BOYS' OWN COLUMN

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 213, 9 September 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

BOYS' OWN COLUMN

THE SEA OF LOST SHIPS

STUDYING A WRECK CM ART.

Dear Boys, I have just been studying a wreck chart—an amazing document it is, and a saddening one, with its record of ships, known and unknown, that have ventured down the pathways of the ocean never to return. This chart, although it covers a very wide area, is concerned chiefly with that part of the Atlantic off the coast of Brittany. Small red circles mark the spots where wrecks are known to lie, and printed beside them the name of the vessel, if this is known. All too frequently, however, appears the brief comment, "Unknown vessel." Probably of the many names figuring on this chart there is none so linked with adventure and tragedy as that of the sunken British liner Egypt. Ever since the day when the P. and O. liner E B ypt, while travelling between London and Bombay, sank with one million pounds of gold and silver in her bullion room, men have sought to wrest this treasure from the sea. The salvage of the Egypt was a dream long cherished by the captain of the Avtiglio and her crew of skilled and fearless divers. And indeed had their plans succeeded, and their weary months of work been rewarded, their feat would have been without parallel in the history of marine salvage.' The difficulties and dangers of deep sea diving are so great that, except in the cases of a few men of great skill and endurance the game is not worth the candle. They must work hard, they must work quickly, but they work for high stakes. Such a crew had the steam trawler Artiglio when, in the summer of 1929, they commenced their great search for the wreck of the Egypt. All through the summer of 1929 and 1930 the slow, weary work of dragging went on. The hopelessness of the job, the fact that it was not only possible but highly probable that they were miles from the spot where the Egypt lay, did not daunt the men. It was not, however, until August of 1930 that this game of blind man's buff under the sea was brought to a close and the cry of "E e'Egitto" (It's the Egypt) came up through the transmitting wire from the bottom of the ocean to those who waited above. But the Egypt's bullion was not for the men of the Artiglio and the final search, begun in triumph, was fated to end in tragedy. The hopes, the ambitions of that little band of seamen were smashed by one instant of false judgment on the part of their leader, and to-day the Artiglio herself lies on the sands of the Quiberon passes, another name added to the chart of lost ships. But the story of that band of seamen—their courage and their amazing feats in diving—will long be &f3 recorded in the history of marine salvage. Theirs was a high adventure and those who died laid a firm foundation for the work of their successors.