LURE OF HIDDEN GOLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 276, 20 November 1926, Page 10

LURE OF HIDDEN GOLD.

WEALTH IN SUNKEN SHIPS. KING'S RANSOM ON SEA BOTTOM. SEARCH FOR EGYPT'S HOARD. Divers searching for the threequarters of a million sterling in. gold ingots and coin in the wreck of tlfe P. and O. liner Egypt, under the waves in the Bay of Biscay, have located the wreck, but have so far failed to recover the treasure. The Egypt sank a little over four years ago, 22 miles off the Brittany coast, with bullion valued at £1,089,000 after a collision which cost 200 lives. A year later, a Swedish sea captain located the wreck, which lies at a depth of 60 fathoms and at a point where the currents are perplexingly swift. Under the auspices of a French company, the powerful tug Iroise was char; tired and fitted with the latest "diving apparatus. Five German divers were engaged to descend and cut through the metal bulkheads in the ship which protect the treasure. Laurentic's Treasure. A .similar enterprise, which • was crowned with complete success, was the salving of gold bars valued at just on five millions sterling from the wreck of the Laurentic, which was sunk by a mine off the Donegal coast in January of 1917. Salvage began in 1918, but iv first the results were poor, and it was not until 1920 that any substantial amounts Were recovered. H.M. salvage ship Racer was requisitioned for the task, which included the exploding of depth charges to break up the body of the wreck, in order to render the gold bars accessible. Day by day buckets of gold bars were hoisted to the surface, each one being valued at between £1500 and £2000, until practically the whole of the great treasure had been brought to daylight again. Paved With Gold. In the course of the operations, the deck of the Racer was literally paved with bars of gold for the men to tread on. Toward the end ot the operations, nothing was left of the Laurentic but a mass of twisted metal plates, but in spite of all difficulties, out of 3211 bars of gold sunk with the ship all but 39 were recovered. But for these two vessels lying on the bed of the ocean, and subject to attempts for the recovery of their treasures, there are hundreds more whose vast stores of gold and gems would pay the national debt'a score of times. Buried Millions. Conspicuous among them are the Lizard, which lies deep down off the rock-bound Cornish coast with treasure valued at ten million sterling; the Wilhelni der Zweiter, carrying 3700 bars of silver, also lying off the English coast; the Thunderbolt, with v _20,000,----000 in gold aboard,-and the Florencian, which lies in Tobermory Bay with, it is reputed, £2,000,000 worth of treasure among her rotted ribs.

In the period of the Great War alone, Great Britain lost 2500 ships, each of which took down to the ocean depths some part of the world's store of gold and gems. Their total value has never been estimated, but it must amount to hundreds of millions of recoverable treasure —or rather, treasure that would be recoverable if it had not sunk to depths at which no diver can hope' to live. Armada Pay Roll. The Florentian. sunk in Tobermory Bay with the pay of the army of the Duke of I'arma aboard, was manned by men who heard the news of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. In. the seventeenth century one Archibald Miller descended in a diving bell and brought up a brass-bound chest which yielded up a golden crown, and other beautiful examples of the goldsmith's art. At the same time Miller brought up a bronze cannon of wonderful workmanship, said to have been cast in the workshops of the great Cellini, which is now in the possession of the Argyll family. But the greater part of the Florentian's treasure still lies covered by the slime and mud of centuries; from time to . time expeditions are formed to recover it, but so far without success. Vigo Secret. But the greatest treasure of all that the sea holds lies in Vigo Bay, where in 1702 the British Fleet sunk the treasure ships from Peru. Thirty vessels in. all were sent to the bottom in that battle, and with them went three years of the yield of what were then the world's richest mines— millions of gold and silver. Of all that vast treasure, only £80,000 in silver bars has ever been recovered, though countless attempts have been made to raise the sunken hulks. There it lies, the value of a kingdom, and there, probably, it will lie while the world lasts.