Page:National Waterways A Magazine of Transportation, Volume 1.pdf/216

 of the plan and asked also for a chance to ship gold and silver. So many applied that it was decided to send a ﬁghting ship, and so the Lutine, a 32-gun frigate captured from France, was detailed.

So secretly was everything conducted that it is not known to this day how the treasure was conveyed to Yarmouth, nor is it known exactly how much treasure in bullion bars and coin was shipped on the Lutine. From bars already recovered by salvors, however, it is believed that no less than nineteen banking houses were represented, and it is also believed that the English government sent $700,000 in coin to pay off the troops campaigning against France.

La Lutine sailed from Yarmouth on November 9, 1799, and that same night she went ashore on the Dutch coast. The only two survivors were unable to tell anything of the disaster. One died a few hours later and the other became insane from the exposure and hardships he endured.

In 1800 the King of Holland authorized an ofﬁcial expedition to attempt the salvage and with the crude facilities then available, about $278,000 was recovered. Then the wreck settled and no further attempts were made for thirteen years, when, in 1814, Peter Tsachauzier, ofﬁcial receiver of wrecks at Terschelling, made another attempt, obtaining only a few small coins. But he formed a company with a royal Dutch charter, which is still legally in existence, known as the Decretal Salvors. They spent about $25,000 in seven years of fruitless attempts.

Finally the British underwriters were aroused, and, in 1821, the King of Holland made over to King George IV by royal decree all his claimed rights in the Lutine and her cargo. King George immediately conveyed the title to the Lloyds' committee. They authorized the Decretal Salvors to work on the wreck for their mutual beneﬁt. But few results were obtained in the various attempts made, until 1858, when divers sent up a total of $140,000 worth of bullion in slabs. Then the sand buried the vessel again, and little could be done. Up to 1860, by various attempts, $210,000 in bullion was added to the amounts theretofore obtained. Then up to 1880 spasmodic attempts made brought up a total of 11,164 coins, valued at $4,600.

The present National Salvage Association has gone at the work in the most up-to-date manner, with powerful apparatus. They are attacking the wreck on the theory that the greatest amount of the treasure as yet unrecovered is within the wreck and not outside, as heretofore has been supposed. They believe the greater part of the treasure is at the bottom of the wreck, underneath the heavy cannon which crashed down through when the vessel broke her back on the rocks. On the other hand, divers who had been down and recovered bullion on previous expeditions declared that a space twelve feet square was literally paved with silver bars that were wedged so tightly together that they could not be moved with crowbars or ﬁngers. This treasure was at the stern of the vessel, outside the hull. So it is a debatable question whether or not the present expedition will be more successful, proceeding along its mapped out plan, than its predecessors. 203