FORTUNES BELOW THE SEA

Taranaki Daily News, 30 September 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

FORTUNES BELOW THE SEA

ROMANTIC OLD TIME WRECK SALVAGE ON AFRICAN COAST. TROOPSHIP BIRKENHEAD SOUGHT. Aeroplanes, electric “seascapes,” 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 journal). - Many attempts have been made by divers in the past to reach such famous sunken East Indiamen as the Jonge Thomas in Table Bay, with her boxes of silver rix-dollars and china; the Meresteyn in Saldanha Bay; and the Grosvenor on the Ponaoland coast, loaded with treasure worth £1,000,000. Sometimes the divers brought up a few. valuable relics, but often they were defeated by banks of sand which hid the rotting bones of the dead ships. A syndicate now operating from Cape Town has equipped a small salvage ship with the latest apparatus for exploring sunken wrecks. Mr. A. M. Carrail—or "Diamond” Carrail, as he 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 River mouth, and he has had long experience of salvage. on the sea floor. Diver R. Fowley, the 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 has ever attempted. This was on the rqckbound Cape coast of Hernianus, near the spot where the famous trpqpshlp 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 racks in IQft. of water. The legend of the “iron treasure chest” was well known on the Hermanns coast for 14 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 airtube and nearly carried him out to sea. His hands were bleeding when ha emerged, and through the glass of his helmet we could see a deep cut in his forehead. “There’s nothing down there ’ but a squaj-e, flat rock that resembles a box,” I announced Fowley. “But that’s salvage —lucky in one job and unlucky the next time. Now I am looking forward to tackfing the Birkenhead herself. No one has ever reached her yet, hut if the aeroplane fixes her exact position I jam. ready to go down.” The electric “seascope” which the Cape Town treasure syndicate is using epnsists. 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 my object as 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 divutg gear and dredgers were merely samples from this graveyard of lost galleons and East Indiamen. . For more than two centuries after the first Dutch settlemen at the Cape, ships anchoring in Table Bay had no protection against the fierce north-west gales uf winter. In one year, 1772, seven dutch and three English vessels .were driven ashore with a loss of 600 lives and cargoes worth a quarter of a mil;°n founds. And in the great gale of 1865 13 large sailing ships were. lost on one tragic night. Altogether there must be more than 100 wrecks in shallow water along the southern shores of Table i B f*y. A rich field of enterprise indeed.