MARINE GOLD RUSH

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 August 1935, Page 11

MARINE GOLD RUSH

TREASURE FROM SEA. One of the greatest gold rushes of recent years will shortly take place when fifty expert divers will make a bid for a huge prize of £20,000,000. Negotiations are proceeding for an Italian salvage company to start work on the wrecks which lie at the bottom of Table Bay, at the Cape of Good Hope (says the “Daily Express.”) , ... The first of the wrecks on which operations will take place is the Haarlem 11, which sank in 1648 with the loss of most of her crew and cargo worth £250,000. Many ships are known to have been lost in Table Bay. The salvage company, with its modern apparatus and daring divers, expects to recover a large amount of the treasure.

Amazipg stories of adventure were told at Cape Town by a diver who has walked the floor of Table Bay. “1 shall never forget one wreck I had to explore,” he said. “A writhing form of green and yellow slid into the broken hull. It was an octopus whose tentacles measured eight feet across.” Old residents remember the terrible night when a ship struck the rocks around Robben Island, then a leper colony in the middle of Table Bay. The whisper passed from bed to bed that a ship had struck on the rocks. In a few minutes they rushed out of the building, tore down posts and wire, and rushed to the beach. Boxes and pieces of cargo were washed ashore and the lepers, breaking open a box, found it contained magnums of champagne. A wild orgy began. The lepers danced and drank all through the night and in the morning lay sprawled among the wreckage on the beach. Every week the dredgers are bringing up queer salvage. Silver coins coine rolling out of the slush, almost in Mint condition. A blue and white Nankin vase was an astonishing find, while the bed of Table Bay seems to be paved with Chinese, porcelain, judging by the amount brought up. Other remarkable finds were coins still baring the crowned lion of Holland and the-monogram of the Dutch East India Company. A man employed on the dredger said they, do not always have that luck. On many a day the only salvage has been a broken type writer, anchors, cannon balls, and rifles.