From earliest years our imaginations are fired by the mere mention
of treasure. Who has not heard of that fabulous treasure of the
bloodthirsty pirate, Captain Kidd, whose booty still lies hidden on
some far-off island? Expedition after expedition has been fitted out
to find it, but the pirate hid it so well that the hunters have failed
in their quest. Who has not marvelled at those mighty hoards of gold
stored away by the Incas of Peru, gold which Pizarro looted from the
Peruvian treasure-house and carried back to Spain?
Treasure! The mere whisper works magic, conjuring up pictures of gold
and silver and piles of glowing gems--rubies, emeralds, and diamonds
galore, gleaming with all the colours of the rainbow. So fascinating is
the idea of treasure that men gladly risk their lives to go in search
of it; nor is the magic confined alone to the romantic. The keenest of
business men, who boast of their hard-headedness, seem to lose their
heads where treasure is concerned. Eagerly they fling down the funds to
prosecute the most problematic searches, in return for the promise of
the most shadowy spoils.
These same business men will aver that they never speculate, yet
all treasure-hunting is speculative, and if there is one form more
speculative than another it is that of searching for sunken treasure.
Still, despite its hazardous nature, there is always money forthcoming
to back deep-sea enterprises of this description. True, success comes
but seldom--failures are the rule. Could a correct balance-sheet be
made up showing how much has been spent on hunting for the world’s
sunken treasure and how much has been recovered, we should probably
find that the money expended was many times greater than the value of
all the treasure brought to the surface.
Few ideas could be more fascinating than that of hauling up gold and
silver from the bottom of the sea, and it is this same fascination,
with all the excitement it brings in its train, which lures men on to
attempt to wrest many of these long-lost treasures from the recesses of
the ocean. Years sometimes are spent in pondering ancient documents,
hunting for evidence of the exact locality of the vanished treasure,
seeking to sift rumour from actual fact. Further years may be spent in
making plans and special apparatus for lifting the treasure, and, when
the hunter starts in real earnest, he finds at last that he has spent
years of his life and thousands of pounds just for the privilege of
stirring up the seabed. Treasure-hunting is, in fact, something like
taking a ticket for a sweepstake. The chances may be ridiculously
small, but the prospect of winning a fortune will always make the game
popular.
Fate, indeed, seems to delight in playing tricks on salvage men. While,
on the one hand, it sometimes leads them on to fit out ambitious
expeditions costing thousands of pounds, sends them journeying afar
and imposes the greatest hardships upon them without bringing them any
reward whatsoever; on the other hand, it sometimes flings a fortune
straight into the lap of some lucky man when he is least expecting it.
Lord Leverhulme, in illustrating the vagaries of Fate, related how an
Australian firm once owned an island in the Pacific, a rocky little
place with a few coco-nut trees that gave their crop of nuts which were
duly dried in the sun and turned into copra and coco-nut oil. Their
trading schooner used to visit the island to load the copra, and on
one of the trips the captain happened to pick up a piece of rock and
put it aboard the ship. In due course that piece of rock went back to
Australia with the copra, and was used in the office to keep the door
open when the weather was sultry.
The firm acquired their island to make money out of it, but although
the coco-nut trees brought them a profit, they certainly did not bring
them a fortune. The question arose as to whether it was worth their
while retaining the island, and after due consideration they sold their
property to some one else, and thought no more about it.
Entering their office one day, a professor from the university chanced
to kick against the stone that was propping the door open. He stooped
down, picked it up, scrutinized it closely for a minute or two.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded.
“Oh, that’s a bit of rock our skipper brought back from one of our
islands,” was the reply.
The professor looked at the rock again. “Do you know what it is?” he
asked.
“Just a bit of stone,” came the answer.
“I don’t know,” said the professor, “but I think it’s phosphate. I’d
like to take it away and analyse it, if you’ll allow me.”
Permission was, of course, granted, and the professor walked away with
that bit of rock which scores of men had kicked against at the door.
Taking it to his laboratory, the scientist carefully analysed it. He
found it to be a sample of the richest phosphate in the world. The
original owners had bought the island as a business proposition, but
they failed to realize the fortune that was theirs. That rocky island
turned out to be one mass of phosphate, worth about £100,000,000--and
they had let it go for a few hundreds! Of all who had stumbled over
that lucky door-prop, the professor was the only one who had the sense
to see the fortune lying at his feet.
