What Divers Find in The Harbour

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 268, 2 February 1928, Page 13

What Divers Find in The Harbour

Sydney Dredges Bring Up Strange Finds

TINS TO CANNON BALLS Here, in the green twilight of the piles, are sets of false teeth, sneezed and coughed over ferry sides . . . dotting the western channel to the Heads are five-inch solid cannon balls, fired half a century ago from muzzleloaders by artillerymen in funny little monkey jackets ... in the slimy security of this forest of piles—berth of great liners—there are mansion-house supplies of crockery, cutlery, anljams, tossed through portholes by retroussenosed flunkeys. At the bottom of Sydney Harbour, in fact, one will find marvels oddly out of place, and now the toythings of cephalapods, bulb-eyed fish, and the tides. Recently, when “The Daily Guardian’s” reporter asked . divers, dredge hands, and amphibious mankind generally to tell of what the harbour floor held, oddities of recollection and plentiful evidence of novel, latterday discovery came to light. Floating Museums Consider the Harbour Trust dredges Triton, Poseidon and Pan; they are floating museums, stuffed full of souvenirs brought up by the great sucking maws of the vessels. From the eastern channel the Triton, not long since, brought to light some French bayonets thrown overboard by mutineers on a French vessel 60 years ago. “Strong Man Drew” will go through an impromptu exhibition of weightlifting with round shot that left the muzzles of old Fort Denison guns many a year ago. But one of the great days in the life of the Sydney dredgemen was when, working under the Orient wharf, four bottles of seasoned whisky came up. The inspection of these trophies of the deep was immediate and satisfactory. The other day, at the P. arid O. wharf, the Triton recovered two cases of assorted Tasmanian jams. The mess-room members are still gummylipped and happy over the sampling and subsequent consumption. At present at the foot of Bathurst Street, the dredge Pan works daily. Last week the neighbourhood fell back with averted nostrils, as tons and tons of cattle horns were sucked up and discharged to the light of day. In three days 200 tons of horns of rich aroma were brought up, last evidence of the slaughter-house at the water’s edge many years ago. The dredges keep themselves overstocked by plates and cutlery dropped overboard. Signs of Corroboree The good ship Poseidon struck a bed of oyster shells some 20 or 30ft deep up in Homebush Bay, and the favourite call of motorist poultrykeepers is to this spot for a load of the shells for their fowl runs. Apparently the natives long since dead were rather partial to this food. George 111. pennies dredged up from the Parramatta River bottom are* now a glut on the numismatic market; and the same applies to sword-bayonets of IS4O from the same resting-place. Gold watches (not working), opera glasses (barnacled), and sovereigns and half-sovereigns (negotiable) . . . ask the dredgemen what they find and they become quite garrulous. Those patient, leaden-footed fellows, the divers, don’t have such an interesting life with souvenirs, however, as most would think. World of Pests They tread through a sort of witchlight, their enormous feet stirring clouds of silt which hang round them like petrified London mists. But they see the insidious and costly operations of Sphaeroma, Limnoria, Ligna, Chelura, Tereban, and Cobra, at their endless feasts on the piles. These are the pests which eat about £40,000 worth of damage into the piles of Sydney Harbour yearly. The Harbour Trust, with its 38,000 timber piles, reckons its yearly repair bill owing to the operations of these borers at £20,000. Sydney’s half-dozen divers see these on the harbour bottom, and now and again fetch up a string-like cobra, who can go straight through a pile like a steel bit. These, however. don’t monopolise the floor of the harbour. They have their definite feeds of hardwood to interest them; and they leave to the bivalves, the jelloids and the filmy weeds and tides the teeth, small change, round shot, and bullocks’ horns.