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Treasure
åÊ "" åÊ TREASURE is the harrowing story of Mel Fisher's quest for the 600-ton galleon Nuestra Sehora de Atocha, vice-flagship of King Philip IV of Spain, which sank off Key West in 1622, taking with it to the bottom 250,000 silver coins, 901-plus silver ingots, 161 pieces of gold bullion, emeralds and other jewels--47 tons of treasure in all, worth $600 million today, Fisher claimed. If åÊhe could find it.åÊTrusting to incredible persistence, raw courage and luck, Fisher and his divers searched the reefs and seas for clues. They fought off storms and sharks. Salvage vessels sank under them. Four crewmen were killed. Years were spent making futile dives and arranging desperate deals for financial backing; divers never knew when or if they would be paid--whether they would live to see the end of the adventure at all.åÊMel Fisher, the incredible optimist who never gave up, cheered his crew each morning with his slogan, "Today's the day!" Revised and the complete story. "" ""Adventure in the grand tradition...wonderful" ----The New York Times "An ever-buoyant story of modern treasure-hunting" åÊ---Publishers Weekly "Stirring escapist reading . . ." åÊ--Newsday "Daley is an exceptional writer . . . TREASURE can be placed beside The Treasure of the Sierra Madre . . . masterful . . . journalism at its best." åÊ--Baltimore Sun "
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
Mass Market Paperback
First published April 1, 1986
12 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
Robert Daley
83 books21 followersRobert Daley is the author of seventeen novels and eleven non-fiction books. Born and brought up in New York, he graduated from Fordham University, did his military service in the Air Force and began writing stories, articles and books immediately afterward. He was a New York Times foreign correspondents for six years based in France but covering stories from Russia to Ireland to Tunisia, fifteen or more countries in all. Much later he served as an NYPD deputy commissioner, which explains why many of his books have played out against a police background. His work has been translated into fourteen languages, and six of his books have been filmed. He is married with three daughters. He and his French born wife divide their time between a house in Connecticut and an apartment in Nice. France.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 11, 2014
Okay so I'm inherently predisposed to love this book. So, of course, I do. I mean, who wouldn't love to read a book about a real live treasure hunt? Plus when I was younger, my sister and I rented the National Geographic documentary from the library about Mel Fisher and his search for the Spanish treasure galleon, Nuestra Senora de Atocha. We were completely mesmerized--as much by his story and sheer force of will and perseverance as by the treasure itself. We rented that VHS every single summer for some 5 or 6 years in a row. Then when we went to Key West, we visited the Mel Fisher Museum where you could touch a real gold bar, see stacks of silver bullion, observe all the maritime archaeology and research that went into pinpointing the Atocha's location. Completely captivating stuff. And to complement my summer VHS-watching, I borrowed books from the library written by the historian and archaeologist who contributed to the search. So like I said, I could not not love this book.
Predispositions aside, I did enjoy this book. It provided a lot of really great insight into the daily grind of treasure hunting. I knew a lot of the background information but the book included perspectives from the persons who lived and breathed the search, like the diver boys. I loved the chapters with Dr. Eugene Lyon who spent months doing research in Seville in the Archives of the Americas. I also loved getting to know Mel Fisher better. He always seemed to be like a happy-go-lucky, always smiling kinda guy. Which he was. But he was also terrible with money, utterly pigheaded, sometimes insensitive, exploitative, and even, to a certain degree, avaricious. Which doesn't make him a bad person--it just makes him human. And there's nothing more human that following that visceral gut instinct to hunt for treasure, abandoning all other logical principles.
Two things I didn't entirely like about the book. The first is the writing and organization. Besides the bad formatting for Kindle (which I'm usually good at overlooking) the writing was a bit convoluted sometimes. And the organization jumped all over the place, especially in the beginning. A thought that was begun in one chapter was suddenly abandoned and just as suddenly picked up a few chapters later. The present was melded with the past in ways that sometimes required a leap of logic, making the chronology difficult to follow. The second is that the book ended fairly abruptly. I get it, the book is about the search for treasure and when the treasure is found, there's no need to carry on. But there is so much that went on afterwards--archaeological excavation, settling bills with everyone who ever contributed to the search, matching the treasure to the manifest, and then realizing that there was still more to find. Other books deal with that, I know, but an afterword would have been a nice touch.
Predispositions aside, I did enjoy this book. It provided a lot of really great insight into the daily grind of treasure hunting. I knew a lot of the background information but the book included perspectives from the persons who lived and breathed the search, like the diver boys. I loved the chapters with Dr. Eugene Lyon who spent months doing research in Seville in the Archives of the Americas. I also loved getting to know Mel Fisher better. He always seemed to be like a happy-go-lucky, always smiling kinda guy. Which he was. But he was also terrible with money, utterly pigheaded, sometimes insensitive, exploitative, and even, to a certain degree, avaricious. Which doesn't make him a bad person--it just makes him human. And there's nothing more human that following that visceral gut instinct to hunt for treasure, abandoning all other logical principles.
Two things I didn't entirely like about the book. The first is the writing and organization. Besides the bad formatting for Kindle (which I'm usually good at overlooking) the writing was a bit convoluted sometimes. And the organization jumped all over the place, especially in the beginning. A thought that was begun in one chapter was suddenly abandoned and just as suddenly picked up a few chapters later. The present was melded with the past in ways that sometimes required a leap of logic, making the chronology difficult to follow. The second is that the book ended fairly abruptly. I get it, the book is about the search for treasure and when the treasure is found, there's no need to carry on. But there is so much that went on afterwards--archaeological excavation, settling bills with everyone who ever contributed to the search, matching the treasure to the manifest, and then realizing that there was still more to find. Other books deal with that, I know, but an afterword would have been a nice touch.
August 1, 2020
A fascinating story of a search for Spanish treasure. Having an ancestral line back into the early exploration of Mexico by the Spanish (where they encountered my Tlaxcalan ancestors), I found this to be interesting on a personal level. In addition, I met some of the people involved in this (maybe around 1990 or so?) and got to hear from them and see some replicas of what was found. That's when I bought this but have recently re-read it.
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July 7, 2016
Very interesting
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews