Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society Museum

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OPEN NOW - Closes at 5:00pm

Housed in an early 20th-century stone building in the center of Old Town that once served as a Naval Armory, this museum displays the extraordinary collection of artifacts salvaged from sunken Spanish merchant and war ships. The dazzling array, largely recovered from the two galleons Santa Margarita and Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which were sunk by a hurricane in 1622, includes emeralds, gold and silver coins, a variety of gold bars and exquisite jewelry. An 18-minute video provides a historical context for the display and relates the search for sunken treasure carried out by Fisher and his team. Other displays include exhibits of navigation instruments and of Spanish colonial trade in the West Indies. Special exhibits, created by the museum to become traveling shows, are often on display on the museum’s second floor. One such exhibit, concerning the slave ship Henrietta Marie, is well worth seeing.