TREASURE HOAX?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 428, 9 August 1928, Page 9

TREASURE HOAX?

SALVAGED “CHEST*’ NO DIAMONDS THERE FRANCS WORTH £lO (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association. > (United Service) Received Noon. LONDON, Wednesday. THE chest of diamonds which was said to have been salvaged •from the sunken Belgian steamer Elizabethville, proved to be non-existent.

Tlie salvagers worked for months to recover the safe in which the diamonds were reputed to be carried. They neglected every other part of the ship in order to secure the safe, which when it was opened was found to contain the equivalent of £lO in Belgian francs. The Paris correspondent of “The Times’* said on August 2 that Italian divers recovered a steel chest containing - 13,000 carats of diamonds and quantities of other precious stones, valued at £1,250,000, from the wreck of the Belgian steamer, Elizabethville, which was sunk by a German submarine in 1917. The sunken ship has been lying 40

fathoms deep off Belle Isle, off the south coast of Brittany, ever since. It was know 11 that the precious stones were in the captain's cabin, said the correspondent. The owners of KrencH trawlers undertook to search the wreck last May, but were unsuccessful Thereupon an Italian salvage ship, the Artiglio, which is specially fitted out for deepsea work, was ordered from her base at Genoa to make a fresh search. The divers located the wreck on June 26 and found the captain’s cabin a week later. It was necessary to pierce the deck and force a way through the iron debris caused by the submarine’s torpedoes, one of which had dislodged the chest, which it had been feared was irretrievably lost. However, the divers continued directing the Artiglto's electro-magnet lifts of 30 tons, and discovered the chest.