Gold in the Sea.

Evening Star, Issue 7876, 8 April 1889, Page 1

Gold in the Sea.

[London 'Telegrapu.'J The memory of the loss of L 200.000 of silver and gold will survive the drowning of 1,000 souls in a coup. There was the Lutine, for instance. She was of thirtytwo guns, commanded by Captain Skynner, and she went ashore on the bank of the Fly Island passage on the night of 9th October, 1799. At first sho was reputed to havo had L 600,000 sterling in specie on board. This was afterwards contradicted by a statement that " the return from the bullion office makes the whole amount about LI40,000." "If," I fiad in a contemporary acoounr, " the wreck of the unfortunate Lutine should be discovered there may be reason to hope for the recovery of the bullion." In the reign of James 11. some English adventurers fitted out a vessel to search for and weigh up the cargo of a rich Spanish ahip which had been lost on the coast of South America. They succeeded, and brought home L 300.000, which had been forty-four years at the bottom of the sea. Captain Phipps, who commanded, had L 20,000 for his share, and the Duke of Albemarle 1.90,000. A medal was struck in honor of this event in 1687. There was a very costly wreck in 1767. She was a Dutch East Indiaman, and foundered in a storm within three leagues of the Texel, taking down all hands but six, and L 500.000. The price of four such armadas as that of 1583 went down in the last century alone in the shape of gold, silver, and plate. She was the annual register ship, as the term then was, and had in her 500,000 piastres, and 10,000 ounces of gold on account of the King, and twice that sum on the merchants' account, making her a very rich ship. She foundered, and no man escaped to tell how and when. In the same year the. Dutch lost the Antonietta, an Indiaman, and with her sank Lyoo,ooo, besides jewels of great value. The Royal Charter is the most notab'e modern instance of the wreck of a treasure ship that I can just now call to mind. She left Australia with L 350.000 in her. Of this sum, says Charles Dickens in his chapter on this dreadful shipwreck in the •Uncommercial Traveller,' L 300.000 were recovered at the time of the novelist's visit to the spot where she had driven ashore ( " The great bulk of the remainder," writes Dickens, " was surely and steadily coming up. Some loss of sovereigns there would be, of course; indeed, at first sovereigns had drifted in with the sand, and been scattered far and wide over the beach like sea shells, but most other golden treasure would be found. So tremendous had the force of the sea been when it broke the ship that it had beaten one great ingot of gold deep into a strong and heavy piece of her solid ironwork, in which also several loose sovereigns that the ingot had swept in before it had been found as firmly imbedded as though the iron had been liquid when they had been forced there." This is a curiosity of disaster, but mighty suggestive of the sea's miserly trick of concealing her plunder. ________^____