After being sick for eight days and seeing the forecast was calling for a beautiful day, I decided to take a trip down to Lewes, DE and try my luck.
While my wife Sandi relaxed on a beach chair by the water, I started down the beach with my trusty E-TRAC with a freshly charged Lithium battery. I had only gone about a hundred yards and my detector sang out with that familiar low tone and my FE/CO numbers were showing 12-3 which indicated a Jeton which I had found previously on other trips. These coins are believed to be from the Severn which sank in 1774. I dug down about four inches, and when I shook out my sand scoop I saw my first Jeton of the day.
This day was starting out just fine! I travelled down to my favorite spot along the beach and within a few minutes found my second Jeton of the day. Thinking to myself, if the storms of the past week brought these coins up I just might have some luck at coin beach down near Indian River Inlet.
So we picked up some lunch on the way down and Sandi dropped me off near the Savage Ditch crossover and I started hiking out to the beach.
After crossing the dune, I looked up and down the beach and there were hundreds of cars parked on the water's edge surf fishing. I turned to the right and started down towards the inlet where I could see a father and his son were detecting.
I had only gone down the beach a few hundred yards and wham, my detector sang out! The sun was so bright that I couldn't see my screen, but the tone sounded right so I dug down about five inches and there in the bottom of my scoop was a King George Copper from the wreck of the Faithful Steward that sank that fateful night September 2nd 1785 where only 68 of 249 passengers survived.
Among the passengers that survived were the ancestors of Civil War General Robert E. Lee. Forty eight members of his family perished that day.
I felt that I had touched a part of that history as I looked at that coin so I gave a new nickname to my E-TRAC today. "The Irish Beauty" in honor of young Mary Lee daughter of James and Isabella Bascowen Lee known as "Pretty Polly Lee" and "The Irish Beauty" who had many poems written about her beauty and accomplishment who perished on the Faithful Steward.
Woody - PA, USA
