Skip the Archives in Seville: How Sub-Leasing a Treasure Fleet Actually Works

Say you’ve got a boat, a few friends who know how to dive, and a genuine itch to go find something real. What you probably don’t have is years to spend digging through 300-year-old shipping manifests in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, or the legal standing to search a specific patch of ocean without getting arrested for it. Here’s the part most people don’t know: you might not need either one. There’s a real, legal system already built for exactly this situation, and it’s been quietly putting recreational-level crews onto genuine Spanish treasure fleet sites for decades.

The short version

Florida’s most famous shipwreck treasure — the 1715 Spanish Plate Fleet, wrecked in a hurricane along what’s now called the Treasure Coast — isn’t a free-for-all. At this time, 1715 Fleet – Queens Jewels, LLC (owned by Brent Brisben) holds the exclusive federal court custodianship over the wreck sites — worth verifying this is still current before you act on anything here, since lease holders and contracts can change over time. That sounds like bad news if you were hoping to just show up and start searching. It’s actually the opposite: that company works with subcontractors, and real people — not corporations, actual families with boats — have been finding real treasure under this arrangement for years.

How the money actually splits

This part is public record, not a rumor. Under Florida law, 20% of anything recovered goes to the state for museum and research purposes. The remaining 80% is negotiated between the salvage company and whoever actually found it — and it’s genuinely negotiable, not a fixed number. One real legal dispute between Queens Jewels and a subcontractor called Gold Hound LLC (a case you can read yourself — more on that below) shows a subcontractor arrangement with a full 50% cut going to the crew that did the diving.

The Schmitt family is the best public example of how well this can actually work: real people, working as subcontractors for Queens Jewels, who’ve been finding coins and gold chain off Florida’s coast for two decades, including a $1 million find as recently as 2025.

This is a real legal arrangement, not a handshake

Worth being completely honest here: this isn’t casual. Searching a contracted wreck site without being part of the permitted operation is a felony in Florida, not a slap on the wrist. The relationship between a salvage company and its subcontractors is a real legal and business partnership, with real contracts — and it can genuinely go wrong. That Gold Hound dispute I mentioned wasn’t hypothetical; it ended up in federal appeals court over who had rights to what after the two parties fell out. If you’re seriously interested, you’re entering a business arrangement, not signing up for a weekend charter. Legal counsel before you sign anything isn’t optional.

How to actually find out about this — it’s public record

This is the part that surprises people: none of this is secret or hidden behind a velvet rope.

1. Federal court records are public. The master case governing the 1715 Fleet is 1715 Fleet-Queens Jewels, LLC v. Unidentified Wrecked and Abandoned Vessel, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. You can read the actual filings — including real subcontractor disputes — for free at CourtListener.com, or through PACER for the complete federal record.

2. Florida’s Bureau of Archaeological Research (part of the Division of Historical Resources) tracks and issues the state-level permits under Florida Statute Chapter 267. This is a public agency; contract areas and permit holders are matters of public record, reachable through a standard public records request.

3. Contact the company directly. Queens Jewels is publicly active — they announce finds, work with press, and are reachable. If you’ve got a legitimate boat, dive-capable crew, and are serious about it, reaching out directly is a real option, not a fantasy.

4. The 1715 Fleet Society — a genuine nonprofit dedicated to this exact history — holds real conferences where the people who actually do this kind of work show up. If you want to make real connections in this specific world, this is where they happen.

What about the 1733 Fleet?

Worth knowing before you get too attached to a specific target: the 1733 Fleet, wrecked along the Florida Keys, doesn’t work the same way. There’s no single company holding one unified contract the way Queens Jewels does for the 1715 sites. Several of the best-documented 1733 wrecks — like the San Pedro — are now protected Archaeological Preserves, open for diving and viewing but permanently closed to salvage. Other 1733 sites have older historical permit holders from decades past, but there’s no active, organized subcontractor pipeline like the one built around the 1715 Fleet. If sub-leasing is genuinely the plan, the 1715 Fleet is where the real, working system actually exists today.

Oh, and you’re still actually scuba diving

Somewhere in all this talk of federal court records and 80/20 splits, it’s worth remembering: the actual job is still diving, and diving carries the same real risks here as it does anywhere else. Depth limits, decompression, currents, boat traffic in a shared work area, staying within your certification level — none of that goes away just because there’s a paycheck-shaped incentive at the bottom. Get properly certified, dive with people you trust, and don’t let the promise of gold talk you into pushing past what you’re actually trained for.

And yes — you’re diving in Florida’s coastal Atlantic waters. There are sharks. It’s genuinely a minor, well-understood risk that thousands of divers and fishermen share these waters with every single day without incident — but let’s be honest, “died searching for pirate gold” and “got nibbled by a shark while searching for pirate gold” both make for a better story than most people are actually looking for. Dive smart.

The honest bottom line

This isn’t a shortcut to getting rich, and every serious account of this world will tell you the odds of a life-changing find are long. But it is a real, legal, well-documented path into genuine Spanish treasure fleet salvage that doesn’t require you to become a maritime archivist first. The research has already been done by people who’ve spent decades on it. The legal framework already exists. If you’ve got the boat and the crew, the actual next step isn’t a library in Spain — it’s a phone call and a lawyer.