Description:
Salvagers certificate included. This is a genuine 17th century Spanish silver coin that was recovered from the 1682 British shipwreck Joanna. Commanded by Captain Robert Brown, this 550 ton East Indiaman ship had 36 cannon and carried a crew of 114 along with 70 chests of silver coins. The Joanna set sail on February 27, 1682 from Kent, England, beginning her long journey to Surat, on the west coast of India.
After days of stormy weather while rounding the southern coast of Africa, the Joanna became separated from her convoy of four other ships. Brown and his navigator assumed they were in deep water, however, they could not get an accurate idea of their location. On June 8th, the Joanna crashed into the reef at Die Dam and sank in rough seas sending 24 sailors to their deaths. Using two small boats and rafts, 104 survivors eventually reached the Dutch colony of Cape Town, from which a salvage party was soon dispatched. The salvagers reported recovering about 28,000 coins from Joanna’s cargo.
After the initial salvage operations of 1682, the Joanna shipwreck slowly faded from memory and the wreck site was lost and untouched for 300 years. However, in 1982 the wreck was re-discovered on the outer reefs of Die Dam by a group of South African divers led by Gavin Clackworthy. The divers recovered iron cannons, many silver ingots and over 23,000 silver cob coins, most of them Spanish Mexican four and eight reales of Charles II. After this salvage excavation, the Joanna shipwreck site was declared a protected area by the South African National Monuments Council Act.
