This, reproduced from the book: Wonders of Salvage, by David Masters (published 1944)...
Two
SEEKING TREASURE
FROM earliest years the imagination is fired by the mere mention of treasure. Who has not heard of that fabulous treasure of the bloodthirsty pirate, Captain Kidd, whose booty is still thought to be hidden on some far-off island? Expedition after expedition has been fitted out to find it, but the pirate hid it so well that the hunters have failed in their quest. Who has not marvelled at those mighty hoards of gold stored away by the Incas of Peru, gold which Pizarro looted from the Peruvian treasure-house and carried back to Spain?
Treasure! The mere whisper works magic, conjuring up pictures of gold and silver and piles of glowing gems—rubies, emeralds, and diamonds galore, gleaming with all the colours of the rainbow. So fascinating is the idea of treasure that men gladly risk their lives to go in search of it; nor is the magic confined alone to the romantic. The keenest of business men, who boast of their hard-headedness, seem to lose their heads where treasure is concerned. Eagerly they fling down the funds to prosecute the most problematic searches, in return for the promise of the most shadowy spoils.
These same business men will aver that they never speculate, yet all treasure-hunting is speculative, and if there is one form more speculative than another it is that of searching for sunken treasure. Still, despite its hazardous nature, there is always money forthcoming to back deep-sea enterprises of this description. True, access comes but seldom—failures are the rule. Could a correct balance-sheet be made up showing how much has been spent on hunting for the world’s sunken treasure and how much has been recovered, we should probably find that the money expended was many times greater than the value of all the treasure brought to the surface.
Few ideas could be more fascinating than that of hauling up gold and silver from the bottom of the sea, and it is this same fascination, with all the excitement it brings in its train, which lures men on to attempt to wrest many of these long-lost treasures from the recesses of the ocean. Years sometimes are spent in pondering ancient documents, hunting for evidence of the exact locality of the vanished treasure, seeking to sift rumour from actual fact. Further years may be spent in malting plans and special apparatus for lifting the treasure, and, when the hunter starts in real earnest, he finds at last that he has spent years of his life and thousands of pounds just for the privilege of stirring up the seabed. Treasure-hunting is, in fact, something like taking a ticket for a sweepstake. The chances may be ridiculously small, but the prospect of winning a fortune will always make the game popular.
Fate, indeed, seems to delight in playing tricks on salvage men. While, on the one hand, it sometimes leads them on to fit out ambitious expeditions costing thousands of pounds, sends them journeying afar and imposes the greatest hardships upon them without bringing them any reward whatsoever; on the other hand, it sometimes flings a fortune straight into the lap of some lucky man when he is least expecting it.
Lord Leverhulme, in illustrating the vagaries of Fate, related how an Australian firm once owned an island in the Pacific, a rocky little place with a few coco-nut trees that gave their crop of nuts which were duly dried in the sun and turned into copra and coco-nut oil. Their trading schooner used to visit the island to load the copra, and on one of the trips the captain happened to pick up a piece of rock and put it aboard the ship. In due course that piece of rock went back to Australia with the copra, and was used in the office to keep the door open when the weather was sultry.
The firm acquired their island to make money out of it, but although the coco-nut trees brought them a profit, they certainly did not bring them a fortune. The question arose as to whether it was worth their while retaining the island, and after due consideration they sold their property to someone else, and thought no more about it.
Entering their office one day, a professor from the university chanced to kick against the stone that was propping the door open. He stooped down, picked it up, scrutinized it closely for a minute of two.
Where did you get this? he demanded.
Oh, that’s a bit of rock our skipper brought back from one of our islands, was the reply.
The professor looked at the rock again. Do you know what it is? he asked.
Just a bit of stone, came the answer.
