Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Museum
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Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Museum
The Mel Fisher Maritime Museum is located at 200 Greene Street, Key West, Florida. The museum contains an extensive collection of artifacts from 17th century shipwrecks, such as the ''Henrietta Marie'', ''Nuestra Señora de Atocha'' and '' Santa Margarita''. Also included are the shipwrecks and artifacts of The Santa Clara, a Conquistador-era galleon (1564), The Guerrero & Nimble. A rotating gallery exists on the second floor of the museum and is currently displaying an exhibit or artifacts belonging to Cuban Rafters, Balseros, who arrive to Key West in hand-crafted vessels. Terrestrial archaeological sites include The African Cemetery of Key West, located on Higgs Beach. The museum is named for founder Mel Fisher and was created as a 501(c)3 non-profit charity organization, thus Fisher's fortune is not financially linked to the museum. It is a museum, a lab, and a nationally recognized research facility. Within the museum is a fully operating Conservation and Archaeology lab, wh ...
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Maritime Archaeology
Maritime archaeology (also known as marine archaeology) is a discipline within archaeology as a whole that specifically studies human interaction with the sea, lakes and rivers through the study of associated physical remains, be they vessels, shore-side facilities, port-related structures, cargoes, human remains and submerged landscapes. A specialty within maritime archaeology is nautical archaeology, which studies ship construction and use. As with archaeology as a whole, maritime archaeology can be practised within the historical, industrial, or prehistoric periods. An associated discipline, and again one that lies within archaeology itself, is underwater archaeology, which studies the past through any submerged remains be they of maritime interest or not. An example from the prehistoric era would be the remains of submerged settlements or deposits now lying under water despite having been dry land when sea levels were lower. The study of submerged aircraft lost in lakes, r ...
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Key West, Florida
Key West ( es, Cayo Hueso) is an island in the Straits of Florida, within the U.S. state of Florida. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Sigsbee Park, Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Island, Florida, Stock Island, it constitutes the City of Key West. The Island of Key West is about long and wide, with a total land area of . It lies at the southernmost end of U.S. Route 1, the longest north–south road in the United States. Key West is about north of Cuba at their closest points. It is also southwest of Miami by air, about by road, and north-northeast of Havana. The City of Key West is the county seat of Monroe County, Florida, Monroe County, which includes a majority of the Florida Keys and part of the Everglades. The total land area of the city is . The official city motto is "One Human Family". Key West is the southernmost city in the contiguous United States and the westernmost island connected by highway in th ...
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Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida and Cuba; it is the only state that borders both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Spanning , Florida ranks 22nd in area among the 50 states, and with a population of over 21 million, it is the third-most populous. The state capital is Tallahassee, and the most populous city is Jacksonville. The Miami metropolitan area, with a population of almost 6.2 million, is the most populous urban area in Florida and the ninth-most populous in the United States; other urban conurbations with over one million people are Tampa Bay, Orlando, and Jacksonville. Various Native American groups have inhabited Florida for at least 14,000 years. In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León became the first k ...
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Henrietta Marie
The ''Henrietta Marie'' was a slave ship that carried captive Africans to the West Indies, where they were sold as slaves. The ship wrecked at the southern tip of Florida on its way home to England, and is one of only a few wrecks of slave ships that have been identified. History The ''Henrietta Marie'' carried a crew of about eighteen men. It was probably built in France sometime in the 17th century. The ship came into English possession late in the 17th century, possibly as a war prize during the War of the Grand Alliance. It was put to use in the Atlantic slave trade, making at least two voyages carrying Africans to slavery in the West Indies. On its first voyage, in 1697-1698, the ship carried more than 200 people from Africa that were sold as slaves in Barbados. In 1699 the ''Henrietta Marie'' sailed from England on the first leg of the triangular trade route with a load of trade goods, including iron and copper bars, pewter utensils, glass beads, cloth and brandy. The shi ...
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Nuestra Señora De Atocha
''Nuestra Señora de Atocha'' ( es, Our Lady of Atocha) was a Spanish treasure galleon and the most widely known vessel of a fleet of ships that sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. At the time of her sinking, ''Nuestra Señora de Atocha'' was heavily laden with copper, silver, gold, tobacco, gems, and indigo from Spanish ports at Cartagena and Porto Bello in New Granada (present-day Colombia and Panama, respectively) and Havana, bound for Spain. The ''Nuestra Señora de Atocha'' was named for a holy shrine in Madrid, Spain. It was a heavily armed Spanish galleon that served as the almirante (rear guard) for the Spanish fleet. It would trail behind the other ships in the flota to prevent an attack from the rear. Much of the wreck of ''Nuestra Señora de Atocha'' was famously recovered by an American commercial treasure hunting expedition in 1985. Following a lengthy court battle against the State of Florida, the finders were ultimately awarded sole ownership of ...
