VIGO BAY TREASURE

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 December 1929, Page 9

VIGO BAY TREASURE

SUNKEN GALLOONS. An exciting search for golden doubloons and Spanish- pieces of eight is now going on at the bottom of Vigo Bay, in -north-west Spain. . - A crew of Italian deep-sea divers, equipped with their new steel cmes used recently in an attempt to hnd the diamonds in the Elizabethville, oft Belle He, and the bullion in the Egypt, off Ushant, are trying to recover the treasure from Spanish galelons sunk during Admiral Sir George Rooke’s famous attack on the French fleet. These galleons lie at a depth of 300 ft., deeply embedded in soft mud. For more than two centuries this fortune, estimated at between £2,000,000 and £4,000,00tf, has resisted all efforts of man to .retrieve it, but modern science now seems on the verge of wrestling another triumph from the deep. “I have every expectation of recovering at least part of the treasure,” Signor Venturini, commander of the diving ship Sais, said. “Although we have only been at work for a short time, we have located the hulls of the galleons, and already have brought up some ancient timbers, cannon, silver plate, silver drinking cups, barrels of wine and weapons. “The wooden hulks are easy to break open. The depth is only 300 ft. and the water is calm, but it takes time to look into more than forty sunken ships embeded in mud.

“The salvage of the gold and silver coin depends chiefly on what sort of container it was kept in. “If the treasure was in .stout iron or oaken chests that are still more or less intact, then we shall have no great trouble, for the chests can be sent up in buckets. But if the coin has been scattered in the deep mud, then it will be a long and difficult job. “Unfortunately, we do not know which of the 17 galleons had been unloaded of their precious cargo before the battle, nor those more or less sacked by the English, and so I suppose we must search them all to locate the money.” The story of this sea battle is one of the classics of British naval history. On the morning of October 12, 1702, Admiral Sir George Rooke, in command of an Anglo-Dutch fleet, sailed into strongly-defended Vigo Bay—the war of the Spanish Succession had/just started —and attacked the French fleet of 24 warships that had escorted the 17. Spanish galleons from the Plate River.

After desperate fighting that lasted all day, Chateaurenault de Bantry, the French admiral, gave orders for the warships and treasure ships under his command to be set on fire, but the British sailors managed to capture and save more than half of the French warships.

The galleons, which are supposed to have had about £10,000,000 worth of gold and silver on board, burned to the water’s edge, and thn sank, although part of the coin was saved. The Spanish authorities had already unloaded some of the golden doubloons ; before the English fleet arrived, and the English themselves managed to seize over £2,000,000 worth, which Queen Anne issued the following year as golden sovereigns, with the word “Vigo” stamped on them. A number of attempts have been made during the intervening two centuries to recover the rest of the treasure, but none proved to be serious until an Italian company came along last year with up-to-date equipment and made a contract with the Spanish Government to divide any coin found, half and half.\ . The search is being carried out undei’ the supervision of Spanish naval officers and every day the prospects look brighter and brighter.