http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22332871-2,00.html

A COIN found in a snake-infested swamp could help prove a century-old theory that a Spanish or Portuguese ship was wrecked on Australia’s east coast years before Captain James Cook’s famed voyage of discovery.

The find, made by an expedition led by self-funded Brisbane historian Greg Jeffreys, is the first piece of dated evidence among a number of artefacts found in Eighteen Mile Swamp on Queensland’s North Stradbroke Island.

An independent UK expert from Cambridge University has been able to confirm the coin as being dated 1597 for NEWS.com.au from what he could see in this picture.

“If it were the genuine object it does suggest a late 17th century wreck,” the expert from the Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum told NEWS.com.au. “It’s pre-Captain Cook by a long way.” (MORE)

Mr Jefferys, who is himself waiting to have the piece verified in Europe, hopes the coin will lead him to the wreck first rumoured to be there from witness accounts in the 1890s.

“It’s the first thing that we can date 100 per cent,” he said. “This has the date stamped on it so it has to be a 17th century wreck.”

Legend of the Stradbroke Galleon

Tales include Aborigines in the 1920s finding gold coins in the area with locals claiming to have seen the wreck throughout the years.

There has also been speculation Captain Cook used secret Spanish or Portuguese maps to navigate before he made landfall in Australia in 1770.

“All the evidence points to either a Portuguese or Spanish ship,” Mr Jeffreys said. “It’s not likely to be a galleon - all the eye-witness accounts put it at 30m long so it’s probably a caravel or carrack which were used for exploration.”

The find

Mr Jeffreys said his team was resting on a sand spit after slowly hacking their way through 3m razor grass when a colleague stumbled on the piece.

“He was scratching in the sand and his machete turned up this coin,” Mr Jeffreys said. “It’s one of those fluke things – it’s amazing.”

Mr Jeffreys, an archaeology graduate and historian, has looking for a wreck to support the theories for more than 20 years.

The quest has not been without its disappointments.

In 2002, he thought he’d found muzzles and barrels of cannons from a 16th-century Portuguese or Spanish galleon only to concede days later in the national press that the pieces were actually lifeboat supports from a 19th-century ship.

More recently he has discovered a brass button, a sailor’s blade and a fishing weight in the dense swamp.

WWII military map

The group had gone to the location after a tip-off from the son of a RAAF pilot whose father had flown over the area many times during World War II.

The pilot - Cyril Broome - claimed to have seen the shipwreck in the swamp between 1938 and 1942 while flying training missions and calculated the location on a military map using area landmarks.

Another map published by Shell in the 1920s includes an entry for “Wreck of Spanish Galleon” in about the same location.

Authorities in Queensland have previously expressed scepticism about the claims.

beer:

This is really interesting Andy, I read a book a few years ago that talked about the Pre-Cook exploration of New Zealand. The book talked about various groups that had visited NZ over the years including the Phonecians and a Tamil merchant. Some of the authors assertions and assumptions were a little wild but several stories had archaeological evidence to back them up. Back in the 1960s an old helmet was discovered in Wellington Harbour and was identified as belonging to a Spanish officer and dated (apparently by 3 different independant experts) as no later than 1580. Maori oral history from some of the East Coast, North Island tribes tell of a visit by tall, fair-haired strangers in a tall large boat. From descriptions it appears that the boat was a Spanish caravel, it appeared while some of the tribe were out fishing on the full moon. From the oral histories it is possible to date the visit via tribal chiefs names, phases of the moon etc. From memory it ties in with the age of the helmet in Wellington Harbour. Also from memory - I read the book maybe 10 years ago - the Spaniards stayed for about a year with a peaceful tribe at the top of the South Island (that would be the Waitaha people), shared theirs supplies and as sailors will do - their genes as well. Somewhere the journey was recorded in a log, the sailors went back to South America and the log ended up back in Europe. Apparently politics of the day ensured that the log never saw the light of day but it was believed (by the author of this book) that a copy of the log found its way into the hands of Jacob Roggeveen, hence the relative ease with which he discovered Easter Island.
Must visit the library and see if I can find that book again.

It's amazing the voyages our predecessors did. I mean, it's still a feat to sail around the world...with satnav and phones, a backup engine, marine band, helicopters etc etc!

Just imagine, had the Spaniards come further west, I might be speaking Spanish, have an affinity with oranges, running away from bulls and going to sleep in the afternoon! LOL, at least I'd understand some of the translation questions in the daily "How Smart are Ya?" quiz! :lol:

beer:

Ha ha ha! Could go along with those mid-afternoon siestas Andy! The irony is my daughter has been learning Spanish at school and the little I know is still more than her. :lol: Apparently one of the reasons the Spaniards found New Zealand so easily is that they came at it from the east and it covers a lot of ground/ocean longitudinally speaking. Mind you whats-his-name that discovered Tasmania managed to miss the really big island just to the north of it when he sailed past - was that Tasman?
Apparently the Maori explorers that settled NZ 1200-1800 years ago used catamaran type boats with square or triangular sails, complete with fire platform and sleeping accomodation/shelter.

Yep, Abel Tasman.