TREASURE MAP

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 December 1945, Page 2

TREASURE MAP

COCOS ISLAND LEGEND SYDNEY, November 13. A battered parchment map, reputed to contain the clue to buried treasure estimated at £12,000,000, is in the possession of Captain Rex Stanton, of the ship Islander. The Islander is taking 900 tons of stores and equipment to rehabilitate Christmas Island, which was occupied by Japanese forces. Captain Stanton was chief officer of the Discovery in Sir Douglas Mawson’s Antarctic expedition in 1930-31. Three years after that he made his first attempt to find the treasure believed to be buried on Cocos Island, in the eastern Pacific, 500 miles west of Panama. Captain Stanton says the expedition failed because' the 12 men who accompanied him wearied of the loneliness. They found old hinges and other relics which convinced him that the treasure was there. “Once the gold bug has bitten you, you are always drawn back, so I intend to take a second expedition to Cocos Island,” he said. Dampier's partner, Captain Davis, is believed to have hidden his booty on the island in 1685 after sacking the town of Leon, Nicaragua, but the chief treasure is said to consist of Inca gold and Spanish cathedral plate from Lima, Peru, which was loaded on a ship to escape a raid by buccaneers. The crew was reported to have mutined, taken the ship to Cocos Island, and. buried the treasure. Captain Stanton says that about 50 years ago a Captain Morgan located the treasure, took a little of it back to San Francisco, and after squandering it, decided to go back for more. Morgan drew the map in blood, in code. After Morgan’s death,, a Captain Lucy bought the map and .searched for, the treasure. It was from Lucy that Captain Stanton bought the map. Sir Malcolm Campbell searched on Cocos Island for there weeks in 1926, found no treasure, but left believing that it existed. The island belongs to the Republic of Costa Rica.