TREASURE QUEST ON SEA BED

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 23 September 1933, Page 14

TREASURE QUEST ON SEA BED

Bones of Ships off African Coast

electric “seaseopes,’ and modern- salvage apparatus are now being used to locate the romantic old wrecks which still lie, with their money chests and rich cargoes, along the .South African coast (writes Lawrence G. Green in an English paper). Many attempts have been made by divers in the past to- reach such famous sunken East Indiamen a.s the Jo.nge Thomas in Table Bay, with her boxes of -silver rix-dollars and 1 china; the Meresteyn in Saldanha, Bay; and the Gresvenor on the Pondaland coast, loaded with treasure worth £1,000,000. Sometimes the divers brought up a few valuable relic?, but often they were defeated by banks of sand which hid the rotting bones of the dead ships. A syndicate now operating from Gape Town has - equipped 1 a small salvage ship with the latest apparatus for exploring sunken wrecks. Mr A. M. Currall —or “Diamond” Carrall, as ho is known on the coast —is in charge of the new enterprise. He was the first ! man to find diamonds on the ocean bed. near the Orange Elver mouth, and h.e - has had long experience of isa-lvage on J the sea floor. Diver R. Fowley, the J oldest and most daring diver in these waters, has been -selected for the work under water.

Recently I watched Diver Fowley carry out' the most dangerous task he ha.s ever attempted. This was on th© rockbound Gape -coast of Hermanns, near the spot where the famous troopship Birkenhead went down with drums beating and soldiers, paraded on the sea-swept deck. The Birkenhead carried bullion; and years ago a fisherman saw, at low tide, what appeared to be an iron box wedged between two rocks in 10ft of water.

.The legend of the “iron, treasure chest” was well known- on the Hermanns .coast for fourteen years before Diver Fowley was sent to the spot to clear, up the. mystery. “Nothing but a salvage .job would .tempt me into a place, like, that,” declared Fowley when he saw the breakers rolling in and

smashing over the sharp reefs. But he ordered his heavy helmet to be clamped down, the air pump started, and Fowley went into the swirling sea. The waves battered him, and the backwash almost tore away lifeline and air-tube and nearly carried him out to sea. His hands were bleeding when he emerged, and through the glass of his helmet we could see a deep cut in his forhead.

“,There’s nothing down there but a square flat rock that resembles ft box,” announced Fowley. “But’s that salvage—lucky in one job and unlucky the next time. Now I am looking forward to tackling the Birkenhead herself. No one has ever reached her yet, but if the aeroplane fixes her exact position I am ready to go down.” . Theelectric “sea-scope” which the Cape Town treasure syndicate is using consists of an inverted periscope with a brilliant light at the lower end.. In fine weather, the sea floor may be examined with this device, and any object a.s . large as a wreck in, comparatively shallow water is certain to be detected. .

Much treasure undoubtedly still lies buried in the sand below Table Bay, the old “Tavern of the Seas.” Records of wrecks and past salvage enterprises prove that. Relics that have been recovered since the arrival of modern diving gear and dredgers were merely samples from this graveyard of lost galleons and East Indiamen.

For more than two centuries after the first Dutch settlement at the Cape, ships anchoring in Table Bay had no prooetion against the, fierce northwn°t gales of winter. In one year, 1772, so\en Dutch and three English vessels were driven ashore with a loss of fiOO lives and cargoes worth a. quarter of a m ilion pounds. And in the great gale of 1865 eighteen large sailing ships were lost on one tragic night. Altogether there must be more than a honored wrecks in shallow water along the southern shores of. Table Bay. A rich field of enterprise indeed.