Whatever doubts there be about the treasure of Tobermory, there can be
none about the treasure of the _Lutine_, for official records prove
that when she came to grief she must have carried bullion worth over
£1,000,000.
H.M.S. _Lutine_ was a frigate of thirty-two guns, one of those wooden
walls of Old England of which the poet sings. Not always had she sailed
under the British flag. Time was when the tricolour of France broke at
her masthead and French sailors crowded her decks, but Admiral Duncan
captured her and brought her home as a prize, and thereafter it was
the white ensign of England that flew at her peak and a captain of the
British Navy who commanded her.
In the early days of October, 1799, at which time we were warring with
Holland, H.M.S. _Lutine_ was lying at Yarmouth, while the British
troops garrisoned on the island of Texel off the Dutch coast were
waiting anxiously for their pay. The _Lutine_ was commissioned to carry
the £140,000 due to the troops, and, hearing that she was departing
for the Continent, many merchants sought permission to ship gold and
silver by her for the relief of the merchants of Hamburg, who were
financially embarrassed by the wars and the ensuing depression of the
money market. The permission was readily granted, and 1000 bars of
gold and 500 bars of silver were taken to Yarmouth and safely shipped
aboard. In the ordinary course of business, the owners of the bullion
went to Lloyd’s and effected an insurance for the sum of £900,000.
On October of the year stated, the _Lutine_ weighed anchor and sailed
out of Yarmouth Roads on her voyage to Hamburg. As she bowled across
the North Sea, the wind freshened and culminated that night in a
terrific gale which the _Lutine_, gallant ship as she was, could not
weather. The treacherous shoals off the Dutch coast reached out for
her, and the mighty seas battered the life out of her and engulfed her.
Of all aboard, but one human soul survived to tell of the wreck before
he, too, succumbed from exhaustion.
The loss of the _Lutine_ was a tremendous blow to Lloyd’s. It meant
that the underwriters had to find the sum of £900,000 with which to
meet the claims of the insurers. Somehow they found the money and met
all claims, thus adding fresh lustre to the name of Lloyd’s and helping
to raise it to the position it occupies to-day as the greatest and most
powerful marine insurance association in the whole world. In return for
their £900,000 the underwriters became possessed of the treasure--or
rather the right to recover it! At that time, immediately after the
calamity, when salvage operations naturally stood the best chance of
success, the underwriters were prevented from doing anything at all
owing to our war with Holland, and later on the Dutch Government made
its position clear about the matter by claiming the wreck and all that
was in it.
As the vessel lay, it was just possible to get to her when the sea
was calm and the tides were at their lowest. It can be imagined that
the Dutch fishermen made the most of their opportunities. Their
government encouraged them by offering them one-third of everything
they recovered, so the fishers found it profitable to leave their nets
and spend their time fishing in the _Lutine_. Although the bulk of the
treasure was beyond their reach, they managed during the next couple
of years to lay their hands on a good deal of it. The Dutch Government
received from the wreck treasure to the value of £56,000, and of this
over £18,000 was paid to the salvors, while the rest was minted into
Dutch money.
The amount of treasure which passed into the hands of the Netherlands
Government during this period was not necessarily all the treasure that
was taken out of the _Lutine_. It is possible, and indeed probable,
that much of the treasure recovered was concealed by the fishermen
salvors and used secretly to swell their own private hoards; but,
even assuming that twice as much treasure was salved as was actually
declared, there would still be a vast treasure worth over £1,000,000
remaining in the wreck.
A series of fierce storms wrought havoc with the wreck and placed her
quite beyond the reach of the fishermen, who were at last forced to
abandon their profitable quest. For years the wreck was the plaything
of the storms, and not until Napoleon was safely imprisoned on St.
Helena did any one give a thought to the treasure that lay amid the
shifting sandbanks off the island of Vlieland. Then a Dutchman, going
to his government, obtained a concession to salve the bullion on
condition that half of what he recovered went to the government. For
two or three years he fought the sea and sand to get at the treasure.
No sight of gold or silver gladdened his eyes. Season after season, for
eight years in all, he did his utmost to recover the fortune from the
grasp of the sea, but without success. At last, weary of the incessant
combat, he gave up the struggle and left the treasure to mock any other
adventurer who might happen along.
