History's Mysteries - Buried Treasure (History Channel Documentary)

comes alive coming up the eternal quest to find and unearth buried treasure it's a common dream to dig up objects known was ever meant to find I'd pulled one buckle on the side of that box and it came out and a cloud of dust and planks and folders fortune seekers hunt for ancient coins in the sand and precious jewels hidden in secret tombs the odds are long the potential payoffs are immense and filled with risk he lost everything and he never found a penny he never found anything they are men and women who consider themselves real-life versions of Indiana Jones treasure hunters armed with metal detectors and the latest in high-tech equipment they travel the world and the high seas searching for adventure and wealth preferably both while most come back empty-handed some actually make a living selling gold and jewelry they pull from the ground and a very lucky few actually do strike it rich very rich join us for buried treasure [Music] the discovery of a very treasure can often be a dream come true you think of that baby sometimes quite unexpectedly it can be the beginning of a long nightmare buried treasures they can be uncovered by sheer luck or coincidence but mostly it's the result of a much more complicated process it can take years of combing through dusty records hunting for clues and following up on promising leads and then there is one magic moment when the riches of the past finally reveal themselves there are dozens of reasons why buried treasure is hidden at all from cutthroat pirates harboring ill-gotten booty to newly rich prospectors concealing a big strike or embattled Kings hiding fortunes while their nation crumbles around them I know that a lot of people have found little caches of treasure little clay pots filled with pirate treasure from the Pirates who went off and buried their treasure went off again to do some more plundering and either get killed or got waylaid somewhere and never get back to their treasure there's a lot of it oh it's not just a little it's a lot most treasure hunters agree once they start hunting for keys to the Past it is almost impossible to stop it is an obsession and I can't I really can't determine ten twelve years ago when I was first doing it I just dismissed it I just enjoyed it but over the last number of years I have realized that it is a compelling thing for me treasure-hunters say even minimal effort with a metal detector can bring big rewards but there is a warning for those who hope to make their fortune by finding lost treasure I've seen guys become very obsessed with treasure I had a very good friend of mine it's dead now but he when he was a young man he he owned a flower shop he got all obsessed with with hunting for treasure he lost the flower shop he lost his wife lost everything and he never found a penny he never found any treasure seekers and their discoveries are the stuff of legends in 1876 a German adventurer named Heinrich Schliemann uncovers one of the most fabled and sought-after buried treasures a priceless gold fortune hidden by King Priam during the last days of the lost city of Troy after two decades of meticulous research schneemann leads an archeological dig in northern Turkey where he believes Troy was once located while his crew of Turkish workers digs on one side of the camp Sleeman and his wife excavate on the other after two weeks of digging they stumble across one of the largest collections of gold jewelry and artifacts ever found anywhere in the history of the world but instead of telling the Turks about defined the Schliemann smuggled the treasure out of the country causing an international uproar he donates the trove to the Berlin Museum and for the rest of his life his treasure of Troy is known as LeMans gold [Music] sometimes treasures are just stumbled across this bit of Loch happened in England in 1992 two retired gardener Eric laws the novice treasure hunter uses his metal detector to relocate a missing hammer on a farmer friends field and they're resting beneath the tilled soil he discovers England's largest cache of Roman coins and artifacts [Music] the box unearthed bylaws contains spoons a solid silver Tiger figurine a gold body chain a cluster of gold bracelets and more than 14,000 gold coins each of which are worth $500 [Music] government archaeologists determined the valuables were most likely hidden by a wealthy family around the Year for 2018 the case tests the country's treasure trove laws which determine who gets to keep a found fortune if a court decides the treasure was hidden on purpose the government can claim ownership but must pay the finder the market value for the discovery scientists are especially grateful that laws did not move the treasure which allowed professionals to excavate the site in some respects one of the most exciting things about treasure that for once and it is such a rare event we have a very important ancient treasure which has been properly professionally excavated laws is awarded 7.5 million pounds the equivalent of some 10 million dollars he quickly fades from public view and now refuses to discuss the day that he stumbled onto a fortune somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Bedford County Virginia modern-day fortune hunters seek a most elusive and baffling buried treasure the legendary Beale fortune those who believe the treasure exists say deep within these woods located between the cities of Lynchburg and Roanoke is a cache of gold and silver worth