This is a true story, retold as a tale. Grandpa Joe and his granddaughter are imagined, but the shipwreck, the long search and the emeralds on the ocean floor are real.
The museum in Key West was cool and dim after the blazing street outside. Ava, who was nine, pressed her nose against a glass case. Inside, on dark velvet, lay a heavy gold chain, a pile of blackened silver coins and a handful of green stones.
"Those look like sea glass," she said.
Her grandfather, who had worked on the docks of Key West his whole life, chuckled. "Those are emeralds, sweetheart. And they spent more than three hundred and sixty years at the bottom of the sea."
Ava turned around. "How did they get there?"
Grandpa Joe sat down on the bench. "Come here. It's a long story."
The Treasure Ship
"In 1622," he began, "Spain ruled a huge empire across the sea. Every year, a fleet of ships carried its riches home: silver from the mountains of South America, gold, and emeralds from the green mines of Colombia, the finest emeralds in the world.
"One of those ships was called the Nuestra Señora de Atocha. She was a big, heavily armed galleon, loaded so full of treasure that she sat low in the water. In early September she sailed out of Havana, headed for Spain."
"What happened?"
"A hurricane. The day after they set sail, a terrible storm caught the fleet near the Florida Keys, not far from where we're sitting. The wind drove the Atocha onto a reef, and she sank. Of the more than two hundred and sixty people on board, only five survived."
Ava was quiet. Grandpa Joe nodded slowly.
"Down here, we know about storms. We always remember the people first."
"Today's the Day"
"For centuries, the treasure lay lost under the sand. People searched and searched. Then, in 1969, a treasure hunter named Mel Fisher came to look for it. He was a cheerful, stubborn man, and every single morning he told his crew the same thing: Today's the day."
"Was it?"
Grandpa Joe laughed. "No. Not that day, or the next, or for years and years. They found a few coins here, a cannon there. And in 1975, a terrible thing happened. One of their boats rolled over in the night, and Mel's son Dirk, Dirk's wife Angel and a young diver named Rick were lost.
"Anybody would have quit. Mel didn't. He kept going out, every morning, still saying it. Today's the day."
The Mother Lode
"Sixteen years after he started," Grandpa Joe said, leaning forward, "on the 20th of July, 1985, the radio crackled at the dock. It was Mel's son Kane, out on the water. And he said, as loud as he could: Put away the charts. We've found the main pile!"
"I was right there on the docks that day," he added with a wink. "Or at least it feels like I was. The whole town went crazy. Divers came up from the bottom with their arms full. Silver bars stacked like bricks. Gold chains. Coins by the thousands. And emeralds. Colombian emeralds, rough and cut, some as big as your thumb, still green after three and a half centuries under the sea."
Ava looked back at the green stones in the case.
"They didn't even fade," she whispered.
"Not a bit," said Grandpa Joe. "Silver turns black in the sea. Ships rot away. But an emerald stays green."
The Legend and the Truth
The Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in September 1622, carrying silver, gold and emeralds from Colombia's famous mines. Only a handful of the people aboard survived. Treasure hunter Mel Fisher began searching for the wreck in 1969, famously encouraging his crew each day with "Today's the day." In 1975 his son Dirk, Dirk's wife Angel and diver Rick Gage died when their salvage boat capsized. On July 20, 1985, the main treasure was finally found.
The Atocha treasure, including many emeralds, is one of the richest shipwreck finds in history, and much of it can still be seen in Key West today.
đź’ˇ Read more legends and true stories of emerald in The Legends of Emerald.
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