The underwriters at Lloyd’s, however, were not content to see the
treasure which had cost them such a huge sum of money pass into the
hands of a foreign nation, and at their request the British Government
began to treat with that of Holland to induce them to relinquish their
title in the wreck. The ways of diplomacy are often long and tedious,
and this case was no exception. Many years elapsed before an agreement
was arrived at and the Dutch gave up their claims and allowed the legal
title in the treasure to pass to Lloyd’s, its rightful owners.
For well over half a century the _Lutine_ bore the brunt of the gales
which afflict the Dutch coast, spending their strength on the belt of
islands and the shifting sandbanks at the entrance to the Zuyder Zee.
She was utterly lost amid the sands. Then came a terrific gale that
blew for days, and the heaving waters washed the sand away from the
wreck and made it possible to get at the treasure. For a period of
five years, from 1857 to 1861, salvage men toiled away, and the result
of their work was the recovery of bullion to the value of just over
£40,000.
Once the salvors heaved the bell of the _Lutine_ clear of the sea. It
was brought to London and hung in the main hall at Lloyd’s in the Royal
Exchange. Whenever there is any important announcement to make to the
underwriters about a ship being wrecked or an overdue boat reaching
port, the bell of the _Lutine_ is sounded to call the attention of all
concerned. Another time the salvors managed to bring up the rudder
of the _Lutine_, and this was made into a chair and placed in the
committee room at Lloyd’s.
For another quarter of a century the sand and sea were left in
undisputed possession of the wreck, then a new expedition set out
to wrest the treasure from the encompassing sands. Right valiantly
the salvors fought for that fortune, but luck was against them. Now
and again they managed to bring up some of the coins that were lost
in the _Lutine_, but the amount of treasure they recovered totalled
considerably less than £1000 in all. So they discontinued further
attempts and returned to England.
Since then more than one expedition has gone out to try to win the
remaining treasure from the wreck of the _Lutine_. In the year 1908
the natives of Brightlingsea were astonished by the sight of a weird
object that was anchored off the mouth of the river Colne. So strange
a thing they had never seen before, and they puzzled their brains for
an explanation of it. The curious object which caused so much amazement
was a wonderful device for recovering the treasure of the _Lutine_.
It was a great steel tube with a little iron ladder running down the
inside of it. At one end were gigantic hooks for hooking it to the side
of a salvage vessel, and at the other end was a steel chamber with a
series of watertight compartments and air locks.
This marvellous contrivance, which took years to construct, was
designed to be sunk in an upright position down to the wreck of the
_Lutine_. It was equipped with water ballast tanks to sink it into
place, and the steel chamber was furnished with cutting edges, so that
the weight would enable it gradually to cut down through the sand until
it reached the wreck.
Divers were to descend the iron ladder in the inside of the tube until
they reached the submerged steel chamber. Then they were to enter the
air locks where the water was kept back by compressed air, and walk out
into the wreck. The divers would then communicate by telephone with the
engineers in the steel chamber and direct the powerful pumps that were
to suck away the sand until the treasure was reached. Once the treasure
was found, the divers were merely to remove it to the steel chamber,
whence it could be transferred to the salvage steamer above at their
leisure. Excellent as the invention seemed, it did not recover the
treasure of the _Lutine_.
Three years later, in 1911, another expedition more powerfully equipped
than any of its predecessors resumed the search which had been going
on for over a century. Notwithstanding the fact that the position of
the _Lutine_ was fairly well known, the obliteration of a landmark by
a violent gale made it very difficult for the salvage men to find the
wreck. The divers went down and searched the seabed vainly for a single
sign of the old frigate. Not a spar was to be seen, not a rib of the
hulk.
Captain Gardiner, who was in charge of the treasure-seekers, was a man
of resource. He realized full well what had happened. The sand of the
treacherous banks had completely buried the _Lutine_, and before he
could make the slightest attempt to salve the treasure he would have to
locate her and dig her out of her grave.
The problem of finding a wreck that lay buried deep in the silt would
prove too much for any ordinary man, but Captain Gardiner was equal
to the occasion. Among his equipment were some of the most powerful
sand-pumps in existence, pumps capable of removing nearly a thousand
tons of sand an hour. Dropping the end of one of these pumps to the
seabed, he began sucking up the sand at a prodigious rate, cutting a
deep channel right across the area in which the wreck lay. Slowly the
pumps of the salvage ship devoured the sand and at last the salvors
found the wreck buried 36 feet deep under a bank. The finding of the
wreck was in itself a wonderful feat.
