New Treasure Found Off Wellfleet?
 

Every day I check the beach cams off the backside of Cape Cod just because I'm an old surfer. Yesterday I checked the Beach Comber webcam at Cahoon Hollow in Wellfleet. Usually you just see the ocean, the surf, maybe a few container ships way offshore.
(cam link)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3LjfzI7EIM

It's unusual to see a boat near to shore there. But there it was, a forty foot+ vessel loitering about 200 yards offshore. She's been there for two days now.
Looking closer I noticed that she had 'mailboxes' mounted on her transom; these are used to deflect the propeller wash directly down to the bottom. Barry Clifford used this method to find the pirate galley Whidah which has been the subject of discussion here before.
It seems a vessel (White Squall) with a cargo of tin ingots sank in this area during a storm sometime in the past. Tin is valued currently at $55 hundred+ per metric ton and it doesn't degrade in salt water.
I'll be keeping an eye on the hunt for this treasure via the live webcam.

Very interesting,let us know more......

If i may, Rick
 

This is absolutely off topic but, i never get an oportunity to show my intriguing find in the local harbour facilities (41º 22' 26'' N 8º 46' 02'' W). Actually it was my late brother (RIP) that had a glimpse of it, tangled in a lot of abandoned fishing nets. Obviously it was dragged by the nets in the sea bottom. But this Dog Tag being undoubtedly American, how come it was dropped (?) in the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean ? Some USAF plane passing by during the (second) World War ? And how did it get lose from his bearer's neck?


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I've got a pentagon guy on it Fernando.

Good to know that, Rick :cool:.

Not A Biography, But..........
 

In it to win it.
Joined in 1942.


Display Partial Records
File unit: Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, ca. 1938 - 1946 (Enlistment Records)
in the Series: World War II Army Enlistment Records, created 6/1/2002 - 9/30/2002, documenting the period ca. 1938 - 1946 - Record Group 64 (info).

You searched for: Lue Bequette and any field. sorted by ARMY SERIAL NUMBER
You found 1 partial record out of 8,706,394 total records in this file.


View Record ARMY SERIAL NUMBER NAME RESIDENCE: STATE RESIDENCE: COUNTY PLACE OF ENLISTMENT DATE OF ENLISTMENT YEAR SOURCE OF ARMY PERSONNEL YEAR OF BIRTH

View 37387931 BEQUETTE#LUE############ MISSOURI ST FRANCOIS JEFFERSON BARRACKS MISSOURI 42 Civil Life 22

Simply great info, Rick; so much obliged for that. I see that most of this data matches with a few uncertain leads i found when hammering the keyboard three years ago. This is then the same Bequette who died in January 2008, so not out there in combat during the war. The mistery remains in how in hell this Dog Tag emerged from the sea in my neck of the woods.
If only it could talk !
Thanks again.

Back to the 'treasure hunters' ;the vessel scanning the bottom at Cahoon Hollow has moved on Southward and cannot be seen on the cam link anymore.

The southward course moves the search closer to the Whydah wreck site and Mr. Clifford is still working on the salvage there.

You're welcome Fernando, but questions still remain about the officer's name on the tag, and it being an Airforce issued example. :confused:

Just fantasies ... to put an end to it.
 

My thought is the names below are contacts in case something went wrong; whether this protocol was in force by then. Maybe the Major was responsible for his transfer (?) to the Airforce.


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White Squall
 

From my source on Cape Cod shipwrecks.
It starts to get interesting:

Here's a recap of the WHITE SQUALL wreck details. The information sources are many newspapers encompassing 3 eras:
i). 1867;
ii). July 1945 CC Standard Times
iii). 1980's;
note: I have too many articles about this wreck to email and no way to digitally scan others, hence my written summary.

WHITE SQUALL: British, barque, steel-hulled, on its maiden voyage from Liverpool to Boston, cargo of lead and tin, tonnage unknown, wrecked in a storm at Cahoon Hollow in Feb 1867; ship estimated to have been 150-200 ft long & 35 ft wide; was driven by the storm waves right into the beach and then was broken up by the shore-pound; loss of life unknown but the Capt survived.

note: This wreck happened about 6 years before the U. S. Life-saving Service was established on the Cape so exact details aren't readily available from one source.

After the ship wrecked all of the tin and lead cargo was reported to have been salvaged during the summer of 1867. However, in the 1940's the former Captain of the Cahoon Hollow CG Station, Henry Daniels of Eastham, reported that during his years at the station many shiny ingots in the ship's remains could be seen under shallow water off the station. He was aware of the story of the ship's demise. In 1945 a local man, Warren Corliss, who had ties to the War Production Board that was trying to alleviate a severe tin shortage because of WW2, got wind of the potential bonanza to be had at Cahoon Hollow and organized a Govt. salvage expedition. He got the CG to assign an 85 ft ship for the operation and two civilian hard-hat divers were hired. They spent about a week in July '45 at Cahoon's trying to find the ship and verify if there was tin aboard. They located a mostly buried wreck in 10 ft of water at about the right spot where Daniels, now retired, had thought it was but they couldn't determine the identity of the ship and didn't find any ingots. It was covered with deep sand and the operation timed out and the Feds. salvage was abandoned.
note: Confusion about the wreck's identity was exacerbated by the fact that Daniels said there was another old wreck just to the south of the SQUALL, name unknown, with a load of millstones and another wreck just to the north.

Now, at about the same time Barry Clifford was laying claim to the WHYDA two other Cape salvagers, named Costa and Daniels, teamed up and claimed the rights to the WHITE SQUALL In the mid 80's they brought up 10,000 lbs of tin ingots which led to a dispute with the State and the salvagers were blocked from selling the tin. How it all eventually was resolved-I don't know.'