at least 20 million dollars the massive fortune of a mysterious Virginian named Thomas Beale armed with metal detectors and maps filled with secret codes these treasure hunters follow a tradition that has been going on in these woods for more than a century [Music] a pamphlet published in 1885 tells the tale of Beals treasure the story begins in 1819 when Thomas Beale a handsome peculiar man arrives at a local Inn and stays for several weeks he befriends the Inns owner Robert Morris bill leaves but returns two years later staying again for a few weeks he's often seen at night writing cryptic notes at a desk by the hotel's fireplace [Music] as bill prepares to leave he gives Morris a locked steel box he says if he does not return to the end within 10 years Morris should open the box and his mysterious travels would be explained bill never comes back [Music] 20 years pass Morris now on his fifties finally opens the box inside is a letter with vague descriptions of Beals travels also in the Box are three pages of complicated ciphers numeric codes Veals letter says if the riddle of the ciphers is solved it will lead to millions in gold and silver hidden in the nearby mountains the story is that they burned it in iron pots about six feet in the ground and on top of rocks and covered by rocks and marked in such a fashion that if they wanted to come back to that place they'd be able to find it and the belief is that one of the landmarks for their figuring where where did we put this is a mountain called sharp top Mountain which is one of two very popular mountains in Virginia called the peaks of otter according to the legend for 20 years from the early 1840s to the 1860s Robert Morris tries to solve the ciphers and fans he spends years trying to retrace Veals mysterious footsteps and finds nothing his business declines and his family falls apart before he dies he gives the contents of bills box to a friend within a year the friend cracks one of the mysterious codes by using the Declaration of Independence here is a page full of numbers looking some elected random but then if you have a separate piece of paper with the Declaration of Independence with each word numbered sequentially starting with the first word one second were two etc that if you had the Declaration of Independence but those things all numbered out and you look at this code sheet you say what is it number eight Oh number eight it was the word thaw why does this word what's a 27 you get another letter etc the pamphlet details how viel and thirty other men traveled to New Mexico they found two wives one of gold on a silver they used horses to secretly transport the treasure back home to Virginia once all the gold and silver were taken from the mines they would divide the fortune bill was in charge of hiding it some treasure hunters believe that the men were stealing the gold from mines located in Indian Territory and on their last trip west they were killed by hostile natives [Music] Morris's friend fails to crack the other codes he gives the ciphers to a third man James B Ward who in 1885 publishes the story of Beals treasure and the ciphers in a pamphlet which comes with a warning the pamphlet ends up with the author saying I exhausted myself on this I'm turning this all over to somebody else but I caution you if you want to sit by the fire and try to solve this mine be careful that you don't for go everything else in your life because of it since 1885 thousands of treasure hunters have descended on Bedford County Virginia claiming to have cracked bills codes and knowing the location of the fortune [Music] frederik Wayne Jones has been searching for the Beale treasure since 1989 every other week Jones makes the two-hour drive from his home in North Carolina to Bedford County to continue his search how Jones came to learn about the fortune is as mysterious as the treasure itself he tells a story that in the late 1980s he was driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway and stopped to take the tour at the peaks of otter National Park at the top of a 5,000 foot model he met a distraught man who was tossing papers off a ledge the man said his name was Pancho he started telling me about his hardships and it's why fat beat him and he has lost his son and he had lost some friends and he had been working on this cave and he started showing me these papers the papers Pancho throws off the mountain are supposedly the Beale codes solved Pancho told Jones that his life was destroyed by his search for the treasure he solved the mystery but lost everything he said he used a French English dictionary to solve the codes he gave the ciphers to Jones and walked away [Music] Jones says the deciphered codes led to a small patch of land halfway up a mountain in Bedford County every two weeks he and his friends walk over the site with a metal detector and seek their fortune he has yet to find it out of here bill is always trying to tell you the directions without telling you the directions bill is always telling you the ops bill he's he's wanting to tell you where the treasure is but in his heart he doesn't want to give it up those frustrating Jones says he will continue to seek Bill's fortune as long as his money and the patience of his family hold out just as those who have gone before him through the woods of Virginia seeking the lost treasure of a man named Thomas vetoed Death Valley California one of the most aptly named places on earth temperatures in the valleys 2.3 million acres can reach 130 degrees in