The counterpart of the professor who saw a fortune in that neglected
lump of rock was the diver who heard the whisper of truth in a rumour.
The work of this diver took him to the coast of Galway, where he was
engaged on salvage work that was to last some little time. He was a
companionable sort of man and, after finishing his spells of work,
would adjourn to the tap-room of the village inn to spend his evenings
in yarning with the fisherfolk.
For years a story had been current in the neighbourhood that a Spanish
galleon, one of the ships of the Armada, had gone down in the vicinity.
Those who heard the yarn smiled. “It’s just a rumour,” they remarked.
Whether it was merely a rumour, or something more, the story had been
told from father to son for generations. So persistent a rumour was it
that it survived century after century, living in the traditions of
these simple Irish fisherfolk, passed on by word of mouth in the little
community, until it survived to our own times. Most of the fishermen
knew the yarn of the sunken Spanish galleon, but perhaps the passage of
time had made many of them rather sceptical.
Anyway, one evening the diver was enjoying his pipe and his beer and
talking about his work, when an old fisherman said to him:
“Why don’t ye thry for the galleon?”
“What galleon?” the diver inquired.
“Why, yon one wrecked just outside the bar,” the fisherman answered.
“Ye can walk about the seabed in that suit of yours?”
“I do it every day,” the diver replied.
“Well, why don’t ye walk out and get the treasure?” The diver smiled.
“Show me the treasure, and I’ll soon get it,” he said. “Where is it?”
Solemnly the fisherman looked at the diver. “My father, he told me, and
his grandfather, he told him. A mighty ship from Spain it was, full of
treasure, that went down in a storm. They saw it from the shore here.”
Puffing away at his pipe, the diver considered the matter. The story in
his judgment might easily be true.
“Show me the spot, and we’ll share the treasure, if there is any,” he
said.
“All right,” the old fisherman agreed. “She’s there all right.
Sometimes we catch our gear in her.”
Completing the task on which he was engaged, the diver began his
search for the sunken treasure. Day after day he and the old fisherman
went out in a rowing-boat, threw a grapnel over the stern and dragged
it about the seabed in the hope of lighting on the wreck. Many of
the villagers laughed at them and thought them crazy, but the two
treasure-hunters paid no heed. They just went ahead with their
monotonous task, buoyed up with the hope of the treasure to come.
The end of the first week saw them as far off the treasure as they
had been on the first day. They dragged on through another week with
a like result. A month of fruitless endeavour failed to rob them of
their faith in the truth of the old story of the wreck. Week after week
they searched the area in which the wreck was supposed to lie, tugging
placidly at the oars, dragging the grapnel along the bottom.
One day the fisherman was rowing slowly along when the diver felt his
grapnel catch in something. He gave the rope a sharp tug, then another,
but the grapnel held firmly.
“We’ve got her,” he said.
Marking the spot with a buoy, they rowed ashore for the diving suit
and air-pump, then they went back to where the buoy floated on the
surface. The diver donned his suit; the fisherman screwed the helmet
securely into place, started to heave the handle of the air-pump as the
diver went over the side and slid down the shot rope to the bottom. The
ghost of the galleon greeted his eyes, the skeleton of the ship of long
ago. For three centuries she had lain undisturbed in her watery grave,
slowly rotting away until she had all but vanished. The diver climbed
over the rotten remnants of the hulk into what had once been the hold
of the ship. The place was full of weed; fish fled at the approach
of the strange monster that was invading their domain; barnacles and
sea-growth flourished on the decaying timbers.
With the same patience that had enabled him to locate the wreck, the
diver searched the seabed until at last he came on what appeared to
be several small barrels. He went up to them, tapped them. The much
talked-of treasure was his at last. Beneath his fingers were solid
stacks of Spanish doubloons, from which the wood had long since
perished, leaving the coins still shaped like the barrels into which
the Spaniards had packed them when they set out on that ill-fated
expedition of theirs to conquer England.
