NO DIAMONDS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 11 August 1928, Page 9

NO DIAMONDS.

ELIZABETHVILLE’S SAFE OPENED.

(United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph Copyright.) (Australian Press Association.) PARIS, Aug. S. The Elizabeth ville diamonds have proved non-existent. The salvagers worked for months to recover the sale in which the diamonds were reputed to be carried. They neglected every other part of the ship in order to secure the safe, which when opened was found to contain the equivalent of £lO in francs.

The Paris correspondent of The Times stated that Italian divers had recovered a steel chest containing 13,001) carats of diamonds and quantities of other previous stones, valued at £1,250,000, from the wreck of the Belgian steamer Elizabethville, • sunk by a German submarine in 1917.

The wreck had been lying in forty fathoms off Belle Isle, and it was known that the precious stones were in the captain’s cabin. French trawlers undertook to search for the wreck last May. but were unsuccessful, whereupon the Italian salvage ship Artiglio, especially fitted for deep-sea work, was ordered from the base at Genoa. An Italian diver located the wreck on June 26 and traced the captain’s cabin a week later.

it was necessary to pierce the deck and force a way through iron debris by means of submarine charges, one of which dislodged the chest, which, it was feared, was lost irretrievably. The divers, however, continued directing the Ar'tiglio’s electro-magnetic lifts of 30 tons, and discovered the chest.