I don’t know, said the professor, but I think it’s phosphate. I'd like to take it away and analyse it, if you’ll allow me. Permission was, of course, granted, and the professor walked away with that bit of rock which scores of men had kicked against at the door. Taking it to his laboratory, the scientist carefully analysed it. He found it to be a sample of the richest phosphate in the world. The original owners had bought the island as a business proposition, but they failed to realize the fortune that was theirs. That rocky island turned out to be one mass of phosphate, worth about 100,000,000 Pounds—and they had let it go for a few hundred! Of all who had stumbled over that lucky door-prop, the professor was the only one who had the sense to see the fortune lying at his feet.
The counterpart of the professor who saw a fortune in that neglected lump of rock was the diver who heard the whisper of truth in a rumour. The work of this diver took him to the coast of Galway, where he was engaged on salvage work that was to last some time. He was a companionable sort of man and, after finishing his spells of work, would adjourn to the tap-room of the village inn to spend his evenings in yarning with the fisherfolk.
For years a story had been current in the neighbourhood that a Spanish galleon, one of the ships of the Armada, had gone down in the vicinity. Those who heard the yarn smiled. It’s just a rumour, they remarked.
Whether it was merely a rumour, or something more, the story had been told from father to son for generations. So persistent a rumour was it that it survived century after century, living in the traditions of these simple Irish fisherfolk, passed on by word of mouth in the little community, until it survived to our own times. Most of the fishermen knew the yarn of the sunken Spanish galleon, but perhaps the passage of time had made many of them rather sceptical.
Anyway, one evening the diver was enjoying his pipe and his beer and talking about his work, when an old fisherman said to him:
Why don’t ye thry for the galleon?
What galleon? the diver inquired.
Why, yon one wrecked just outside the bar, the fisherman answered. Ye can walk about the seabed in that suit of yours?
I do it every day, the diver replied.
Well, why don’t ye walk out and get the treasure?
The diver smiled. Show me the treasure, and I’ll soon get it, he said. Where is it?
Solemnly the fisherman looked at the diver. My father, he told me, and his grandfather, he told him. A mighty ship from Spain it was, full of treasure, that went down in a storm. They saw it from the shore here.
Puffing away at his pipe, the diver considered the matter. The story in his judgment might easily be true.
Show me the spot, and we’ll share the treasure, if there is any, he said.
All right, the old fisherman agreed. She’s there all right. Sometimes we catch our gear in her.
Completing the task on which he was engaged, the diver began his search for the sunken treasure. Day after day he and the old fisherman went out in a rowing-boat, threw a grapnel over the stern and dragged it about the seabed in the hope of lighting on the wreck. Many of the villagers laughed at them and thought them crazy, but the two treasure-hunters paid no heed. They just went ahead with their monotonous task, buoyed up with the hope of the treasure to come.
The end of the first week saw them as far off the treasure as they had been on the first day. They dragged on through another week with a like result. A month of fruitless endeavour failed to rob them of their faith in the truth of the old story of the wreck. Week after week they searched the area in which the wreck was supposed to lie, tugging placidly at the oars, dragging the grapnel along the bottom.
One day the fisherman was rowing slowly along when the diver felt his grapnel catch in something. He gave the rope a sharp tug, then another, but the grapnel held firmly.
We’ve got her, he said.
Marking the spot with a buoy, they rowed ashore for the diving suit and air-pump, then they went back to where the buoy floated on the surface. The diver donned his suit; the fisherman screwed the helmet securely into place, started to heave the handle of the air-pump as the diver went over the side and slid down the shot rope to the bottom. The ghost of the galleon greeted his eyes, the skeleton of the ship of long ago. For three centuries she had lain undisturbed in her watery grave, slowly rotting away until she had all but vanished. The diver climbed over the rotten remnants of the hulk into what had once been the hold of the ship. The place was full of weed; fish fled at the approach of the strange monster that was invading their domain; barnacles and sea-growth flourished on the decaying timbers.
With the same patience that had enabled him to locate the wreck, the diver searched the seabed until at last he came on what appeared to be several small barrels. He went up to them, tapped them. The much talked-of treasure was his at last. Beneath his fingers were solid stacks of Spanish doubloons, from which the wood had long since perished, leaving the coins still shaped like the barrels into which the Spaniards had packed them when they set out on that ill-fated expedition of theirs to conquer England.
