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This shows the strength of a river. this washed up on Caterpillar Island.....

Yes! That's the famous photo that gets passed around! Funny...

Now I might as well cover this here (there will be more to come) but, turns out there are some ship wrecks on the shoreline of Caterpillar Island. Snag points for a money bag passing by? Here is a map of them and a photo the one at the northern tip of Caterpillar Island. Did Tosaw dive these wrecks?

Credit* Dan Bullard in both cases.

The ship wreck at the northern end of Caterpillar Island was removed a long time ago (maybe before 1971) according to Amazon.  It used to be plotted on the GPO topographical maps but doesn't show up in the aerial photographs of the area.

The six(?) shipwrecks in the channel on the southern end of CI were probably old ships that were tied up there, abandoned, and left to sink.  I have not seen any indication on them on maps or in photographs.

Don't forget that the money was probably found at an elevation that was higher than the shipwrecks.

Do you know if Tosaw explored this area, this wrecks?

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This shows the strength of a river. this washed up on Caterpillar Island.....

Yes! That's the famous photo that gets passed around! Funny...

Now I might as well cover this here (there will be more to come) but, turns out there are some ship wrecks on the shoreline of Caterpillar Island. Snag points for a money bag passing by? Here is a map of them and a photo the one at the northern tip of Caterpillar Island. Did Tosaw dive these wrecks?

Credit* Dan Bullard in both cases.

The ship wreck at the northern end of Caterpillar Island was removed a long time ago (maybe before 1971) according to Amazon.  It used to be plotted on the GPO topographical maps but doesn't show up in the aerial photographs of the area.

The six(?) shipwrecks in the channel on the southern end of CI were probably old ships that were tied up there, abandoned, and left to sink.  I have not seen any indication on them on maps or in photographs.

Don't forget that the money was probably found at an elevation that was higher than the shipwrecks.

Do you know if Tosaw explored this area, this wrecks?

Tosaw reportedly explored the Tina Bar area extensively including doing some things in the main channel.  If the North end wreck was still there at the time, then he probably did check it out.  Galen Cook reportedly has Tosaw's papers and maybe Bruce Smith has some knowledge of this or could check it out.

Those wrecks have probably been explored multiple times. 

Looking at Google maps, it appears the large wood ship wreck is still visible on the tip of Caterpillar Island.

How far back does Google earth go? I haven't used it in a long time....

I posted some older pics that came from the Clark County GIS...you can zoom in pretty good, but the aerials are old...

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Looking at Google maps, it appears the large wood ship wreck is still visible on the tip of Caterpillar Island.

Great eye!  I looked at it on Google Earth and went back a few years and found the attached image.  I'm going to look at Tina Bar next and see if I can see the effects of erosion over the years.

Shutter's shipwreck seems to be that of a good size ship.  Not like the small river fishing and recreational boats that make up most of the other Caterpillar Island wrecks.

I think the rest of the wrecks from Bullard's website have been removed. I zoomed in, but didn't see any other wrecks around the island...

I've been pondering something for a bit, and thought I'd throw it out there and see if somebody has some insight.  Water saturated soil can have some strange properties.  If you've ever been to a beach and walked in loose sand at the waters edge and sank  to your ankles, or been stuck in "quicksand", you get the idea.  Could the found ransom have migrated from one level of soil to another because of buoyancy or density differences? 

Normally, in mostly dry soil, I would say "no".  But, because the area where the money was found was prone to be water saturated sand, could the sand become "loose" enough to allow lighter objects to float and heaver objects to sink? 

I've been pondering something for a bit, and thought I'd throw it out there and see if somebody has some insight.  Water saturated soil can have some strange properties.  If you've ever been to a beach and walked in loose sand at the waters edge and sank  to your ankles, or been stuck in "quicksand", you get the idea.  Could the found ransom have migrated from one level of soil to another because of buoyancy or density differences? 

Normally, in mostly dry soil, I would say "no".  But, because the area where the money was found was prone to be water saturated sand, could the sand become "loose" enough to allow lighter objects to float and heaver objects to sink?

Interesting notion, Nimi, and worthy of investigation.  Then add that the bundolas were compressed and many bills stuck together. Did they all migrate upwards from a deeper, denser depth?

I used to run a company that picked rocks and cleaned beaches. It was named Sandsifter, and the machines we used were modified potato harvesters. In that work I observed that the ground is not static, especially over time. Many things, such as rocks or bundolas, will float in soil and move upwards. I attributed this to long-term dynamics such as frost heaves, drenching rains saturating soils for short periods of time and creating a fluid mass - or a flood in the case of T-Bar.

Perhaps the bundolas were deposited by the dredge in '74 or so, then compressed over the next few years and by '79 and '80 had floated to the surface a few millimeters at a time?