TREASURE FROM SEA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 181, 5 August 1935, Page 8

TREASURE FROM SEA

SEARCH FOR OLD WRECKS DIVER MEETS CCTOPUS STRANGE FINDS ON OCEAN BED One of the greatest gold rushes of recent years Mill shortly take place when 50 expert divers will make a bid for a huge prize of £20,000,000. Negotiations are proceeding for an Italian salvage company to start work on the wrecks which lie at the bottom of Table Bay, at the Cape of Good Hope. 'lhe first of the wrecks on wh ch operations will take place is the Haarlem IL, which sank in 1648 with the 10.'.s of most of her crew and cargo north £250,000. Many ships are known to have been lost in Tabic Bay. The salvage company, with its modern apparatus and daring divers, expects to recover a large amount of the treasure. Amazing stories of adventure were told at Capetown by a diver who has walked the floor of 'Fable Bay. “ I shall never forget one wreck 1 had to explore,” he said. “A writhing form ot green and yellow slid into the broken hull. It was an octopus whose tentacles measured eight feet across.”

Old residents remember the terrible night when a ship struck the tucks around Robben Island, then a leper colony in the middle of Table Bay. The whisper passed from bed to be.l that a ship had struck on the rocks. In a few minutes they rushed out. of the building, tore down pos.ts and wire and rushed to the beach. Boxes and pieces of cargo were washed ashore and the lepers, breaking open a box, found it contained magnums of champagne. A wild orgy began. The lepers danced and dranld all through the night and in the morning lay sprawled among the wreckage on the beach. Every week the dredgers are bringing up queer salvage. Silver coins come Killing out of the slush, almost in Mint condition. A blue and white Nankin vase was an ashonishing find, while the bed of 'J'able Bay seems to be paved with Chinese porcelain, judging by the amount brought up. Other remarkable finds were veins still bearing the crownc 1 lion of Holland and the monogram of the Dutch East India Company. A man employed on a dredger said they do not always have that luck. On many a day the only salvage has been a broken tvpp writer, anchors, cannon balls and rifles.