RECOVERY OF SUNKEN TREASURE.

Lyell Times and Central Buller Gazette, Volume VI, Issue 280, 3 July 1886, Page 4

RECOVERY OF SUNKEN TREASURE.

The English divers and Captain R. F. Stevens, Lloyd's surveyor, lias just returned from the Island of Grand Canary, after raising a sum of no less than £90,000. This amount was lying submerged, 158 ft. deep, about a mile from the southernmost limit of the island Grand Canary. The treasure went down about two years ago in a brand new Spanish steamer called the Alphonso XII. The steamer had on board £IOO,OOO worth of Spanish dollars on their way to Cuba. The insurance on the money was effected at Lloyd's, and was paid over to the insurers after the vessel foundered. After i a lapse of over a year Captain R. F. Stevens and three English divers were sent out to Grand Canary to try and recover the sunken treasure. They succeded in bringing up nine boxes containing specie to the value of £IO,OOO each, but the tenth box could not be found, and the divers had to come away without it. The money was in the mail room almost at the bottom of the ship. The decks had to be forced by explosion, and when the mail room was reached, the plucky divers had to haul the boxes from one deck to the other until the top deck of the vessel was reached. The wreck lay on a ridge of rocks, and one of the fears entertained before the explosion was effected was that the force might precipitate the vessel to almost fathomless depths. Fortunately the fear was not realised, but the explosion sent to the surface thousands of dead fish.