When warships sink, it’s usually during a battle where they’re shelled, torpedoed, bombed or rammed and heroic deeds are recorded in history books. But not so heroic, and surely distressful for the captains, is when they have to scuttle their ships.

How many times have we come upon the word “purported” when perusing or researching stories about sunken or buried treasures? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “purport” as: “to imply, profess or claim, often falsely.”

In 1961, when divers excavated the hull of the CSS Neuse, a Confederate Civil War ironclad gunboat burned and scuttled in 1865 in the Neuse River, Kinston, North Carolina, they didn’t know it would be so massive.

He drops eight small pieces of silver into my hand, smiles and says, “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar.” Then he shows me a one ounce eight reale (royal) coin, better known as a peso or piece of eight, minted in New Spain in the 1700s. “Sometimes they were cut into eight pieces, like a pie, in order to make change,” he says.

When Bonnie Buckler and John Santulli settled into a waterfront table for lunch at the Ocean Grill Restaurant, Vero Beach, Florida, they spotted a strange object offshore. It was only about a quarter of a mile away and at first appeared to be some sort of a marine creature. But it wasn’t moving and barely broke the surface, its shadowy outline looming in the clear blue water.