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In 1975 Olin Frick told his friend John Casque to quit playing sandlot baseball and chasing girls, and instead help him search for sunken treasure. Gasque, then a physicist by profession, agreed—a decision he will never regret. Plumbing the waters around the West Indies, Gasque, 30, and Frick, 46, have discovered two 19th century ships, about $250,000 in gold, Ming dynasty china and pearls, and a seemingly worthless old wreck that may turn out to be the most precious find of all. The ship, discovered two years ago in 30 ft. of clear water 60 miles north of Haiti, is, according to a growing number of scholars, Christopher Columbus' Pinta, sister ship to the Nina and the flagship Santa Maria, which is believed to have sunk in a hurricane, eight years after the discovery of North America in 1492. Frick and his partner hope to verify that theory by raising the galleon intact — a six-month process they will begin next month.
—By Claudia Wallis