SUNKEN TREASURE

Taranaki Daily News, 24 July 1929, Page 11

SUNKEN TREASURE

SEARCH BT ITALIANS.

A MILLION IN THE EGYPT.

The Italian treasure expedition which went out- recently to search for the P. and O. liner Egypt, sunk off Finisterre in 1922 with £839,000 in gold and £215,000 in silver aboard, has so far not located the wreck.

The Egypt sank in 53 fathoms, and the two salvage boats Artiglio and Rostro that compose the expedition, have been dragging the bed of the ocean with a stee’ hawser at .bout the point where the liner should be. So far they have not been successful, and it is thought that the wreck may have been shifted a considerable distance by the action of the tides during the seven years since the collision that sent her to the bottom.

If and when the Italian party locates the Egypt it is understood that they will not start salvage operations before first again locating the Belgian liner Elisabethville, torpedoed off St. Nazaire toward the end of the war w’ith a valuable cargo of diamonds and ivory. The Elisabethville was found last year by the game Italian firm now in charge of the operations and the ivory, or some of it, recovered. But when the safe in the captain’s cabin, where the diamonds were believed to be, was hoisted to the surface and opened, the stones were missing.

Two alternative conjectures were made to explain this fact—either that the captain of the ship, who has since died, concealed th. diamonds for greater safety in some hiding place that only he knew, or that they were by some means got off the Elisabethville before she sank. The divers of the Artiglio and Rostro will try to throw more light on the mystery thi year.