These two men, with a diving suit and rowing-boat, found a greater treasure than has fallen to many a powerfully-equipped expedition, and it is strange to think that the fisherman who hauled the doubloons up from the bottom was probably a direct descendant of one of the Irish peasants who stood on the shore on that wild Armada night in 1588 and watched the mighty Spanish ship founder. The diver had the good sense to realize that there might be some-thing in the old story, he spent weeks investigating it, and he reaped a snug little fortune as his reward. Nor did he squander the treasure that Fate flung his way. The same good sense which enabled him to find it also enabled him to keep it, for he turned his Spanish doubloons into a row of houses which he called “Dollar Row” in order to perpetuate his good luck.
It is another tale of the Spanish Armada, a tale which up to the present has not ended quite so happily, that lures men to try their luck in the Bay of Tobermory in the Isle of Mull just off the west coast of Scotland. Somewhere beneath the waters of this pleasant bay is averred to lie a treasure so prodigious that it would make its discoverer a millionaire twice over. Here, if tradition speaks truly, a man has the chance of dragging from the seabed beautiful jewels and golden cups with Spanish doubloons worth 2,000,000 Pounds which went down with the Florencia.
Many who have studied the question believe that the Florenciaundoubtedly sank here, but an element of doubt creeps in when it is known that the Spaniards themselves swore that the Florenciareturned after the disastrous expedition. During the last war the British Government did its best to conceal the loss of H.M.S.
Audacious in order to deceive the Germans as to the strength of our navy, and it may have been the Spaniards, three centuries ago, who introduced this practice. About this, nothing is known with certainty. It all happened a long time ago, and the years have tended to obscure the facts. Whether the statement that the Florencia returned was true, or whether it was a deliberate falsehood spread forth to give her enemies the impression that Spain was still strong in ships of the line, is an open question.
Whatever be the name of the vessel, the evidence that a Spanish galleon actually did founder in Tobermory Bay in 1588 seems fairly strong. Moreover, it is backed up by material facts in the shape of a cannon, some cannon balls, a weapon or two and a doubloon that have been brought up from the bottom of the bay by different treasure-hunters.
From what we can gather of that distant happening, it appears that the Spaniards, sailing down the Scottish coast in their galleon, and seeking to replenish their water-casks, must have made a foray or two ashore. During one of these they captured a Highland chief, one Donald Glas M’Lean, whom they held prisoner aboard their ship. So bitter a blow was it to the Scottish chieftain that, reckless of his own life, he sought a terrible revenge. Waiting his opportunity while the ship was anchored in Tobermory Bay, he managed to enter the powder magazine. In a moment or two his revenge was complete. The mighty galleon blew up and the proud chief accompanied her crew of nearly 500 Spaniards to their doom.
Many a tide has ebbed and flowed, many a storm arisen and sub¬sided since that catastrophe. Timbers have decayed, and mud and sand have gradually covered up the remains. The treasure by now may be buried 20 or 30 feet at the bottom of the bay and, unless some lucky chance leads an expedition to hit on the exact spot, may remain buried there forever. Divers may have walked over the treasure dozens of times without knowing that the gold and silver they were seeking lay actually under their feet.
The Duke of Argyll, who possesses the right to salve the treasure, has proved his belief in its existence by spending considerable sums in hunting for it. In addition, he has given permission for several expeditions to prosecute the search, and these expeditions, in the aggregate, must have expended a deal of money.
No man had a greater knowledge of the galleon than the late Colonel K. M. Foss, who in 1912 located her and brought up treasure worth nearly 1000 Pounds. The last war came; and when he resumed work in 1919 a powerful water-jet injured him so severely that operations were stopped. With faith undiminished he returned once more to Tobermory, only to come away disappointed.
I have myself handled fragments of the plate dredged up from the bay. I have by me a section of oak timber from the galleon to confirm the historic evidence in the case. But whether the treasure, if it existed, has been secretly recovered in past ages, or whether it still lies at the bottom of Tobermory Bay, are questions that remain unanswered. |
