£500,000 SEA TREASURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9385, 6 November 1908, Page 2

£500,000 SEA TREASURE.

» STRANGE DEVICE FOR ITS RE* 1 COVERY. To the mouth of the River Colne, off Brightlingsea. an extraordinary machine has been towed and anchored. It is to be used in a final attempt to recover the £500,000 treasure of gold, in coins and bars, which is said to have <*one down in H.M.S. Lutine in 1797 near the island of Terschelling. off the coast of Holland. A portion of the treasure has been recovered, but all ordinary dredging plant is useless, as the vessel has sunk into the sand. The new device is a great steel tube nearly 100 ft in length and wide enough to allow a man to walk erect down its centre. At one end is a metal chamber provided with windows and doors, and at the other a medley of giant hooks and other tackle. ' The apparatus has just been completed, after years of work by Messrs Forrestt and Co., shipbuildei'3 in their i Wyvenhoe yard. ' ; One end of the tube," explained a member of the firm, " will be clamped to the side of a steamship or barge. The other end, by means of water-ballast tanks, will be sunk until it touches the bottom. Then, by means of compressed air, all the water will be forced from the tube and also from the chamber at the bottom of it, which will be flush upon the bed of the sea. " Divers will walk down a stairway in the centre of the tube until they reach the submerged chamber. Here they will don their diving costumes, and, opening a series ol water-tight doors, will step straight out into the water. Engineers will be stationed in the chamber, and, following the instructions of the divers, who will communicate with them by means of portable telephones, they will operate the mechanism of two powerful suction pumps or dredgers which are fitted to the sides of the tube. These dredgers, it is hoped, will suck awaj r the sand_ around ,the sides of the heavy chamber until it gradually sinks by its own weight right down on to the deck of the Avrecked ship. Then the divers, making their way from the chambers to the deck of the ship and thence to the hold, will be able to transfer the treasure from the •ship to the chamber by easy stages."