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Santa Margarita (shipwreck)
The ''Santa Margarita'' was a Spanish ship that sank in a hurricane in the Florida Keys about west of the island of Key West Key West ( es, Cayo Hueso) is an island in the Straits of Florida, within the U.S. state of Florida. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Island, it cons ... in 1622. The saga of the Santa Margarita begins in 1622. Namesake of the patron saint of homeless people, midwives and reformed prostitutes, Santa Margarita was a Spanish galleon of 600 tons, armed with twenty-five cannon. One of a fleet of 28 ships, she was voyaging to Spain with an enormous cargo of plundered New World treasures. In registered wealth, the Santa Margarita carried 166,574 silver “pieces of eight” treasure coins, more than 550 ingots of silver weighing some 10,000 pounds, and over 9,000 ounces of gold in the form of bars, discs and bits. Additionally, there was contraband — a fortune in ...
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Mel Fisher
Mel Fisher (August 21, 1922 – December 19, 1998) was an American treasure hunter best known for finding the 1622 wreck of the ''Nuestra Señora de Atocha'' in Florida waters. Personal life Fisher was an Indiana-born former chicken farmer who eventually moved to California. He opened the first diving shop in the state, it was called "See Da Sea". He attended Purdue University and was a member of the Delta Chi (ΔΧ) Fraternity. In 1953, he married Dolores (Deo) Horton who became his business partner. She was one of the first women to learn how to dive and set a women's record by staying underwater for 50 hours. Mel and Deo had five children: sons Terry, Dirk, Kim and Kane, and daughter Taffi. On July 20, 1975 Mel's oldest son Dirk, his wife Angel, and diver Rick Gage died after their boat sank due to bilge pump failure during their quest for treasure. Mel ventured through decades treasure hunting in the Florida Keys with the motto ''Today's the Day''. The Atocha Fisher found th ...
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Slave Ship
Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast in West Africa. Atlantic slave trade In the early 1600s, more than a century after the arrival of Europeans to the Americas, demand for unpaid labor to work plantations made slave-trading a profitable business. The Atlantic slave trade peaked in the last two decades of the 18th century, during and following the Kongo Civil War. To ensure profitability, the owners of the ships divided their hulls into holds with little headroom, so they could transport as many slaves as possible. Unhygienic conditions, dehydration, dysentery and scurvy led to a high mortality rate, on average 15% and up to a third of captives. Often the ships carried hundreds of slaves, who were chained tightly to plank beds. For example, the slave ship ''Henrietta Marie ...
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WLRN-TV
WLRN-TV (channel 17) is a secondary PBS member television station in Miami, Florida, United States. It is owned by the Miami-Dade County Public Schools district alongside NPR member WLRN-FM (91.3); the two outlets are operated under a management agreement by Friends of WLRN, the stations' fundraising arm. Both stations share studios on Northeast 15th Street and Northeast 1st Avenue in Miami, while WLRN-TV's transmitter is located at McTyre Park in Miami Gardens. WLRN-TV is one of two PBS member stations serving the Miami–Fort Lauderdale market, the other being WPBT (channel 2), owned by South Florida PBS. Originally a secondary station to channel 2 when it was WTHS-TV, the effective split of community and public licensee in the late 1970s made channel 17 the only TV station operated by the school system. WLRN-TV's local productions include documentaries and special-interest programs on South Florida, and it also airs independently produced Spanish-language programs on Sundays. ...
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Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area and is the largest city within the greater Mojave Desert. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city, known primarily for its gambling, shopping, fine dining, entertainment, and nightlife. The Las Vegas Valley as a whole serves as the leading financial, commercial, and cultural center for Nevada. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous for its luxurious and extremely large casino-hotels together with their associated activities. It is a top three destination in the United States for business conventions and a global leader in the hospitality industry, claiming more AAA Five Diamond hotels than any other city in the world. Today, Las Vegas annually ranks as one ...
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Miami Herald
The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by the McClatchy Company and headquartered in Doral, Florida, a List of communities in Miami-Dade County, Florida, city in western Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County and the Miami metropolitan area, several miles west of Greater Downtown Miami, Downtown Miami.Contact Us
" ''Miami Herald''. Retrieved January 24, 2014. "The Miami Herald 3511 NW 91 Ave. Miami, FL 33172" - While the address says "Miami, FL", the location is actually in Doral. Se
this map of Miami-Dade County municipalities
an

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List Of Maritime Museums In The United States
List of maritime museums in the United States is a sortable list of American museums which display objects related to ships and water travel. Many of these maritime museums have museum ships in their collections. Member museums of the Council of American Maritime Museums (CAMM) are indicated in the last column. Museum ships not affiliated with a museum appear on a separate list of museum ships. Table See also * U.S. Navy museums References * * * * * * * {{cite book , last = Stanford , first = Joseph , title = Sea History's Guide to American and Canadian Maritime Museums , publisher = National Maritime Historical Society , year = 1990 , location = Croton-on-Hudson, New York Croton-on-Hudson is a village in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 8,327 at the 2020 United States census over 8,070 at the 2010 census. It is located in the town of Cortlandt as part of New York City's northern subur ... , isbn = 0-930248-03-1 * ...
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