If only the other difficulties could have been overcome as easily, the
treasure by now would have been won. But all the time the divers had
to contend with the most difficult set of currents in the world. A
strong tide, always running, plays incredible pranks with the bottom
hereabouts. The submerged sandbanks are almost like cliffs some thirty
feet high, and the tide moulds them and remoulds them almost day by
day. A vessel at dawn may anchor in a deep channel, and by night the
tides in one of their playful moods may have poured tons and tons of
sand into the channel, completely filling it and building up a sandbank
on the very spot where the channel existed only a few hours previously.
It will be realized how difficult this made salvage operations.
The strong currents tended to wash the sand back directly it was
removed, and the salvors were faced with what seemed like an endless
struggle with the sea. They did not shirk the struggle; they went on
dredging whenever the weather allowed, and they fought the tides most
brilliantly by dumping the sand in such a position that it deflected
the current right across the wreck. Thus there was a continual flow of
water over the wreck to keep the site fairly clear and prevent the sand
settling.
Meanwhile, they literally sifted the bed of the sea for traces of the
elusive treasure. Every ton of sand sucked up by the pumps was poured
through a gigantic sieve erected over the side of the salvage steamer.
The sieve was like a giant birdcage, with a small mesh, and the men who
watched the sand pouring through were more than once gladdened by the
sight of a coin from the _Lutine_.
[Illustration: SEEKING THE TREASURE OF THE LUTINE. ONE OF THE HUGE
PUMPS SUCKING UP THE SEABED AT A PRODIGIOUS RATE AND POURING IT INTO
THE GIANT CAGES WHICH SIFTED IT FOR TRACES OF THE LONG-LOST TREASURE]
They were weeks battling with the tides before the sand was cleared
from inside the vessel and around the hull, but the day came at last
when the divers went down to investigate the interior for the long-lost
treasure. Every one aboard was keyed up to concert pitch. It seemed
certain that the _Lutine’s_ treasure was to be lifted at last.
But the divers found the place in a sorry state. Much of the wooden
hull had, of course, been preserved by the sand, but the magazine, in
which the treasure lay, had collapsed, and there was practically a
solid mass of iron five or six feet deep lying on top of the bars of
gold and silver. When the magazine collapsed, hundreds of cannon balls
had poured all over the place and these had been rusted together by the
action of the water, locking up the treasure as securely as though it
had been in a steel safe.
The only hope of the salvors lay in blasting this mass of rusted cannon
balls to pieces and removing them bit by bit. In no other manner
could the treasure be reached. Accordingly they set about their task,
and little by little blew away the first layer. It was slow, tedious
work, and all the time the salvors were harassed by the thought that
the autumn gales might spring up and put an end to their operations,
undoing in a single night work which had taken them months to
accomplish.
Day by day they continued steadily with the blasting, and they had just
succeeded in blowing away the second layer of rusted cannon balls when
the dreaded gales came on. Further work was impossible, and sorrowfully
the salvors left that exposed spot and went to Amsterdam to lay up for
the winter.
A little more time, and they might have succeeded in their quest. There
is evidence that they were somewhere near the gold, for one of the
pieces of rust brought up bore the impression of a gold ingot, and when
this rust was treated with acid it yielded five grains of the precious
metal to prove that the gold was quite close.
Ten divers and a powerful plant had been seeking the _Lutine’s_
treasure for nine months. A small fortune had been spent on the
operations. The workers removed a veritable mountain from the seabed,
and they were rewarded with five grains of gold. They had shifted a
million tons of sand to find five grains of gold! In this way does Fate
taunt the deep-sea treasure-hunter.
The following winter the wreck was buried under 5 feet of sand by
the tides, and by now she is lost once more, buried perhaps deeper
than ever. The exposed position and the strong tides have kept the
_Lutine’s_ treasure safe for over a century. But whether they will keep
it safe for ever, no one can say.
It is a dozen years since I fingered one of the silver coins salved
from the _Lutine_, and wondered whether the treasure was to be
recovered at last. Still the _Lutine_ is not forgotten, and only a
few months ago I received from Lloyd’s a letter from an inquirer
in Vancouver who desired full details of the wreck, with a view to
carrying on further salvage operations. I sent him the particulars he
required, but so far I have not heard of operations being started.
For over a century wind and wave have beaten the men who sought to
recover the wealth of gold and silver that went down with the _Lutine_
on that wild October night. The fortune still lures men on to win it,
and, in spite of the many disappointments, a lucky turn of the wind
and tide, combined with improved salvage appliances, may yet make some
future treasure-hunter a millionaire.