The Awful Allure of a Shipwrecked Piece of Eight. Part 1.

Relics rarely come "better" than a piece from a shipwreck. Today, we explore a Spanish-Colonial piece of eight that was recovered from the Hollandia. It has an "awful" charm born of a violent end.
   The Hollandia was a heavily-armed Dutch trader, measuring about 150 feet with nearly 40 guns (accounts differ). It was a built for the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) or Dutch East India Company for the Far East Trade. The proud ship left Texel on its maiden voyage on the third of June 1743 with a fleet bound for the Indian Ocean by way of the African Horn. But as Neptune
would have it, the ship barely made it out of the English Channel.
   On the thirteen of July, the vessel lost touch with the fleet, and with cannons firing in distress, the ship smashed into Gunner Rock near the Isles of Scilly, off the southwest coast of England. All hands were lost. VOC records revealed that the ship was laden with 129,700 guilders (about one ounce of silver each) lost to the sea. Most of the coins were Spanish-Colonial eight reales fresh from the Mexican mint with the rest primarily made up of Dutch ducatons -- a few cobs were also in the mix.

Mexican Piece of Eight from the Hollandia: A perfect relic.

   The treasure was found in 1971 by Rex Cowan after several years of research and underwater scouting. Dan Sedwick -- a prominent dealer and expert -- has reported that some 35 thousand coins have been retrieved. He rated the availability of such pieces (for collectors like us) as moderately scarce but available.
   I acquired this beautiful 1741 pillar dollar over a decade ago. This piece is striking with a pea-green patina that blends to gray near the rims. The details are sharp, softened slightly by the washing of a salty sea. A few nicks and an old scrape remind you where it came from. What an "awful beauty" (as Charles Dickens would say). It is can be admired for its art and tragedy all at once.
   We are fascinated by the death of our fellows, even when separated by centuries -- if for any other reason, to learn something that might help us avoid a similar fate. We mourn, and we prepare.
   Shipwreck coins -- all relics, actually -- evoke this dire fascination, this charm. The charm, of course, comes from the fact that the coin survived. It is a real piece of the action, and unlike so many other relics that are mysterious, once we know the story, the object screams. This piece of eight is immutable. You cannot examine it without thinking about those desperate mariners, frantically cutting sails and firing canons.
   Of course, relics are always about loss, decay, and death. Even if we do not know the storyline, the drama is the same: a piece was lost, and maybe a life. This is why we are so intrigued. Shipwrecked pieces have the added punch (in the stomach) of a known death toll and a storyline that ends badly.
  This is what relics are all about. The necromancer is acutely sensitive to this. The term relic means that which is left after loss and/or decay. A secondary meaning suggests that a relic is linked unequivocally to the past. But it is the archaic meaning of relic that is of most importance here: a relic is a piece within which the living dead among us still dwell. The mariners. This is all that is left of them -- a tenuous grasp on immortality, made possible by the sensitivities of the necromancer coin collector.
   Next time, we will explore this connection further.