Wayne Mushrow often went scuba diving with his brother Lloyd and their friend Walter Bennet. Searching for ship wrecks and trying to find anything interesting enough to keep was a hobby of theirs.
On this 26th day of November 1981, He was about to make a very memorable find. Wayne had no way of knowing that today he would discover an artifact more than 350 years old.
Mushrow and company were diving in an area near Isle Aux Morts, NL (a.k.a. island of the dead) which is located approx. 12 kilometers East of Port Aux Basques , Newfoundland, Canada. Wayne spotted what he thought to be a ship's anchor encrusted with marine growth. Further investigation found wooden planks under six inches of sand, and two canons. Just two hundred feet from shore they had discovered an ancient ship wreck.
Before long they found more interesting articles from this ship. Carefully searching through the sand they found dishes, wooden bowls, a green vase, and parts of a shoe with wooden pegs instead of nails. They also found five French Coins dated 1638. It was obvious this was a very old wreck here lightly covered with sand.
By far the most exciting and valuable discovery was about to occur, making a divers dream a reality. Mushrow spotted a tiny shining object poking up from the sand. About the size of a match head, this metallic tip was made shiny by the shifting sand only fifty feet beneath the Atlantic Ocean. Mushrow retrieved the object whose shining tip had captured his attention. Encrusted in black he had no real idea of what he had found. Later, at home he cleaned it up with steel wool and oven cleaner, and started the task of identifying what he had found.
Mushrow Astrolabe