Survey may prove gold tale a lie

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33739, 11 January 1975, Page 14

Survey may prove gold tale a lie

Three hundred thousand dollars worth of sunken gold has lured another expedition to the coast of the Auckland Islands. It might prove that a century-old castaway tale about the site of a wreck is a carefully planned lie.

Six divers will leave from Port Chalmers on Monday morning aboard the Acheron on the 300mile trip south to the storm-tossed islands in a search for the wreck of the General Grant.

A Yankee-built clipper on the home run from Melbourne to London with 83 persons on board, the General Grant sank on the coast of one of the Auckland Islands in 1866. Fifteen persons survived the wreck, but one later died on the islands, and another four lost their lives in an attempt to sail to Stewart Island in a small boat.

The ship took two boxes, or 25760 z, of gold to the bottom with her, according to the official ship’s manifest. Many have since argued that some of the passengers would have been taking the newfound goldfield fortunes home with them.

Various accounts of the events and site of the shipwreck given by the 10 survivors have previously been taken as authoritative, if confused. This expedition will search in areas quite different from the generally accepted site of the wreck, half-way down the west coast of the main Auckland Island.

The leader of the diving team will be Commander J. Grattan, a Royal Navy di’ ng expert. In 1968, Commander Grattan led the divers who found the wreck of the Spanish galleon, Santa Maria de la Rosa, which was sunk off the Irish coast in 1588. The expedition is being financed by a Christchurch businessman, Mr G. P. O’Farrell. who estimated the cost of this preliminary search at $15,000. Three New Zealand divers, Messrs K. Tarlton, M. Blair, and J. Dearling, will join Commander Grattan and two English divers, Messrs F. and J. McCormack, on the dive, which will employ the swimline search method pioneered by Commander Grattan. This extremely accurate and efficient method of search has been used successfully to find a range of sunken objects. from Armada galleons to a holidaymaker’s false teeth lost overboard in a bay off Malta.

Plan for December Depending upon the success of the expedition, a fullscale search is planned f or December of this year. Twelve divers under Commander Grattan might spend up to a month on the fullscale search. The Dunedin author and

journalist, Mr K. Eunson, endorsed the traditional theory of where the ship sank in a recent book on the wreck. The expedition, however, has other ideas. Mr B. H. Meikle, a Christchurch nautical surveyor and loss assessor, said in a report prepared for the expedition that the vessel foundered in a cavern on the south side of Adams Island, (the southernmost of the island group, about 25 miles round the coast from the cavern where the survivors said she went down.

Mr Tarlton said in Christchurch this week that he had his own theory as to where the ship went down, but he refused to say where, except that it was not at the generally accepted spot near the Beehive Rocks. Mr Tarlton said he had worked out to within half a mile where the General Grant ought to have sunk.

On a previous expedition to the area, Mr Tarlton recovered an anchor thought to have been from the General Grant, but he said he now thought it was some other wreck. Psychic’s theory Yet another theory on the site of the gold has come from Mr C. Hulme, who claims to have used psychic powers to pinpoint the position. Mr Hulme has a specially carved greenstone pendulum which he used to divine the location. If the expedition is successful it might prove that the survivors lied about the events of the wreck inorder to keep the true location a secret. They would have had every reason, and plenty of time in the 18 months they were marooned on the islands to concoct a story about where the ship went down. During the expedition, four scientists, led by Dr J. Yaldwin, the assistant director of the Naticfnal Mueum in Wellington, will carry out research in the ocean and on the land. Dr Yaldwin is an authority on marine Crustacea. The others will be two Government geologists and an | expert on marine mammals.