TREASURE TROVE

Evening Post, Volume XCIX, Issue 83, 8 April 1920, Page 5

TREASURE TROVE

RELIO OF SPANISH ARMADA,

Salvage operations on thfe galleon Da Florencia, .the treasure §hip of Spain's "Invincible Armada," sunk off Tobermory, Scotland, 330 years ago, are beginning to. yield results. These operations were begun" in. 1903. Recently parts of cannon, bits of the ship's hull and other relics have rewarded the trea-sure-hunters' efforts.

The De Florencia was sunk by one of the Mac Leans of Morven, who fired her powder, magazine. If her main stores are retrieved from the sea, the ship should yield a rich haul, for, according to contemporary chroniclers, the ship's stronghold was full of gold, silver plate and jewels, including a crown intended for the coronation of the Spanish nominee to the throne of England. By a covenant made shortly after the wreck^ this crown, if recovered, goes to the King of England, but the rest of the treasure to the Duke of Argyll.

The explosion -which sank the De Florencia scattered the vessel and her contents over a. wide area of sea bed, and that fact v has so far baffled those who have tried throughout the centuries to locute the wreckage and treasure.

Inverary Castle houses a beautifully ornamented bronze ordnance which was one of the galleon's fifty-two guns. From time to time blunderbuss.es, swords, scabbards, doubloons, and pieces of plate have been brought up.

The bits of oak found, believed to be ■ bits of the skip's hull, are overlaid with a crust of compressed shell as' difficult as concrete to penetrate, and some time nin-y elupiip Wore it is possible to roach the.mpre important part pf tlja sunken ■imgs*:..