GALLEONS AND DOUBLOONS?

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3252, 4 September 1917, Page 3

GALLEONS AND DOUBLOONS?

♦ An anxious syndicate and a waiting world have for some time been eagerly expecting the news that Spanish doubloons in bucketfuls and vast treasure of various kinds had been fished up out of To'.ermory Bay. For over a year now divers and elaborate dredging plant have bren at work in the Duke of Argyll's waters en.l?avouring to discover the great treasure-ship of th • Armada, the Duque di Florenzia, whi h is s ipposed to have sunk tin re with her untold wealth in snht of Invernrv Castle. Visions of the sea b"d strewn with priceless pe-irls an 1 sumptuous gold plate have been dazzling many eyes, and now comes the horrible suggestion from naval historians that the snip that peiisli;d in Tobermory Bay was merely a hired transport—an insignificant- vessel of some 600 tons—having nothing of any lasting value on board her. Mr. Julian S. Corbett, in a communication to the l ading da ly, states that in the Armpda Lists there is no ship called Duque di Florenzia. The ship the treasureseekers had in mind appears as the Galleon of Florence, or sometimes as the Admiral of Florence. This is not the name of the ship, but its des<ription, meaning that it was the viceflagship of the Medicean Navy.

Had this ship been wrecked in Tobermory Bay, she would have b n well worth looking for ; but the in disputable fact is that, according to both Spanish and Florentine official reports, she returned in safety. The main facts concerning the ship actually lost at Tobermory are equally certain. She was not a galleon at all, but a nao, or ordinary armed transput, carrying two companies of a certain "tertla." "We know its name," adds Mr. Corbett, "and the name of th'j officer commanding ; we kno^ - the name of the ship, the name of its owner, its tonnage, and its armament ; and it was obvious to aiyonj familiar with naval matters of the period that, however interfs ,; n" th? search might prove anhneo'n u- '] , i«y no means could it rethe c< pt. It is, indeed, a matter <.f urn-fir" that any of the gun- irenvrred from such a ship were as good as a few o; them proved to ie, though, in passing, it may be s;u I th-? lienvenuto Celliai cipher is not patent to everyone."