Brief History:The Sampan was a WW2 era Liberty Launch bought by Kip Wagner for use by the Real Eight company for salvage work on the ships and artifacts of the 1715 Spanish Tax Fleet that wrecked on the coast of Florida near Cape Canaveral. She was used as a diving and salvage platform, seeing multiple modifications from her original configuration through the 1960s and later had multiple changes installed by the group often added in the winter off-seasons when diving was difficult. Additions included modified steering (replacing the Coxswain steering seen on this model), a dive ladder, and a pilothouse added to keep the divers warm and out of the wind when out of the water after dives. (Photos of the skiff are very rare and I couldn’t get the specs for the pilot house so I just made a replica of her early form that saw a great deal of use with the company). Most of her career was spent over the “Cabin Wreck” at Sebastian Inlet where she acted as the platform for numerous dives, recovering countless priceless and historically rich artifacts to include clumps of silver cobs, gold coins, plates, forks, jewelry, in-tact pottery, silver wedges, cannons, bottles, and much more. She was also used across a majority of the other identified wreck sites of the fleet that Real Eight had leases on, eventually being replaced by the Derelict, another skiff better suited to the task and in better condition.

The 1715 Fleet: The fleet was the first to sail the tax-collecting route through South America and the Caribbean since the beginning of the War of Spanish Succession. Due to the danger of putting such valuable ships to sea in wartime, the fleets were delayed until 1713 when the war had officially ended. Spain relied completely on their distribution and sale of precious metals for their economy at the time, so the fleet was very much overdue and needed for a nation recovering from a war. The ships were caught in a hurricane on the coast of Florida near Cape Canaveral leaving only the French merchant Grifon in tact. The rest of the vessels were destroyed on the long stretch of reef-lined coast spilling over 14,000,000 Pesos. The wrecks were greatly worked by the Spanish to recover what could be found but a great deal of the cargo and wealth was lost. Raids on the salvage camps were also common and may have been one of the primary inspirations for many of the famous pirates of the early 1700s.

The Replica: I tried to make a decent replica based on what little info I could find on it. Turns out treasure hunters are a little more pre-occupied documenting the actual treasure and ships involved than a skiff they dove off of. I tried adding a few of the finds they documented to include a few silver coins and clusters (the black misshapen lumps in the front), a cannon breech block, gold coins, a round gold Ingot and cross, some in-tact China, a spoon, a plate, and some musket and cannon shot. I would’ve added more but I feel like I’ve kinda hit a wall at this point with the build so hopefully everyone enjoys what there is. I also tried to replicate a map of the primary wreck site they explored using Sampan, called the Cabin Wreck.
There’s two very good books I read about the 1715 plate fleet and the Real Eight company. One is called Pieces of Eight by Kip Wagner himself, and the other is called Floridas Golden Galleons and is an outside view on the story and ethics of private treasure hunting.
I’m very passionate on the topic and I hope I was able to do some justice to the story and get a few people interested!