LOST TREASURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 234, 2 October 1937, Page 7

LOST TREASURE.

IN SUNKEN SHIPS. m SALVAGE EXPEDITION. UP-TO-DATE DIVING GEAR. (From Our Own Correspondent.)

SAN FRANCISCO, September 14. Lieutenant Harry Fieseberg lias returned to San Francisco after 24 years, but very few recall liim. The last time he was in tlie Golden State metropolis was when he was 17. broke and hungry. He now said he wanted to find the cheap waterfront resort where the proprietor took him in and fed him, and found him a job on a sailing ship.

Rieseberg is not rich yet, but. lie expects to be. There is at lea«st £1,000,000.000 in lost, treasure in. sunken ships, he estimates, and in a few weeks lie will start out to get some.

Two wealthy San Francisco sportsmen arc backing bim on a six months" expedition in the Caribbean Sea, he says, and lie will attempt to recover some £4.000,000 from 11 ships that found their graves there. He would not divulge the identity of his backers but admitted he needs no further, financial aid, and had no stock for gale and would have none. The salvage vessel he expects to use is the only sailing fourmasted passenger schooner afloat and it probably will sail from San Francisco.

For the last 15 years Lieutenant j Rieseberg, who was for 14 years chief | of the tonnage and licensing division of the U.S. Bureau of Navigation, has pored over musty tomes, ferreting out the history and probable location of some 240 sunken ships with treasure aggregating about £100,000.000. This was a hobby at first. Later he made it his work and has beeome one of the world's foremost authorities on treasure trove.

On his own account Lieutenant Riesel>erg says, lie retrieved £10.400 0110 time from a wreck near Almeria Island in Florida, and £5400 from another near Soldiers Key, of the same State.

He claims to have regained vaster amounts for sponsors on «i commission basics, one haul being £.">O.OOO in silver bars from a sunken ship oIY Cape llatteras. N.C. Among his lore he has listed galleons hundreds of yeors old. Many j of them were made of teak and doubtless j are still pretty much intact, he says. ! "It is only in recent years that deep sea equipment hos been developed that will make the recovery of the bulk of treasure possible." Lieutenant ltieseberg explained. ".Most of it is at such depths that, a diver in ordinary pear would be .crushed by the pressure before ever reaching it." liieseberg uses what he calls an '"ironman robot." It is a suit built to withstand tremendous pressure. The diver inside of it can so 1000 feet below and

manipulate its steel fingers ut will. There is no air hose for sharks to sever.; The diver takes his oxygen down with, him and it six hours. It has Oft : arms and can pick up a coin from the . ocean's lied or twist, a one-inch steel j cable into a knot under water at great ' depths. In addition the expedition will , carry « diving bell. This is capable of! descending 2.">ooft for observation and; actual working operations.