Where would we be on the Treasure Coast without a good shipwreck to celebrate? Probably not as stir-crazy as the survivors of the downed 1715 Spanish fleet.
The 300th anniversary of that horrific event on our shores is being commemorated in a two-day conference at the Vero Beach Museum of Art and in weeklong series of events at the Indian River County libraries.
While a thousand perished in 11 ships wrecked in a hurricane off the coast of Vero Beach, several dozen people miraculously survived the battering winds and waves and made it to shore along the north barrier island. If you want to sense what they faced, try tent camping at Sebastian Inlet State Park. Only forget the cooler and the bug spray. The survivors, many with injuries and illness, had to scavenge the dunes for palmetto berries and eat their dogs and cats.
All next week, the commemoration organized by the public libraries and the 1715 Fleet Society includes lectures by treasure hunters, exhibits of treasure and remains of the ships, book signings and a show of maritime paintings by Vero Beach Art Club members.
From 10 a.m. to 3 p .m. Monday at the main library, 13 authors will sign their books on the subject of wrecks and treasure.
Tuesday, kids get a chance to learn about the fleet’s mission and disastrous end. They get to make some crafts at the North County library in Sebastian starting at 11:15 a.m. Then Wednesday at the Main Library, they can spend the afternoon listing to a couple of folk musicians, Sam and Seajay Milner, singing about treasure, followed by Capt. Bonnie Schubert talking about metal detectors and diving.
Schubert is the career diver who a few years back found the stunning gold “pelican of piety” while her remarkable mother, Momma Jo, looked on from the boat’s deck.
Schubert will also be speaking to a grown-up audience at the library on Friday at 1 p.m. At 2:30, Capt. John Brandon talks about his time working with famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher from the early 1970s.
Next Thursday, there’s a bus tour scheduled with Margaret Weller, widow of Bob “Frogfoot” Weller, the author and treasure diver. A native of Trinidad, Weller herself is a diver and accompanied her husband at a number of wreck sites. Many of their finds have been displayed a museums around the country including the West Palm Beach Science Museum.
Stops on the tour include the McLarty Treasure Museum and the Mel Fisher museum as well as the sites of several wrecks. The bus stops at Capt. Hiram’s for lunch.
A zoo isn’t always the best place to go in the middle of a hot summer day, but at the Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, they add a little enticement to get the humans to come out in the evenings. This Saturday from 5 to 9 p.m. is the last of the Summer Saturday nights, with admission only $6, live music starting at 5:30, and zebras and giraffes hanging out. Though a lot of the exhibits shut down so the animals can rest, you can still kayak and ride the train around. Saturday’s featured band is Bittersweet, a Brevard-based band with three women and a man; the set list includes hits by Adele, Aretha Franklin, Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow.
If you do end up in the zoo zone during the day, there’s a butterfly exhibit that runs through Aug. 2, and on Aug. 8, there’s the fourth annual Youth Environmental Summit, an all-day seminar for kids ages 12 to 18, with seminars and hands-on activities.
Next Wednesday evening is the bi-monthly Jazz Jam at the Port St. Lucie Botanical Gardens. Now five years old, the gardens are slowly filling in the 20 acres on the pristine North Fork of the St. Lucie River on Westmoreland Avenue, just south of Port St. Lucie Blvd. Included in the terrain are Florida wetlands, bay-gall, scrubby flatwoods, and along the river, wetlands and a mangrove fringe. Various gardens are in progress including native plantings, bamboo, hibiscus and orchids.
Such tranquility belies the property’s four-minute moment of fame: In 1979, it doubled as the Amazon River for the James Bond movie “Moonraker.“ The wild chase scene had the heavily armed bad guys, including Jaws, the seven-foot-tall hunk of menace bearing the least discreet set of orthodontics ever. As the bad guys close in on Bond, who’s tossing mini-mines at them off the back of the boat, Bond suddenly goes airborne when the top of his boat lifts and converts to a hang-glider.
Just one of the legendary getaways back in the day in the nether reaches of PSL. The Jazz Jam has a tough act to follow.
