Dr. E. Lee Spence, a marine archaeologist and modern pioneer of underwater exploration, has had a lifetime fascination with treasures and maps. He describes his maps as the “natural byproduct” of his research to locate sunken ships. In 1970, Spence discovered the submarine H. L. Hunley, which sank on Feb. 17, 1864. His maps proved to be more than a natural byproduct. They were a necessary tool for preserving his discovery before souvenir hunters could destroy it. “I read Treasure Island and was fascinated by its tale of pirates and buried treasure. I started burying coins for others to find, imagining the thrill it would give the finders,” Spence says. His propensity for hiding coins continues to this day: “When we break a cup or plate, we don’t throw it out. We bury the pieces outside. Someday someone is going to dig them up.” Spence started drawing maps when he was young. “Not long ago, I went looking for a jar of silver coins that I buried in the dirt floor of our family carport when I was a child and we were living in Georgia. It was money saved from my paper route. “I still had the map I had drawn showing where I buried those coins, but I still couldn’t find them. The house was gone, the carport was gone. All of the locators or signposts I had recorded on my ‘treasure map’ were long gone,” he recalls. 
While Spence’s paper route money disappeared with the landscape, that was not the case with silver dimes and quarters he had secreted under the corner of his family’s home on Sullivan’s Island, S.C., when he was a teenager. Decades later, he took his son Matthew to look for them. Using a metal detector, Matthew, then just 10 years old, quickly found his father’s buried trove of coins. Beside burying treasures and drawing maps, Spence also started collecting maps in his youth. “I could buy antique maps for 25 cents. That was half my weekly allowance,” he says. When Spence went off to college, he went to the National Archives. He found out that the Government Printing Office was still selling 19th century maps for their original-issue price, as long as the Printing Office still had them in its inventory. The original prices used to be 50 cents or a dollar. “I bought many navigational charts from the 1800s. The most expensive one was $2.50,” Spence remembers. Spence sits in his treasure-filled office outside Columbia, S.C. A bank building with a 3-foot thick vault door serves as his repository for many of the shipwreck coins and valuable artifacts he has discovered under the oceans of the world. He still buys antique maps but now pays thousands of dollars for them.
Mapmaking As Art
Spence pursued mapmaking studies and eventually a career in finding shipwrecks. However, when he went to college, there were no programs in underwater archaeology. 
“Because I figured I would need mapping skills, I started out in civil engineering. I later took a number of cartography courses, including one in interpretation of aerial photography and another in computer mapping,” he says. Spence says that he loves drawing maps and explains how maps can influence people’s perception: “On a flat map of North of America, Greenland is gigantic in comparison to the way the same island appears on a globe. Depending on who is drawing a map, it might be used to twist realities and effect political or other goals. “In the old, days maps were used to convince people to explore and settle the interior of our country. Look at a highway map versus a map made for commercial interests. They can be vastly different.”
Related Articles
- Forbidden City Treasures Exhibited at Met Museum
- Helping Submariners Breathe More Easily
Spence got inspiration from shipwreck charts in the National Geographic Magazine. Some of his maps show how to get to specific shipwrecks that he has found, while others are based largely on the historical records of shipwrecks rather than on fieldwork. Some maps deal with a special period like the Civil War. Others cover hundreds of wrecks spanning hundreds of years. “Maps I draw for publication are usually decorative and meant for people to hang on a wall,” he says.
Read More . . . Buried Treasures Prev – 1 | 2 | – Next >>
Similar Posts:
- James Spader hired full-time for ‘The Office’
- Remembering ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ ‘Brady Bunch’ creator Sherwood Schwartz
- Nicolas Cage Could Be Investigated For Child Abuse
- Discovered Leonardo Da Vinci Painting to Be Exhibited
- ‘Jeopardy!’ Host Injured Chasing Burglar
