BURIED TREASURE

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 7 August 1926, Page 11

BURIED TREASURE

GOLD AND PIECES OF EIGHT.

The lure of pistoles, doubloons, nnd pieces of eight has led to the waste of a tremendous amount of human energy. Treasure-hunting, regarded even as a pastime, was considered by the late Mr E. F. Knight, who liked real adventure, to be over-rated; and, as a way to riches, it is a snare and delusion. There is only one ease of a treasure-hunting expedition being completely successful —and then the man who did the work did not gain the reward (writes Lawrence Mason in the Daily Mail). Within the last three years plans have been, made for salving the bullion in the frigate Lutine, sunk off the Dutch coast about 100 years ago, and for lifting the (alleged) gold-laden Turkish fleet sunk at Navarino in 1827. But nothing has been achieved. During the same period the Armada galleon which lies somewhere in Tobermory Bay, Mull, has been diligently sought for by divers and diviners. About 100 efforts have been made altogether to find this galleon, though it has never been definitely established that the hulk is indeed that of the Florcncia, the payship of the Armada, reputed to have eontained more than £3,000,000. The Cocos Island treasure, to find which a company has been asking for money, has been sought again and again. But a pirate’s chart, even one on a tal-low-stained piece of canvas, has never yet led to the finding of gold. It was a chart which led Mr Knight to the Isle of Trinidad a few years ago, but

FEW QUESTS ARE PRODUCTIVE.

he did not ask the public for money, each of the ten members of his company, city men, subscribing £IOO for expenses. Knight was inspired by a chart in the possession of an old Newcastle sea captain, drawn, it was said, by the only survivor of a slaughtered crew. Bui the chart lied. The adventurers found that the ravine which it indicated had been tilled in by boulders. For three months they laboured, in a climate, like sulphur steam, and they dug and found—nothing. Another classic lost treasure, that on Oak Island, Nova Scotia, has eluded repeated search, water always flooding the deep shaft in which the treasure is supposed to lie. English, French, Spanish, and American syndicates by the score have tried to retrieve the world’s greatest lost treasure, the three years’ output of the gold mines of Peru, which, contained in 30 Spanish ships, was sunk in A r igo Bay by the British fleet in 1702. Once, as a result of SO years’ intermittent work by an American syndicate, one of the hulks was lifted to the surface, but it broke up immediately. The only person who met with any success with this treasure was a Scotsman, -who in 1821 recovered £BO,OOO worth of silver. As the Government inspectors who had been watching him demanded a big proportion of his "find,” he entertained them rather well, and was able to sail away before they realised what was happening. He built a mansion in Perth called "Dollar House.”