the summer and below freezing in the winter at 282 feet below sea level it is the lowest land mass in the Western Hemisphere on Christmas Day 18-49 a group of 100 people called the Jayhawker party men women and children wander into this unforgiving place on their way to the gold fields of California the group takes a southerly boot from Utah because northern mountain passes are blocked by snow they soon become disoriented in the massive basin at least one dies in the harsh environment repeatedly in in their journals they talk about how you could look off into the distance and they would judge it to be only three or four or five miles and they would take off and fall short of that point and finding out that it was more like ten fifteen or twenty miles a mile each here in the desert is extremely deceiving once I hiked here in Death Valley and I hiked for three solid days and never got out of sight of my starting point the party makes its way to the Panamint mountains on the western edge of Death Valley they climb six thousand feet over a pass and make an observation that will stay with the valley forever as they exited the valley on their final journey out here they turn back and looked at the valley and said their allies Death Valley and that's how it got its name but there are no artifacts from the party and no mention of exactly which past they crossed to escape the brutal conditions in the basin that all changes November 22nd 1998 when a mature California archaeologist Jerry Freeman retraces the steps he believes the Jayhawker party took across the patent mountains while on a remote mountain trail 4 hours hike for any road Freeman makes a remarkable find a rusted knife and a box shoe in the sand not far away he sees a small cave inside Freeman finds a truck propped up on a pile of rocks what Freeman does next he admits tarnishes his reputation as an historian well as an archaeologist I've been accused of tampering of damages on archaeological site but as a human being I think I did like anyone else would have done I reached up and inside that cave and I pulled one buckle on the side of that box and it came out and it caught a dust and planks and boulders when you come across a fine such as that it should be approached as if you were say an archaeologist a professional archaeologist or an investigator in a crime scene where you don't touch anything Freeman returns to the site a week later with a group of family and friends they document their journey on videotape Freeman takes the trunk to his home where he studies its contents inside is what could be a treasure trove of 19th century artifacts a knitted shawl tintype photographs children's shoes a doll jewelry a canteen pottery coins from the late 1700s through 18-49 and a flintlock pistol for Freeman the most poignant item is a note found folded within the pages of a church hymn by William Robinson one of the gold prospectors who died during the journey supposedly wrote the letter note now we should have gone around but I'm thankful to not be sick with the egg you because others are worse often than me if you should have already seen my Lydian tell her my heart beats with hers if and I don't return by end of 50 I won't never come Lord be precious dear soul William following news reports of the fine Rangers at the National Park Service stationed at Death Valley tell Freeman to bring the trunk in for examination a conservator is called in as well as a local archeologist and a curator from the Smithsonian Museum the Park Service begins to doubt the authenticity of the treasure the items were in impeccable condition considering that this was supposedly left in the desert in a cave for 150 some odd years pieces of pottery are marked made in Germany experts say the United States did not require imported foreign pottery to be labeled prior to 1891 an authority on dolls claims the stuffed figurine in the trunk most likely was made during World War a scientific test run emit blue from an envelope reveals polymers developed in the 20th century a brass bowl appears to have the remnants of a price tag on the bottom the word grubstake is written on a property list linguists say the word grubstake was not in common usage before 1860 and the Park Service says that tintype photographs found in the trunk could not be from 1849 we know that the tintype photographic process was not patented until 1856 and was not commonly used until the 18th 60s again this post dates the 1849 1850 date of the trunk is attributed to Freeman who has studied California history all his life cannot believe that he's accused of fraud he cites the dozens of coins worth thousands of dollars as evidence the trunk is real who would give up such a treasure and there is the letter written by the dying William Robinson no one disputes its authenticity I really feel strongly that that's the key the letter I said from the very beginning if the letter is authentic the trunk is authentic but after just two weeks of research the Park Service announces that the trunk is not authentic its origins unknown and if Jerry Freeman didn't put the trunk in the desert then who did and why people are allowed to come and pay the trunk it's a museum storage and we're happy to show the trunk to people because there is still a lot of curiosity about it and we still just don't know who did it or when or why well it's been a couple of years after two years Freeman sees the treasure again for the first time since he found it the Park Service none of this has historical value but they