One thing is for sure, this season of Cooper’s Treasure on Discovery is full of rare period nautical items and exciting finds that has Darrell Miklos and his crew energized and on point with astronaut and diehard treasure hound Gordon Cooper’s maps made from space.
In our exclusive clip, recovery expert Mike Perna explains the amazing find as Miklos and his crew underwater bring up a piece of lead sheathing.
Perna said: “The crumpled-up LED sheeting is the quintessential shipwreck it’s a piece of lead that was nailed to the hull of the vessel and as the vessel came in and struck the bottom it accordioned up as it got ripped off when we find something like that it is an absolute indication that the shipwreck came through this area.”
Imagine, as Gordon Cooper, rocketing around the Earth in a small ship with such tight quarters that he barely had room to turn his head, had to keep his sanity and fight muscle cramps as he could not even stand up.
But all the while he did his assigned job for NASA, he was also making assiduous notes and taking photographs of the treasure routes from the old world to the new world. As he circled the Earth, Gordon Cooper especially focused on the shallow and crystal clear waters of the Caribbean and southern American coast. He knew something.
His educated hunches bore some real fruit as Darrell Miklos, gifted these precious maps upon Cooper’s passing, is now retracing the coordinates and doing focused dives based on the “anomalies. ”
These were odd metallic structures under the water near the reefs of many islands in these seas that can go from glassy and calm to churning and roiling ship destroyers in just a second, aided in their destructive ways by razor sharp coral and rock just below the surface.
The last time we saw Darrell Miklos in action, his crew that includes Perna, Eric Schmitt, and marine archaeologist Jim Sinclair used a plane with Eric aboard as they scouted the turquoise blue seas in an area called Dragon’s Teeth, a name given to this area by Gordon.
This episode also introduced Nemo, a high tech submarine to help them find artifacts.
One of the areas they found to have a lot of items were in Rocky Cove and also Reef’s Edge. These appeared to be the shipwreck-laden Dragon’s Teeth area Gordon had notated.
Mike Perna is a mag specialist and he got major “hits” indicating metal on the floor of the sea. This got Darrel and Jim down below as they used Nemo then free dived and found a Colonial anchor.
But this lead sheath opens up a whole new line of possibilities as the men try to piece together the debris pattern and field of this wreck as they continue to search for recoverable treasure.
Make sure to tune in as Miklos and the crew are uncovering this elusive wreckage and trying to pin it to a historical event that might offer more clues.
Cooper’s Treasure airs Friday at 9 pm ET/PT on Discovery.