LONE SHIP.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 112, 11 April 1929, Page 8

LONE SHIP.

CALIGULA’S GALLERY. PRICELESS TREASURE. Signor Mussolini’s romantic project of simultaneously ■ laying bare the Emperor Caligula’s historic galleys and recovering the priceless treasures which have lain in them at the bottom of Lake Numi for nearly 2000 years is now approaching tho test, states the correspondent of the London Daily News in Rome. The larger ship was sometimes called Talamego—meaning The Inner'Chamber of Love —while Seneca described it as the Rest Ship. Caligula, between the years 37 and 40 A.D., constructed a magnificent galley, really the first and most wonderful houseboat ever built. It was a floating palace surrounded by balconies, including .dining halls bedrooms, temples and even winter gardens. Everything was very richly ornamented with precious marbles, statues, rare metals, ivory, tortoiseshell, wood-work, golden curtains and festooned walls. The galley was 236 feet long, with a 75ft beam. Although it was equipped with purple sails, it was not intended for navigation, but was moored in the centre of the lake, on which the second galley, almost as large but not so ornate, ferried the Emperor’s parties to the Rest Ship from a landing-place, the stone remains of which have been Exposed by five months pumping out of the lake, which is Mussolini’s method of recovering the treasures. The lake’s level has now sunk 15 feet, revealing! the greatly-corroded wooden stern of the galley surrounded bv a tangled mass of beams and planks. Tho hull is vaguely visible. It is covered by slime and weeds. The stern is apparently damaged owing to its nearness to the surface during the previous efforts at salvage, but the bow is sunk far deeper m the mud. The stern’s emersion was hailed with enthusiastic cheers. The workmen immediately hoisted the Italian flag on it, and'hurried on with the pumpinfir.

Signor Mussolini budgeted £IOO,OOO for the enterprise, of which the pumping out cost £40,000, and the excavation of an underground conduit to carry the water tq a neighbouring lake £30,000. The remainder was devoted to roads, a museum, and other works to complete the gigantic engineering and archaeological feat, the results of which are hoped to prove dazzling, both historically and artistically.