want to make sure clubs Jerry Freeman still insists the trunk and its contents are real but he says that the true treasure of Death Valley continues to be the valley itself there are so many trails out there are so many wagon trails that have been followed over the years the Oregon Trail you know the Santa Fe Trail but the differentiation there is almost all of them now are are covered with 7-elevens and golf courses this particular singular trail lies by itself and the 49ers in 18-49 would recognize it right now exactly as they did then and that's what makes it so exciting along the east coast of Florida in the sleepy beach town of Sebastian one of the great treasure hunts goes on just as it has for nearly 300 years armed with high-tech metal detectors and low-tech digging scoops hundreds of residents in this Central Coast community take to the beaches after every big storm seeking treasure we think of that baby ob1 hey trail right there Spanish silver 7:15 three little nice condition it's a town where nearly everyone is an amateur historian and can recite the tragic tale of a fleet of ships loaded with treasure that wrecked here during the violent storm in 1750 it begins July 31st 1715 the annual flotilla of Spanish treasure galleons makes its way up the east coast of Florida the ships are headed north from Havana Cuba loaded with tons of gold and silver coins newly minted in Central American mines the ship's crews seek the trade winds that will carry them East to Europe the waters along the Florida coast at this time are dangerous known as feeding grounds for 18th century pirates who turn the seas blood-red in their quest for treasure but as the dozen ships approach the present-day Sebastian it is not pirates that bring danger but the weather [Music] a major hurricane whips the sea into black water and mountains hurling the fleet into an underwater reef 11 ships all wrecked fine are never found half of the 1400 sailors on board drown 50 miles of coast stretching from Vero Beach Florida north to Cape Canaveral buries a treasure that even in 1715 is worth tens of millions occasionally one of the people out here will will hit a spot in the reef and they'll blow the sand away and they'll find a pocket of rings and earrings and chains and coin or just a clump like it was in a leather pouch or some kind of a clay container just buried and spent there for 250 300 years even the most casual seekers of fortune have something to show for their efforts either in gold or silver or artifacts from the wrecks this is a brown spike that I found off the beach at low tide with a metal detector originally it was a straight spike and when the shipment planking pulled apart it tore it and bent it and a half almost which is very unusual [Music] some keep the items for mementos others sell treasure outright to local shops depending on the condition coins can sell for between two hundred and two thousand dollars others fashioned their treasure into jewelry we got earrings these have me a match set to go with a chain had made from a wife one local man turns his passion for treasure hunting into a business Eadie scoop man Matthews is frustrated because there is no device strong enough to dig through bytes and so he builds one himself and starts a company Treasure Coast scoops which today manufactures and sells fifteen thousand treasure scoops a year at his small workshop Eadie shows off some of his favorite finds from hunting for the 1715 treasure not coins but artifacts to keep them preserved Eadie stores the items in a tank of fresh water and soda ash this piece here is actually one of the pins that held the ship together this would actually hold the Timbers or the keel or the ribs to the bottom of the ship perhaps the most amazing artifacts among its treasure are cannonballs he found in the sand one was preserved in the water and soda ash solution the other was left to dry here's the difference in two cannonballs this one here is the one we use that's been in water this one here we cleaned didn't leave it on long enough and you can see that the rust built from the inside out and things started breaking and falling apart takes about four to five years to clean the Cannonball or something of solid mass something this size this one was left on for two years and this is what happened because many states require treasure hunters to share the balli much of the fines go unreported once they find it you know whoa you know and believe me the state and the feds are right there knocking at your door saying hey Potter that's ours and if it's got anything to do with archaeology forget it they're gonna throw you out Thank You treasure so what is happening is these people are leaving they're finding stuff and not tell anybody and so the state archeologists and people like that are saying well how come we're not finding more people are finding it they're just not telling you future ownership of Florida's buried treasure may be in doubt but treasure hunters believe there are riches still to be had and history still to be followed you can go out and find a silver coin like the one I'm wearing nobody's touched it for 280 years you're the first one to go out there find that target dig it up first one to actually touch it in 280 years this is you find the right thing and it runs a chill up your spine [Music] day break on the New England coast in the small harbor of Ryan New Hampshire a group of geologists armed with space-age detecting equipment heads out to sea to search for pirate treasure [Music] their