Image Credit : Centro de Estudios Históricos y Humanidades
Posted on 04/30/2026 7:34:23 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Archaeologists in Chile have uncovered a 16th-century silver coin, confirming the location of one of South America's most infamous failed colonial settlements at the site of Rey Don Felipe – later known as Puerto del Hambre, or "Port Famine".
Located on the north shore of the Strait of Magellan, Rey Don Felipe was founded in 1584 with around 300 Spanish settlers. According to historical accounts, the extreme conditions led to the settlers starving or freezing to death, and by the arrival of English navigator Thomas Cavendish in 1587, the settlement was mostly in ruins.
The coin, valued at eight reals and bearing the insignia of King Philip II, was found beneath what archaeologists believe to be the original foundations of the church. Historical records from the 16th century describe a ceremonial practice in which such coins were deliberately placed under the cornerstone of a settlement during its founding...
The precise placement of the coin has provided a fixed reference point, allowing researchers to reconstruct the colony's layout with remarkable accuracy, including the positioning of dwellings, storage facilities and defensive structures...
The colony plan was determined using non-invasive methods and modern metal detection technology, enabling the team to identify subsurface anomalies without resorting to large-scale excavation.
(Excerpt) Read more at heritagedaily.com ...
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The source didn't take, it's Heritage Daily. This keyboard and mouse may be on borrowed time.
So that’s where I lost that thing!...............
Location, location, location.
“...Strait of Magellan...”
-
Heck of a place to start a colony.
I guess that’s why they named it “Port Famine”.
Sounds like some of the crew needed to learn their lessons the hard way. That’ll teach ‘em to **** with Magellan.
The coin, valued at eight reals........
So it was a piece of eight?................🙄
I’m not sure your claim is *real*. /rimshot
That’s the first rule of real estate, and in this case, unreal estate.
I piece of eight is a real cut into eight pieces, a consequence of needing more currency to support daily commerce. Hence the US quarter wound up with the nickname “two bits”.
The Britain the half-penny in the old system began as one of those nice big English copper pennies cut in half, but somewhere around here I’ve got an actual minted halfpenny (”haypenny”) coin dated late but still from before British currency went with a metric-style system, uh, circa 1974.
I always marvel at these people who become colonists going out in the wilds so bravely facing who knows what.
I looked up the value of eight reales, “The melt value of an 8 Reales coin is approximately $59.07 as of late April 2026. This value can vary based on the coin’s condition and market demand” but that coin has such historic value they’re not going to melt it. I wonder what they will do with it? Museum?
The Brits had so many coin denominations that didn’t exactly match the 1-2-5 sequence of coins it is a wonder that they could keep track of their money. And they had multiple names for them as well..............
It has historical relevance to this site, so, museum.
Sez it came from Potosi. The silver mining began in Precolumbian times, but really got going under the Spanish. That one place is still producing silver in some quantity or other, but historically perhaps between 3 and 4 percent of all the silver ever mined came from there.
During the 16th-18th centuries, Spanish operations there produced most of the silver found worldwide.
Hence, the Spanish empire got staggeringly rich, not to mention from gold and emeralds from its New World colonies.
I’d speculate that a few metallic asteroids will (within as little as 50 years) double or more the silver, gold, titanium, and platinum metals supply here on Earth. And rare Earth metals, for that matter.
Folks younger than me seem to still understand the use of shillings in pricing stuff, although of course the meaning has been somewhat altered.
Pence, Shillings, Crowns, Pounds, Guineas, moooore.
Then there were the SLANG terms to further complicate the system:
BRAVE AI:
British monetary slang is a mix of universal terms for the pound, specific denominations for notes, historical remnants from the pre-decimal era, and Cockney rhyming slang.
General Terms for Money
Quid: The most common universal term for one pound (£1); the plural remains “quid” (e.g., “five quid”).
Dosh, Bread, Wonga, Dough, and Lolly: Informal general terms for money or cash.
Brass: Northern English slang for any amount of money.
Specific Note Denominations
Fiver: A £5 note.
Tenner: A £10 note.
Score: A £20 note.
Pony: A £25 note.
Bullseye: A £50 note.
Ton or Century: A £100 note (e.g., “4 ton” for £400).
Monkey: £500.
Grand: £1,000.
Historical and Pre-Decimal Terms
Bob: Originally a shilling (1/20th of a pound); occasionally used to refer to 5p or 10p in modern contexts.
Tanner: A sixpence (6d).
Joey: A threepenny bit (3d).
Florin: A two-shilling coin (2/-).
Guinea: Historically one pound and one shilling (£1.05 in modern decimal terms), often used for luxury goods or professional fees.
Cockney Rhyming Slang Examples
Lady Godiva: A fiver (£5).
Cock and Hen: Ten pounds (£10).
Sausage and Mash: Cash.
Bread and Honey: Money.
Commodore: £15 (derived from the song “Three Times a Lady”).
You’ve lost another colony?
And some complain about the system of measurements we all still use here. Yorkshire was split into “Ridings” which is a corruption of “Thirdings” — but before the county lines got “reformed”, the division of Yorkshire was different than now.
Some of those land division oddities have persisted here, such as “Hundreds”, which is probably only found here and there in the former 13 colonies. Uh, yeah, my poor old brain said it was Delaware (this from involvement with genealogists). Doesn’t mean 1/100th of a county for instance,it means an area (which was at one time) containing 100 families.
We may be somewhat off the trail of this thread by now...
I think it’s down in the couch cushions.
I think we may have mentioned before how incredible it is that the Spanish managed to explore and colonize Mexico and south So quickly compared to How north America was explored and colonized. The Spanish Gave license To individuals To do this and also make personal fortunes in the process
May have had to do with the terrain and such. The Andes limits somewhat the settlement areas, making for more population concentrations. Mexico and Central America had the equivalent of city-states with large adjacent managed cultivation to support themselves. Central and eastern South America was rain forest, somewhat arid sparsely populated pampas (alternatively, savannah or great plains) with some concentrated populations here and there on the coastline.
North America was 2/3rds accessible by the Mississippi/Missouri/Ohio system draining plains and prairie in between two mountain ranges; coastlines running along a nice deep ocean and the Gulf; the Great Lakes and other large water resources; tribal populations with many languages and language families which didn't have any central gov't and didn't even get along with each other.
Some had adopted the horse from their contacts with the Spanish (there's native folklore that they'd already had the horse, there's a trickle of evidence that it may be true in places, but I'm not going to egg on any cranks) well before English and French speakers started pushing westward.
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