[Illustration: TREASURE HUNTERS EXAMINING THE BED OF TOBERMORY BAY IN
THE ISLE OF MULL THROUGH A SPECIAL INSTRUMENT INVENTED FOR THE PURPOSE]
These two men, with a diving suit and rowing-boat, found a greater
treasure than has fallen to many a powerfully-equipped expedition, and
it is strange to think that the fisherman who hauled the doubloons up
from the bottom was probably a direct descendant of one of the Irish
peasants who stood on the shore on that wild Armada night in 1588 and
watched the mighty Spanish ship founder. The diver had the good sense
to realize that there might be something in the old story, he spent
weeks investigating it, and he reaped a snug little fortune as his
reward. Nor did he squander the treasure that Fate flung his way. The
same good sense which enabled him to find it also enabled him to
keep it, for he turned his Spanish doubloons into a row of houses which
he called “Dollar Row” in order to perpetuate his good luck.
[Illustration: HARD AT WORK HUNTING THE TREASURE OF TOBERMORY. WASHING
THE MUD AND SAND DREDGED UP PROM THE BAY IN ORDER TO FIND THE SPANISH
DOUBLOONS REPUTED TO BE LOST HERE OVER THREE CENTURIES AGO WHEN WILD
WEATHER HELPED DRAKE TO ROUT THE ARMADA]
It is another tale of the Spanish Armada, a tale which up to the
present has not ended quite so happily, that lures men to try their
luck in the Bay of Tobermory in the Isle of Mull just off the west
coast of Scotland. Somewhere beneath the waters of this pleasant bay
is averred to lie a treasure so prodigious that it would make its
discoverer a millionaire twice over. Here, if tradition speaks truly,
a man has the chance of dragging from the seabed beautiful jewels and
wonderful golden cups, with Spanish doubloons worth at least £2,000,000
which went down with the _Florencia_.
Many who have studied the question believe that the _Florencia_
undoubtedly sank here, but an element of doubt creeps in when it is
known that the Spaniards themselves swore that the _Florencia_ returned
after the disastrous expedition. During the Great War the British
Government did its best to conceal the loss of H.M.S. _Audacious_ in
order to deceive the Germans as to the strength of our navy, and it
may have been the Spaniards, three centuries ago, who introduced this
practice. About this, nothing is known with certainty. It all happened
a long time ago, and the years have tended to obscure the facts.
Whether the statement that the _Florencia_ returned was true, or
whether it was a deliberate falsehood spread forth to give her enemies
the impression that Spain was still strong in ships of the line, is an
open question.
Whatever be the name of the vessel, the evidence that a Spanish galleon
actually did founder in Tobermory Bay in 1588 seems fairly strong.
Moreover, it is backed up by material facts in the shape of a cannon,
some cannon balls, a weapon or two and a doubloon that have been
brought up from the bottom of the bay by different treasure-hunters.
From what we can gather of that distant happening, it appears that
the Spaniards, sailing down the Scottish coast in their galleon, and
seeking perhaps to replenish their water-casks, must have made a foray
or two ashore. During one of these they captured a Highland chief,
one Donald Glas M‘Lean, whom they held prisoner aboard their ship. So
bitter a blow was it to the Scottish chieftain that, reckless of his
own life, he sought a terrible revenge. Waiting his opportunity while
the ship was anchored in Tobermory Bay, he managed to enter the powder
magazine. In a moment or two his revenge was complete. The mighty
galleon blew up and the proud chief accompanied her crew of nearly 500
Spaniards to their doom.
Many a tide has ebbed and flowed, many a storm arisen and subsided
since that catastrophe. Timbers have decayed, and mud and sand have
gradually covered up the remains. The treasure by now may be buried 20
or 30 feet at the bottom of the bay and, unless some lucky chance leads
an expedition to hit on the exact spot, may remain buried there for
ever. Divers may have walked over the treasure dozens of times without
knowing that the gold and silver they were seeking lay actually under
their feet.
The Duke of Argyll, who possesses the right to salve the treasure,
has proved his belief in its existence by spending considerable sums
in hunting for it. In addition he has given permission for several
expeditions to prosecute the search, and these expeditions, in the
aggregate, must have expended a deal of money. The lack of success on
the part of previous expeditions seems in no wise to deter others from
following in their steps, and the last expedition to work in Tobermory
Bay reflected the great changes of modern life by including a lady
diver among its members.
Meanwhile the treasure of Tobermory Bay, which has excited the minds of
treasure-hunters for many a generation, still awaits discovery.