A boat docked Thursday in Key West carrying an estimated million-dollars-plus worth of 17th century gold and artifacts treasure salvagers say they recovered from a shipwrecked Spanish galleon.

The pieces include a gold bar, eight gold chains and 11 ornate gold pieces found in approximately 18 feet of water about 40 miles west of Key West.

Marine archaeologist Dr. Duncan Mathewson, a partner in Blue Water Ventures, says experts believe the items will point them to the final resting place of the Spanish galleon Santa Margarita that sank in a 1622 storm.

"We know a lot about how the ship came in and sank and then progressively broke up. We know from the documentation, we know from the salvage efforts back in the 17th century that there probably is upwards of 150 to 200 million of artifacts and of treasures still left on the Santa Margarita.”

Mathewson says among the most intriguing discoveries was an 8-inch-long closed metal box. A small gap in its seal allows a glimpse at the contents, thought to be pearls or diamonds.

An initial cache of treasure and artifacts from the Santa Margarita was discovered in 1980 by the late shipwreck salvor Mel Fisher. Blue Water Ventures has been searching for the remainder of the Margarita wreck site for two years.

Angola was a community of escaped slaves, black Seminoles and self-emancipated Africans who made their home in the early 1800’s in Southwest Florida. Archaeologists are conducting the first underwater survey of the Manatee River in Bradenton searching for the town that has since disappeared. But so far it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Amy Tardif reports.

Shrimping came to Fort Myers Beach in the early 1960's - soon after record numbers of jumbo pink shrimp were discovered in the Gulf of Mexico, 25 miles off Naples. The fledgling fleet soon outgrew the Naples docks and settled in San Carlos Island, where it's been based ever since. What might appear to be nothing more than a tiny fishing hamlet in the shadow of Matanzas Pass Bridge is actually an important contributor to Lee County's coffers. WGCU's Christine Buckley spent the afternoon with some of the local shrimp industry's main players to explore the trade.

This December 7th marked the 65th Anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - which propelled the United States into World War II. A 92 year old Ft. Myers woman was an eyewitness to the attack. Monica Conter Benning was an Army Nurse. Here’s her story.

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Monica and Barney’s romance was dramatized in the film “Pearl Harbor”. Barney died in 2005.

On November 2nd, 1982 a black woman was elected to the Fort Myers City Council. Veronica Shoemaker was the first African American to win an elected office in the City of Palms.

As "A Florida Life Remembers" returns to the airwaves, we hear from Mr. Pat McCutcheon. Born in Fort Myers in 1921, and raised under Jim Crow, McCutcheon organized the voter registration that ultimately led to Veronica Shoemaker's electoral victory 24 years ago.

The 85 year old still works part-time. During his life he's been a taylor, a shopkeeper and a storeowner. His hobby is collecting model trains.

"A Florida Life Remembered is produced in cooperation with the Lee County Public Library System.

The devastating Florida hurricanes of 1926 and 1928 are highlighted in a new exhibit that opens today at the Clewiston Museum. It’s part of a weeklong effort to shine the light on two deadly tropical systems largely forgotten by residents. The 1928 storm killed more than 3-thousand people after a Lake Okeechobee dike flooded, sending a torrent of water into nearby towns. The group ‘Project HOPE’ is helping with the Clewiston festivities. Organizer Angelica Pena says a highlight is a discussion with a handful of survivors.

“It’s really hard to say how many are still out there because as we look at history and identify certain names, we are then faced with the difficulty in actually finding them. So I really don’t know how many we would have actually still living.”

Pena spoke on W-G-C-U’s Gulf Coast Live. She says the program also includes survivors of last year’s Hurricane Wilma and presentations from local disaster officials.

Southwest Florida was a top spot for training pilots for action in World War II. After the war some of the servicemen returned to the area and some married local girls and made it their home. Bill Smith senior came from Tennessee to learn to be a pilot. He washed out of flight training school in Arcadia but stayed in the area during the war years - assigned to an Air Sea Rescue Unit. Here's his story:

Hear more about the fly boys and others who learned to soar over the skies of Southwest Florida on Untold Stories: A Wing and a Prayer - a production of WGCU pbulic television.

Fifty years ago today the luxury liner Andrea Doria collided with another ship - the Stocholm - off the coast of New England and sank. Fifty people perished. Andrew Stevens of Rotonda was on board the Andrea Doria - with his parents. They were returning to the United States after living in Paris for two years. As Stevens recalls, the collission around 11:30 at night - in a deep fog.


“it was very foggy. I had gone out on deck about twenty minutes before and I could not see the bow of our ship the Doria, nor could I see when looking over our the rail of our ship the wake of the ship passing by the ship.”


Stevens and his parents escaped down a rope to a bobbing life boat and were eventually picked up by another ship - the Isle De France. WGCU Public Televisions will broadcast the story of the Andrea Doria tonight at 8:00 on "Secrets of the Dead".

Before the canals…before the houses…before the traffic…
the early settlers in what is now Cape Coral lived simple, country lifestyles –fishing, farming, and raising cattle.
This month, WGCU-TV’s Untold Stories series looks at Cape Coral –the early years, the boom years, and the future.
Pat Molter Emerson recalls what life was like when she was a young girl, before Jack and Leonard Rosen transformed the land into a bustling city.

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