FABLED TREASURE

Taranaki Daily News, 1 August 1931, Page 9

FABLED TREASURE

DUTCH LINER TUB ANTI A.

WEALTHY GERMAN DUPED,

Numerous cables have recently been received about a search •« for ® ° s treasure sliip in the North Sea by the British salvage vessel Reclaimer, which set out from Hull in May to locate the Dutch liner Tubantia, sunk by a German submarine in 1916. The last of these messages stated that the Reclaimer had found the ship, but. could discover neither the £2,000,000 in, gold nor the cargo of cheeses in which it was rumoured to have been hidden. A strange-story to the effect that the whole tale of the treasure on the Tnbantia existed only in the mind of an American confidence trickster is published by the London People. The paper, in an interview with one of the American s comrades, tells how Mexican James otherwise “Colonel” Jimmy James—who is now dead, hoaxed officialdom for years and, incidentally, gained a neat little fortune for himself. The man’s story, briefly, is as follows: — “In May,; 1921, I-was one of a party of four sitting in the dining hall of the Trianon Hotel, where, two years before, the Peace Treaty was signed. One was a Wealthy German-Swiss who had made a great fortune from profiteering, and was then engaged in spending it. With him was his wife. The fourth man was one whose name I shall not reveal, but who had promised the German to introduce him to -the one person who knew the location of a treasure ship under the North Sea. This was Jimmy James. “As we talked, the litter entered. He told how, in 1916, when he was in Singapore, he was approached by an emissary of the Wilhelm strasse and asked if he could manage to chip a large consignment of gold to New York to relieve the strain on German credit, caused by the scarcity and demand for raw “materials in Europe. . The idea was accepted, and the Royal Holland Lloyd Line’s finest liner, the Tubantia, was chartered to take a cargo of cheeses from Rotterdam to Buenos Ayres. “Jimmy then went on to tell of the great secrecy observed in the packing of the sovereigns in little tubes, and the loading of the innocent-looking cheeses in the lower hold of the vessel. He said the ship had only just passed the North Hinder lightship, when a submarine popped lip aiid blew a hole in her side. Jimmy was flung into the, water, and afterwards picked up by .a boat. Hi& leg was blown off in the explosion, he said, and even now I do not know how he came to walk with the aid of a crutch.

“The story went down well, and the German immediately put down £10,006 for the fitting out of a ship of which I was to be captain. Jimmy would take half of the treasure, and the German the other half. The expedition set out, ■but was, of course, a failure. Not to be beaten,, the German fitted out another, meanwhile paying Jimmy for' his services. The German acted in entire, good faith, aS have the numerous British and French syndicates who have been interested since. 1

“But the only person to whom the Tubantia was a goldmine was Jimmy James, who came out of it well over £35,000 to the good.”