TREASURE HUNTERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 70, 19 September 1936, Page 11

TREASURE HUNTERS

ALL HOPE GIVEN UP Another- group of marine treasure hunters has given up the search, for the British sloop-of-war de Braak, which, with its reputed £160,000 in Spanish gold now lying at the,bottom of Delaware Bay -near, Cape Henlopen, has eluded salvagers, for 138 years (says the "New York Times"). .■■■-... The Braak Corporation, which in 1932 was responsible for the. most elaborate and well-equipped search ever made for, the sunken sloop, has decided to "die a natural death," Randolph McCracken, aged 61, a butcher living in Lewes, and a grandson of Gilbert McCracken, who piloted the sloop to her last anchorage on May 31, 1798, /and drowned with Captain Drew, his lieutenant,, and. thirty-eight officers, seamen, and marines, was disconsolate when the news reached him. Mis belief that he would some day inherit the undersea legacy has never faltered. . V■.' ■ ' '■-. ,'•.-.. The spirits of those concerned in the salvage operations' were high in November, 1932, when divers identified an old wreck as being of the same con'struction and era as that of the trea- ! sure vessel. .■'.■■

The old Fire Island Lightship was bought and outfitted with the most modern salvaging devices, to resume operations here in the spring of 1933. But the bank holiday was declared, and people became, afraid to risk any sizable capital,' arid: so the lightship never steamed, into ~the: Delaware Breakwater; ..'.-';

The Braak expedition divers brought many interesting relics to. the surface however, among ; them timbers from a ship's frame, an iron chain plate, and both large and small hand-wrought copper spikes. The search lasted from July to November 30 except for two interruptions, one caused by the explosion and loss by fire of the 55-foot wrecking launch Katie Durm in the ocean near Rehoboth Beach. vTens of thousands of dollars were spent on the expedition.

Last summer ; a, group of sportsmen from Providence, headed by Richard T. Wilson, working under the direction of Charles N. Colstad, of Attleboro, Massachusetts,, made a ■ preliminary search. Satisfied that they had found the location of the sloop, which was only 125 feet long and had a 30-foot beam,-they chartered the former Boston pilot schooner Liberty, and returned to Lewes in the late summer. Stormy weather and an unseasonably early fall called a halt.

Bolt Colstad and Wilson stated that they would return late in spring to raise the vessel if possible. The summer is partly gone, hut' there is still no sign of a salvage vessel. ,