In search of lost treasures

By TP

There are at least 5,000 known ships (not all treasure ships) wrecked around the Australian coastline and probably a very large number of ships met the same fate before Australia was colonised. Ships foundered on Australian reefs, islands, and the coast, well before Captain Cook sailed up the east coast of Australia in 1770. The Dutch treasure ships Batavia, Gilt Dragon, Zuytdorp and Zeewyck had already come to grief off the Western Australian coast. It is generally accepted that the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch knew of Australia and visited its northern shores centuries ago. Items have been found to tease the historians and in some cases, they have wondered if the items found were brought here by the original owners or whether a collector carelessly dropped or lost the article. A coin was once dug up at Cairns and created a flurry of interest as it bore the stamp of Ptolemy IV, who supposedly ruled Egypt more than 2,000 years ago. Torres Strait Islanders once practised the art of embalming their dead. They then took the mummy to sea in a canoe and this is a similar ritual found in Egyptian mythology.

UNEARTHED AT ROCKHAMPTON

Gold coins, gold scarabs and an Egyptian calendar stone were also reported to have been unearthed at Rockhampton in 1966. These were estimated to belong to the 2nd or 3rd dynasty of about 2,780 BC. Were the Egyptians really in Australia so long ago? Australia’s notorious undersea explorer and treasure hunter, the late Alan Robinson, mentioned a discovery that could well prove that seamen from the Mediterranean reached the west coast of Australia approximately 600 years before Christ. Robinson also claimed credit for locating the wrecks of the Gilt Dragon and Zuytdorp. An old prospector showed Robinson a plate made of bronze that had been found on the north-west coast of Western Australia near some deposits of galena ore (silver, lead and zinc). The bronze plate was sent to a US university and they wrote back saying the plate was “of Phoenician origin, possibly from the period 200 to 700 BC.” The university was unable to decipher the writing on the bronze plate. Historians claim that the Phoenicians were excellent seafarers and that Emperor Darius sent Admiral Scyax to the Indian Ocean on a voyage of exploration around 500 BC. The Admiral returned with his ships’ holds full of silver ore. It seems quite a coincidence that a bronze plate found near an old silver mine has been identified as belonging to the Phoenicians.

CHINESE WRECK

Another wreck Robinson claims to have found is Chinese, built in either the 11th or 12th century. In a museum in Taiwan is a map believed to be 2,000 years old. It shows the southern coastline of New Guinea and the eastern coastline of Australia. Marco Polo in the 13th century mentioned that the Chinese spoke of a large and rich land 320km south of Java and that the people worshipped idols and spoke the Persian language.

Booby Island was a haunt of Asiatic pirates

A porcelain map made by the Chinese in 1477 depicts the Pacific Ocean and coastline of the east coast of Australia. The Chinese Admiral, Cheng Ho, lost some of his 62 ships in 1420 during a severe storm off the south Sumatran coast. The ships blown off course are believed to have reached Australian shores. A prawn trawler friend of Alan Robinson showed him an 86cmhigh vase that had handles shaped like coiled serpents. The trawler brought the vase up in its nets while working in Exmouth Gulf off the Western Australian coast. Robinson dived in the area and found relics which included a pottery case and a bronze cooking vessel from a sunken ship. The Western Australian Museum identified them as coming from China around the 11th or 12th century.

A JAPANESE PIRATE

Yama da Nagamasa, a Japanese pirate, claimed to have visited with his 40 ships, every land from Australia to Japan, between 1628 and 1633. A missionary, Father Ricci, working in China in the 16th century, drew up a map showing the coastline from Cape York to where Townsville is situated today. The British Museum deciphered an inscription on the map and it gave details of a Castilian (Spanish) ship that had been wrecked somewhere on the Queensland coast. All this proves that ships from many countries have visited or have been wrecked on our shores, especially the Western Australian coast, around to Queensland and on the Great Barrier Reef. Research can help the treasure seeker find the general locality where treasure ships have been wrecked but diving and salvaging is for the experienced and in some past cases, it has proved costly and dangerous both in money and lives. In 1975, American treasure seeker Mel Fisher, lost his son and daughter-in-law in a tragic salvaging mishap while bringing up the treasure from the Spanish galleon Senora de Atocha off Florida.

The late treasure hunter Alan Robinson (second from right)

MODERN SUCTION EQUIPMENT

Modern suction equipment, and expensive and sophisticated magnetometers can help find wrecks. The magnetometers or other underwater type metal detectors usually can help find old wrecks by homing in on the ship’s cannon. This was how the six-man team from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, USA, in 1968, found the cannon jettisoned over the side of Captain Cook’s Endeavour on the 10th of June, 1770. The cannon were discovered on the Six Mile Reef (9.6km) under nearly 1.5 metres of coral growth. I feel any yachtsman who sails the Australian coastline would benefit by purchasing a good metal detector and using it on islands where it is possible that early shipwrecked sailors might have landed. One of the first things the captains of treasure ships did when hitting a submerged rock or reef, was to try and get the treasure into a longboat. The Torres Strait area should yield numerous treasure ships as many Spanish gold and silver coins, guns, swords and other relics have been sold by Trepang fishermen and pearlers to passengers on ships that used to sail through the Straits.

WELL-KNOWN HAUNT

A well-known haunt of Asiatic pirates was Booby Island and a lot of early coins have been found there. The pirates terrorised European treasure ships and the island is one of those isolated places that is riddled with caves. One cave was used as a “Sailor’s Post Office” and when you research northern wrecks, you will find that many people from shipwrecks reached Booby Island. Years ago, a team from the Queensland Museum searched the island with metal detectors but didn’t find any buried treasure. They had been searching for relics to learn more of the lifestyles of sailors who had been wrecked on northern islands during the 19th Century. More than 40 years ago a friend of mine once wrote from Cairns saying he knew of a prospector who had found an old Portuguese suit of armour containing the bones of a sailor. The armour had been found with the aid of a metal detector under bat droppings in a cave on one of the Torres Strait islands. The detector, a Red Baron, was in a Cairns shop for repairs and it still smelled strongly of bat droppings.