SUNKEN GOLD

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVII, Issue 21449, 13 September 1939, Page 14

SUNKEN GOLD

TREASURE IN SEINE ESTUARY The recovery of sunken treasure from the sea is an enterprise which ■ has always had a romantic attraction, both for those who attempt it and for these who read about it. It is exciting news that the searchers who have for months been trying to locate the wreck of the 130-ton brigantinq Telemaque and her reputedly valuable cargo imagine that they are on the eve of success, writes the Paris correspondent of a London weekly. Th Telemaque sailed from Rouen on Januar" 1. 1790, bound for London and carrying what was officially described as baulks of wood and barrels of tar. But. according to legend, there were jewels, gold and silver plate, and coins to a fabulous amount concealed in the legs and below the false bottoms of the barrels. They were riches which part of the French aristocracy and the Catholic Church were trying to smuggle out of the country in order to escape the confiscations of the Revolution. They included not only priceless chalices and other sacred and secular vessels from the rich abbeys of Juinieges and Saint Martin de Bischerville, the ruins of whose splendid Norman churches are still a feature of the Seine Valley in the great loops of the river between Rouen and the sea. but also a sum of money belonging to Louis XVI., and supposed to have been as much as two and a-half millions of “livres"—which were not English pounds, but francs—and .necklaces belonging to Queen Marie Antoinette, and said to have been Worth a million and a-half. For nearly 150 years the Telemaque has been lying in the mud and the shingle just off Quillebeuf. the last town on the already widened Seine before it spreads out into the estuary. She anchored there on the evening of her departure in order to await the tide and avoid the currents, which were even more dangerous then than now; but in the middle of the night she broke away, and her captain and 10 of her crew only just' had .time to escape in a boat before she was caught in a whirlpool and thrown against the shcal, where she foundered/ At least 20 boats have gone down at about the same place since that time, which makes it difficult to be sure that the right wreck has been identified. But the divers are confident that they have reached-their goal, and that when they can set to work again shortly, after the spring tides, which make that wonderful tidal wave, or “mascaret," so well known to tourists at this season, they will penetrate into the hull and begin to bring up something more valuable than the few timbers which is all they have to show at present. Theirs will be the fourth attempt to recover the treasure. The first was made by the Government of the restored Bourbons in 1818. and the second and third in 1937 and 1842, by two different engineers belonging to Le Havre, the great seaport at the mouth of the estuary, on the other side.