Discovered pirate coins might solve mystery...Arrgh!

[Rick]

A friend of mine used to be the resident Mason on the PBS This Old House television show; he was my neighbor in Eastham and an avid bottle digger/relic hunter; back in the day many of us were similarly inclined as the Outer Cape was settled very early in our nation's history.
He did a lot of relic hunting in Wellfleet; we all did back then.

In the late 17th century there was a tavern on the highest part of Great Island which borders Wellfleet harbor; all that's left there is a cellar hole, and it is barely more than a depression now. Back in the time when the tavern was active the hilltop had been cleared; the view of Cape Cod Bay must have been spectacular and a very good place to view any vessels coming and going offshore.
Poking around the spot one day he spied a tiny coin in a sandy patch; it turned out to be a French Henry IV 1/4 Ecu that had been drilled, quite possibly to identify the owner of a livestock animal back in those days.
Now there are only two usable harbors on the bayside of the Outer Cape, Provincetown which is a very open anchorage and Wellfleet harbor which is a very snug place to anchor. All kinds of mariners frequented that tavern and it is not much of a stretch of the imagination to think that Bellamy and his crew were among the clientele.

[shayde78]

https://www.livescience.com/pirate-h...iscovered.html

Stumbled across this article and thought it sounded familiar, having read this thread. Thought I'd park it here as an addition account of this interesting find.

[M ELEY]

Thanks for linking this up. It does have some more details and hopefully, this article will still be good in the years to come.

[Jim McDougall]

Shayde, thank you for this article, and I think it is pretty compelling evidence.
These kinds of coinage were certainly not the kind of currency found about in colonial America in those times. Despite the prevalence of trade, which was not direct necessarily with these 'exotic' locations, the amount of such currency which filtered to these shores via these networks was likely small, and more a novelty. The coins would have probably been melted down for the metal.

While the romantic notions of pirates and the proverbial dead mans chest have long been pretty much dispelled, I think there had to have been some degree of secreting at least some amount of currency.
After all, through history the burial or secreting of valuables and money has been commonplace. The discovery of hoards of coinage in archaeological finds or metal detector discoveries is well known. ......there were no banks until fairly modern times.

Rick brings up a good point on coinage, with coinage or currency outside the standard exchange, how would one determine value? I would imagine either it would be based on the precious metal, or perhaps simply become a barter type agreement. Taverns and some establishments used a 'tally' (precursor to the bar tab) for individuals, but in everyday business its hard to say.

[fernando]

Well, the value of money in those days was not fiduciary but intrinsic. It was about solid coins, and those favoured were made of silver and gold, not minding their numeric value but instead their weight; in that, real business was made with coins of known reputation. One of the most reliable was the silver thaler, which lasted for 400 years (the dollar descends from it). Gold coins were also reputed by their metal purity. On the other hand, and going back in time, Roman coinage could be good for internal use, but it is known that, at least silver denariums were either underweighted or of low purity to cope with momentum inflation.
But i realize taverneers and traders, altough illiterate, knew a whole lot about this ... much more than me, i am sure .

[Rick]

I expect that this post is just a rehash of Fernando's above.
From a bit of research I have found that nondescript foriegn coins in that age that were made from gold or silver were valued by weight. I expect innkeepers and tavern owners kept a small balance scale and weights. If one knew (for example) the value of a Thaler then the equivalent weight in silver could be adjudged as the same.
Purity and counterfeit might be a problem; I always think of the image of a merchant biting a coin to asses its purity.

[fernando]

It was not easy to circumvent counterfeight. Weighing was a practical method, but fakes could be made with metals of similar density and bathed in gold or silver; nowadays with electrolysis.
Biting the coin is another story, as we start by stripping the act from some fiction. In the old days, integrity of pure gold coins was of concern, as it was soft enough to wear with time and also subject to shaving (edge clipping)*, in both cases losing intrinsic weight. Circa 1526 a blend with a harder metal was invented to give gold some toughness.This way when (if) the recipient bit the coin to check on its authencity based on the gold malleability, the test was inconclusive due to its resistence.
Also not to forget that, due to its unique characteristics, there are those who pretetend that 'tasting' the flavour of gold is a good test.
* A system implemented to prevent this was the minting of coins with an edge (rim) to allow for the eye checking of this highly punishable crime; but that is another story.


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