FREE TREASURE FROM THE SEA

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 10 YEARS OLD

In the 1950s and 60s, the north and south bay beaches of Scarborough used to get packed like sardines with thousands of holiday-makers every day throughout Summer. With ice cream stalls, crab stalls and amusement arcades dotted around the beach area, people quite often carried loose coins, and many dropped them. If you've ever dropped money into soft sand, you'll know that in most cases, IT'S GONE!

So by the end of a Summer season, the beaches (particularly the south beach) would be riddled with lost money. Sometimes it was easy to make a few bob by just 'nicking' a wire-mesh collander out of the kitchen at home and go down to the beach, get on your hands and knees, and simply sift the sand. As kids, this was a great game, sometimes with huge rewards, because you'd often find wallets, rings, necklaces and all sorts of stuff lost by the people. I've known friends who have even found Roman coins from centuries ago.

The big treasure came when the big storms hit Scarborough on a Spring tide. The seas would rise quite a few feet above normal, and sometimes even flooded across the seafront roads. At these times, with huge waves hitting the beach and then rolling back into the sea, would cause the top layer of sand to be sucked into the sea, exposing many of the lost coins. Hundreds of locals; especially fishermen with waist high waders; would wander up and down the beach watching with eagle eyes for coins to appear out of the sand as the waves rolled out. Sometimes, the coin might be 20 feet away and to get to it meant risking being hit with the next wave, and I've seen many a strong man diving onto a penny coin and being hit by a 20 foot wave.

No matter whether it was daytime or evening in the dark using torches, everyone always managed to collect at least a few coins, because literally between any one wave, there would be up to a dozen coins exposed in a 20 foot strtetch of beach. It was great fun, and could be quite lucrative. I have walked away with up to ten shillings, which was more than a day's wage in those days.

It was not unusual to see two grown men dive onto a single sixpence, and then have a scrap over who saw it first.

I don't know whether this still happens today because I no longer live in Scarborough, and the council ploughs the beach every day to keep it neat for holidaymakers in the Summer.