DIVING FOR UNDER-WATER TREASURE

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 34, 10 February 1937, Page 16 (Supplement)

DIVING FOR UNDER-WATER TREASURE

ADVENTUROUS TASK

Bullion at Bottom of Sea

signs are in the wind that, some day, and before very long, too, some concise paragraphs will find their way into parts of newspapers that nobody reads except the people who are hounds for business indices. The paragraph will say that met’al markets are on the upgrade, which may seem to you an undramatic enough annoucement, writes John Eden in the “Christian Science Monitor’’. But if you happen to know where to look, you will be able to find some men those dry-as-dust words will cause to break out into their equivalent of a sailor’s hornpipe. The men are professional divers. And a rise* in metal markets means they’ll be able to get into their dresses and take to the water again. There’s work enough for them to do at this minute, but it is rising metal markets that will have to warrant paving them money to do it. It’s no idle —or shoestring—dream to hire a diver to do a job of work, for it isn’t everyone who has a taste for underwater work. If you like it, you like it. But if you don’t, you couldn’t malic yourself do it in a thousand years. If cn© talks much about the existence of sunken treasure these days it’s apt to be attributed to having seen too many movies. It’s curious so many people think that all the sunken treasure there ever was was found long ago. Nothing of tho kind. Of course, there is sunken treasure and sunken treasure. There may be very few of Napoleon’s jewels lying around on the floor of the ocean, but there is known to be money and bullion. And then there is that other form of treasure which is redeemable metal.

Why, for instance, this very minute, odds and ends of metal are slipping overboard, off ships loading for tho Far East, due to the usual incidents of hurry arid carelessness. That metal, in time, will turn up on the lists of salvage companies, and divers will earn a tidy sum recovering it. And that’s in addition to what is already known to b© down below, merely waiting for the day when someone has money enough to send men down after it. Most of us would be surprised enough if we stopped to think that, taking so much as a Staten Island ferry on the way home from work at night, or a coastwise steamship to Boston, we cut through water that flow's over enough sunken treasure to keep generations of divers happy for many a long day.

Don’t think divers are what their general outlines indicate, just slowmoving hunks, with hoses sticking out of their hats. They are interesting, often picturesquely interesting, men, who have definite and interesting ideas about their life and work. There is even a philosophy that goes with the business of diving. It is that, no matter what the burdens of life, there’s nothing like d.ving to rid you of tliqjn.

And that brings us to Mr Frank Crilley, who has what most people would accept as a satisfactory reference iu a Congressional Medal or Honour, bestowed on him at tho hands of President Coolidge, for going down in 306 feet of water in Hawaiian waters in 1915, to get a fellow diver who was all tangled up in liis own lines. In case you have any doubt, 306 feet is a great deal of water.

Ask Frank Crilley what the requisites are, for a professional diver, and be will laugh) the old-line navy' man’s dry laugh and say, “A strong back and a weak head.”

The strong back part is accurate enough, and ho could add to it a high*test knowledge of seamanship, and of machinery, a tendency to bo calm us an oyster in emergencies. The weak head part isn’t accurate at all. What he means is a habit of not insisting on life in soft places. But the proof that Crilley doesn’t think diving is either an outlandish or particularly hazardous profession—if you go about it sensibly

—is to be found in the fact that, ho brought up bis two children, practically from sprighood, fo dive. Not carelessly or with jroor equipment, but properly. Nt that all divers —the best of them, too—don’t have adventures. Look at Tom Eadie, and the S-4. As for Crilley, the Congressional Medal doesn’t by any means signalise the only real adventure he ever had—and he’s got some years as a diver ahead of him yet. What is there, lying around under water, that makes divers wish someone

would hustle around and get the money to put them to work?

Well, everyone who reads newspapers —more or less—is familiar with Mr Simon Lake’s project for recovering treasure from R. M. S. Hussar, wlijch is down in 72 feet o( water, or thereabouts, in the East river, in the general neighbourhood of 149th street.

The Hussar is classed as a war prize, and the Navy Department has granted Mr Lake a concession to recover her, or at least what is sujjposed to be within her, which is money. They are working on that job at intervals with an ingenious inclined steel tube, hooked to a scow, which allows divers to proceeed down tho tube, and work out of a diving hatch, rather than make the whole descent over the side of a scow from the top. Crilley is Simon Lake’s boss diver. Never call a real diver a deep-sea diver. They probably won't say anything if you do, but they will bo thinking, “Where do you think divers work? In bathtubs,” You call them master divers. They may work in 30 feet or in 300, but anything you’re looking for in the way of characteristics of diving experience you can get in 30 feet just as well as in 300—and do. Of course, no one knows what is In the Iluasar. She was a Revolutionary irigate, on her way to America in 1780 with a companion ship, apparently carrying pay for the British forces. When she got into New York harbour sho bad word that there was trouble ahead, and she put about for Narragansett bay to join the rest of the British fleet. But, going up tho East river, she stuck on Pot Rock (since removed) and, when she got off, though she could make headway, she was also leaking; so they anchored her in the Little Hell Gate, at what is now approximately 149th street. The it became clear she .couldn’t take of the w ater and, as there Tere some little inlets not far away, they

decided to put iu where they could ground her. Getting over a little reef, they put a line ashore and tied the frigate to a tree. But there was so much water in her that she began to settle. As it turned out, her stern was hanging over an underwater cliff, and pretty soon the ropes wouldn’t hold; in fact, nothing would hold, and she slid off and sank.

Now, maybe this diving operation of Simon Lake’s is after treasure which doesn’t exist. Hardly likely, though. The British Admiralty lias never been conspicuously known for engaging in wildcat hunts, and it sent over two expeditions to see if they could get at tho sunken frigate. That was shortly before 1800. Naturally, no ono on the American side of the water ever has had-access to the British Admiralty records, which would show accurately whether there was a pay shipment aboard or not. But if there wasn’t any pay shipment, there still is the'frigate. Metal, even when it has been in the water for 156 years, is still valuable. What else is lying around in New York harbour, worth divers’ time. Well there is such a trifle as a cruiser lying right off Jones Beach, near Fire Island Light. There js a battleship at the very door of the harbour. Up and down the whole Atlantic sea Coast there are ships worth salvaging; where there is salvaging, there is work for divers. Modern engineering has done away with some work formerly available for professional divers. Once cable laying used to mean big, fat jobs. Now a diver is lucky to get a couple of days’ work when there is such a job as laying a cable across the Harlem river; because a lot of tho work is what you might call machine-made, and a cable can be thrown across tho Harlem river in a couple of hours. It used to take days or even weeks.

Most of us ar© familiar with pictures of Dr AVilliam Beebe's bathysphere, and with tho extent to which divers have been used on such scientific expeditions. Many expeditions include divers in the personnel. Crilley has tho pragmatic view about archaeology. Of course he agrees that it’s fine in its place. “Sure, archaelogy is all right,” he says, “hut what a diver is interested in is gilt.” Which means that the kind of sunken treasure a professional diver really likes isn’t the kind that you stuff and shellac and put in a case in a museum.