THE BURIED TREASURE OF FRIGATE HUSSAR.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1277, 13 January 1883, Page 4

THE BURIED TREASURE OF FRIGATE HUSSAR.

The monumental fraud in the way of sunken gold, writes a correspondent of the Philadelphia Press, is right in the harbour of New York, and not more than eight miles from the centre of that great metropolis. I allude to the British frigate Hussar, which ran into one of the Hell Gate rocks late in the revolutionary war, was bulged in forward, and sunk near a spot where the Morisania Gas Works are now situated, in about eighty feet of water, She was a first classfrigate, and according to popular belief carried about £2,000,000 in gold for the payment of the British army in America. Right whore the Hussar went down there is a strong tide and an eddy that renders work very difficult; but not long after the close of the war ellbrts to get at her treasures were begun, and they have been kept up, with occasional intermissions, ever since. In 1852 I first had the idea of raising sunken ships that I applied in 1857 in Sebastapool, and I then thought of applying it to the Hussar; but in undertaking a scheme of this sort I always want to make sure that the treasure I am looking for is where I have reason to think it is. So I went to England and commenced a thorough search through the records with regard to the frigate Hussar. I hired number of searchers, and made a complete investigation among the papers of the admiralty and pay department and was at lenth satisfied that the £2,000,000 carried by the Hussar had been landed and duly distributed to the paymasters. Whether it ever reached the troops I did not take the trouble to inquire. When I came back to New York I was called upon by a friend who wanted me to go into the scheme of raising the Hussar. I laughed at him and told him of my search among tho records, but in spite of my warning he quit me and put ten thousand dollars into the scheme. For thirty years the search after the treasure (which does not exist) has bceu unremittingly carried on, and to-day if you walk out 168 th Street to the water front, in Morrisania (I won't be certain about the street), you will see a schooner moored off the shore, equipped with an engine and sending down divers whenever the tide suits. The backers of this scheme are a Boston company, I never heard of them recovering anything except a few wooden cups and platters and sundry guineas with the likeness of George 111, and yet the search has been kept up for thirty years, and good money has been sunk in the wreck of the old Hussar—thousands and thousands of it. My fripnd who invested the ten thousand dollars, called to see me when I returned from Russia, and told me he was sorry he had not taken my warning, but I could see that he still hankered after the supposed treasure, and that he still had a lingering belief in its existeuce, despite his sad experience. I went out to Momsjiiiii and witnasssd the diving for the treasure, which was done without concealment, and became more and more convinced that there was nothing worth diving for.—The theory of themanager was that the Hussar's guineas had been packed in iron boxes, and that the material in these had been oxided by tho influence of the sea, and that thus the divers woro forced to work slowly with drills and could accomplish no satisfactory results, Tlie fact is that certain persons interested in the scheme saw a chance of making money without raising it from the deep, and availed themselves of it. One man whose whole life has been devoted to the Hussar and its supposed treasures, has built a row of brick dwelling houses in Boston, I am told, and is well-to-do, but the money did not come from the Hussar. I need not say more. This is one of the most persistently followed searches for snnken treasures that I ever heard of; but then you sep, there were treasures that never had been sunk that were available for its promoters.