MILLIONS IN GOLD LIE AT BOTTOMS OF SEAS
FINANCIERS BACK ENGINEERS TO MAKE SEARCH
New York, June 12 – Would you believe that big business men financiers and stock market operators of the super-wise Wall street clan would put up $125,000 to finance an expedition to search the bottom of the five oceans for lost treasure trove?
They have.
And no less personage than Rear Admiral Chester, U. S. N., retired, is to head the company. More than $200,000,000 in gold have been charted in sunken ships.
Since the great war started, in the hulks of 500 vessels that have been sent down by torpedoes and shell, there is another vast fortune.
The company was organized chiefly through the success of Engineer George Stilston who raised the submarine F-4 in Honolulu harbor.
He is chief engineer cf the Treasure Trove company and it is believed by the Wall-st. coterie that the methods he applied to the submarine will repaire treasure ships from almost any depth.
In spite of the heavy sum risked in in the expedition, the backers will repaire all they have invested with a rich dividend added on the first time a treasure ship is brought to the surface.
For instance, there lies in the shifting ocean bed off Cape Hattcras, a Ward liner which went town some years ago. In her iron hull are chests of silver worth $200,000 and non-perishable goods in her freight holds will bring $700,000 if they can be salvaged, it is claimed.
But this is only one of 600 vessels whose position at the bottom of the sea have been already charted.
The richest prize of all the sunken treasure ships, is the Spanish galleon which sunk off Lizard Point, Cornwall, England, in 1784 with $83,000,000 in gold doubloons in her chest.
Then there is the British frigate Hussar which four years earlier, went to the bottom in the East river a stone’s throw from New York’s money mart. There was $4,800,000 in gold in her hold.
As lately as 1899 the Adelena of Tacoma, Wash. She had $500,000 in nugget gold brought down from Alaska.
The Islander, another Klondyke gold freighter, sank near Douglas Island, Alaska, with $650,000 of the precious dust on board.
The treasure hunters are preparing new scientific machinery with which they will not only dredge the ocean bed but dig under the shifting sands and seek out the, gold and precious stones that sank in ships centuries ago.