series coins. Here is why. Nesmith claims the L series coins went into production in 1556. That would immediately eliminate our ship from being the San Miguel. However the 1554 Padre Island shipwrecks had the L series coins that would have been minted the previous year 1553. So now the only real problem naming our ship lies within this dilemma. This is very important to coin collectors as the P.I. wrecks now proved Nesmith wrong and our ship could even date the coins two years earlier. If the only true researcher of these coins has been proved wrong because of the PI wrecks then who is to say in 1551 the San Miguel wasn't also carrying these new series of coins? My new book has nothing about the naming of this ship. My new book is a memoir of my life starting in the Florida Keys in 1972 spanning through the years of smuggling and my years of commercial fishing and then here searching and excavating a treasure ship. Its funny My next book and what a challenge it is, is a book about what we just discussed. Anybody who vehemently denies this ship is not the San Miguel must have found the real one. Other than that there is plenty of wiggle room to believe this wreck very well could me of that of the San Miguel. Nice little video i made with a few of the 17000 pictures and documentation of three and a half years of excavating a Spanish treasure transport ship. Turn the volume up and enjoy. And Mike i welcome these debates but please bring original material to the table and not just some cut and paste material that anybody and the brother can get on line.\ https://vimeo.com/150100357\
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