destination a small group of Iowans nine miles offshore called the Isle of Shoals it's here in waters that today are home to hundreds of lobster fishermen that pirates once sailed during the 18th century one pirate in particular has a love for the islands William teach otherwise known as Blackbeard [Music] black beard had a fondness for a particular Island a small speck of land called lungeing Island a bastardization of the word London there's a little tavern on Long Island they could go in and have a few drinks and they could be in the air and be fairly safe and they could get out of there quick there was a nice small little cove there and supposedly he buried a nice catch of silver bars [Music] since 1923 lungeing island has belonged to the Randall family of Massachusetts they maintained the only house on the island a summer getaway for the family named the honeymoon cottage there is no dock to get ashore visitors must take a dinghy from their boats the family discourages treasure seekers from coming ashore family matriarch prudence Randall spent her summers on the island and raised her sons here now she accepts a request from The History Channel to try to put the mystery of Blackbeard's treasure to rest the only reason that we would consider looking into this again is because I'm getting older and I cannot see my young son raise patience putting up with a half a dozen or more every year enthusiastic energetic treasure hunters who would like permission to come in here and chew up his is Beach out yes a team of geologists arrives armed with metal detecting equipment and ground-penetrating radar [Music] they set up a degrees by pattern and begin to work criss crossing a 100 foot by 100 foot section of land the team searches in an area that prudence Randall knows well the center of the island where 50 years ago her father had a geologist do some tests the man said he was sure silver was underground but it would require blasting through granite to get it mr. Randall did not want any explosives on his island and the matter was forgotten until they ran it so far as he could see it was grounded and we camped it hide with a crowbar and we got a very hollow Sun this is very limited penetration at day's end there are surprises in store the fact that we got electromagnetic signatures due to metal objects in the m61 data indicates that there's metal objects may be stuck in the crevices that may be material that simply washed in in some time in the past or it may indicate the presence of something that was deliberately put there there is something there whether it's treasure or not we're not quite sure but there is something there the following dawn phase 2 begins a drilling crew uses a remote-control device to drive a tractor sized boring machine onto a world war 2 era barge the boat pulls out of the harbor and chugs across the choppy sea toward lungeing Island getting the equipment ashore is a difficult task the barge has to run aground lower its front gate and a truck generator and drilling machine are then driven onto the sandy beach [Applause] these are the first vehicles to ever be on the island the geologists briefed the drilling crew on where the best places are to dig okay Gary let's show you the results of our geophysical survey we got signatures magnetic scattered points of high readings that would indicate the presence of metallic objects [Applause] [Music] with a target chosen the drill team goes to work [Applause] oK we've got a four and a quarter of hollow stem auger going down here this will be penetrating the sand layer hopefully we encounter a bedrock of some sort very shallow the auger digs into the sand after chewing through four pieces if it's granite an air hammer replaces the auger and poems food the rock [Music] the first one is drilled to 20 feet nothing is found the rig is reset drilling begins again this time where prudence Randall remembers a geologist saying there was treasure fifty years ago after a half an hour of digging the air hammer hits something see water sprays from the home work stops there is some kind of opening 15 feet underground perhaps a cave could it home Blackbeard's treasure after several tense moments the drill crew determines the void is a crack in the island that opens to the sea but not a cave [Music] the drilling continues but nothing else is found to turn back to the confident rock again for prudence Randall knowing that the geologists tests showed metal beneath the surface of the island is enough to prove that Blackbeard was there even if the treasure will never be found she echoes the words of her son ray that if there is very treasure on the island belongs to history and I don't think after close to 300 years too sensible to worry about so perhaps Rey is right when he says let it lay though the History Channel's drilling project was inconclusive geologists still believe there is some type of metal buried deep underneath lungeing Islands granite rock but the Randalls maintained this was the one and only time they will allow anyone to drill holes in their pristine paradise as far as they're concerned the case of Blackbeard's treasure on lungeing Island is closed to discover more about this and other topics please visit our search engine at history channel calm [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Peter David Documentaries

Views: 246,393

Rating: 4.624896 out of 5

Keywords: History Channel Documentary

Id: 2hoXrAfiuAo

Length: 42min 9sec (2529 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 03 2019