[The Cuban]

Freaking French illegal immigrants lol.

[manna]

BTTT

[Sacajaweau]

Pretty exciting find...

[TexasFreeper2009]

wow... they may take it from the treasure hunters and give it to France!

unbelievable.

[V_TWIN]

Having lived on the first coast (northeast Fla.) since 1969 I have observed discoveries like this many times appear after a big storm shifts the ocean floor. Since Matthew just passed our area that may be why.

[Bogie]

Ping

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

Doubtful that the expedition would have made Florida “French-speaking.” The French managed to establish a few outposts often on, and the Spanish were usually pretty brutal and efficient in excising them from the landscape, as it were.

[JimSEA]

You got little warning about the approach of big storms or hurricanes in those days. Perhaps that explains why there are so many wrecks found there.

[MNJohnnie]

Wow French Protestants in Fla would of drove the Most Catholic Spanish king nuts. It also would been seen as a French threat to the trade routes to Mexico and Panama. Considering Spain and France spent most of the 1500s fighting each other over Iraly, I guess there would of been a lot passing the FLA colony back and forth between Spain and France

[WellyP]

Peter Throckmorton would have loved this!

[Ditter]

I love this! I wear a coin found in the Caribbean on the wreck of the Atocha,. This period of our history is fascinating to me. Thanks for posting.

[sportutegrl]

Treasure hunters have apparently found the 500-year-old remains of a naval expedition led by a colonizer who could have changed Florida's history, making it French-speaking at least for a while.

I disagree. Wherever the French go, they keep their language. See Louisiana and Quebec. Italians, Polish, even Mexican speakers' decendants eventually speak English here, but not the French.

[AnalogReigns]

Let’s not forget “Ribault and hundreds of other French Huguenots were massacred by Menendez de Aviles.” These were the original European settlers of what is now the USA (well before the Pilgrims, before Jamestown, before Roanoke colony) slaughtered as POW’s of the founder of St. Augustine, because they would not convert to Roman Catholicism.

This was close to 400 people—mostly civilians.

So the first permanent settlement by Europeans in what is now the USA, was NOT St. Augustine, FL, it was the Huguenot’s Fort Caroline (in GA or FL (?))—wiped out by the Spanish—after just a year.

Just 7 years later, as many as 100,000 of fellow Huguenots, French Calvinist Protestants, were slaughtered in France—in one of the worst butcheries of civilians in European history, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

[BluH2o]

French Protestant Huguenots transported on a French warship is interesting ... about the same time they were fleeing France to Holland and England to avoid persecution by the Catholics in France. The Dutch recruited those Huguenots with wine growing experience and shipped them to the Cape Town area of SA to establish vineyards, some of which exist to this day.

[Fiji Hill]

Under laws governing shipwrecks, the United States recognizes other countries' sovereignty over warships of theirs that sink in US waters.

For one thing, it didn't sink in US waters--there was no US at the time. And the Spaniards will tell you that these were pirate ships, not warships.

[smokingfrog]

ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00000019/00001/40x

[bert]

The book shown is one of the most important documents in American history. It is the first person account of an authentic colonizer making multiple voyages from France to America when there was no America. The book describes in excruciating detail the war between the French and the Spanish to get a foot hold on the continent. The events occur circa 1564 before the establishment of St Augustine and any Spanish settlement east of Santa Fe.

In fairly recent time, The National Park Service developed a National Monument called Fort Caroline on the River of May at Jacksonville Beach Florida. The actual site of the failed colony was somewhere near by but the precise location is unknown. The acreage for the park was donated for establishment of the French monument.

Then there is my favorite book "The Flamingo Feather" a fictional account by Kirk Monro written I believe in 1854

[bkopto]

From another article:

The find was finally made in May of this year by a treasure hunting firm called Global Marine Exploration. The one who is not happy is Robert Pritchett, the owner of GME, who says he has invested three million dollars in this gig and now runs the risk of getting nothing for his trouble.

Under laws governing shipwrecks, the United States recognizes other countries' sovereignty over warships of theirs that sink in US waters.

So Florida must -- and it plans to -- hand over the remains in this case to France.

But Pritchett does not want to end up with nothing and is promising to fight it.

"It is not a French military vessel. Tell France to prove it. They cannot. I can tell you France has no proof of anything," said Pritchett.

"We are professionals here at GME, not novice divers like LAMP and state archaeologists," he added.

The find has been kept under wraps since at least August, but came to light recently because of a legal dispute between France and GME over rights to the shipwreck.

In October GME filed a suit claiming ownership of all the remains found at the shipwreck site. But early this month France and the state of Florida filed a counter-suit.

So the F'n, incompetant governments don't want to compensate the company that found the ship? GME ought to announce the location of the shipwreck. Screw these governments.