LOST TREASURE

Hokitika Guardian, 23 December 1933, Page 6

LOST TREASURE

LYINC AT BOTTOM OF OCEAN

NEARLY £35,000,000 WORTH

Nearly £35,000,000 'of treasure is lying at the bottom of the sea,- waiting to be picked up. There is a list of it in a book on “Deep-sea Salvage,” by A. Gowans 'White and Robert L. Bad- * field, published recently. It is all solid treasure in gold bars, coin of the down, and so on, and it all went down undoubtedly with the ships named in the {list, and there it unquestionably is' to this day, unless the fishes have' swallowed it. One of these days it maybe raised.

There is nearly £1,000,000 remaining to he ifted from the wreck of. the famous Lntine, whose bell, salvaged years ago, now peacefully reposes at Lloyd’s, London. A massive chair and table made of the Lutine’s timbers-may be seen at Lloyd’s, and a chair of Lntine wood also stands in the committee room of the Liverpool Underwriters’ Association. Yet the Lutine went down in 1799, and it was not until 99 years after that the timber was salvaged. Then there is the “Spanish Armada treasure-ship” beneath the waters of Tobermory Bay, in the Island of Mull, off the west 1 coast of Scotland. The popular legend fs that she had on hoard j 30.000,000 ducats.to finance the' whole] rArmad.a and the, intended, invasion of jEnglaiid. Messrs. White and Hadfield '.argue that even the Spaniards would -never have been so stupid as to put • all- their treasure in one ship and to risk it going to the "bottom or being captured. ,v.' ... . A magnificent bronze gun, ,‘about. - lift 10ng,.-bearing the letters E.R. {(Elizabeth Regina), the date 1584, the - fleur-de-lys of Francis I. of France, and the makers’ names, R. and G. Phillips, whs got out of . the wreck of the Armada vessel in ,1730. It must have been captured on an English or French ship, for it clearly was cast in England, apparently for Queen Elizabeth, and ■then either sold to the French or captured by them, before it passed to the Armada. Some gold and silver coins were recovered.

Thirty years ago a syndicate in Glasgow raised up in Tobermory Bay some stone and some iron cannon balls, som*. skulls and bones, coins, a ring and a pair of dividers. A couple of years later up came arms and a massive silver candlestick.; Then a water diviner arrived, and on his advice the seachers tried various - places in the bay and recovered several pieces of plate. Butin the.'3oo years searchers have not fohnd those 30.000,000 ducats.

! ‘lphere .we.re two more attempts, in 1912, when some “pieces of eight”—

Worth. 18 to 24 guineas apiece, it is kaid- at . the price of gold in December, 1932—were , .among the spoil, and in 1922, when, a gold ornament and a gun with the initials P. and 1., standing for Philip and Isabella,-were recovered.