CHAPTER VI
For months at a time during the past few years, a little ship may have been seen floating around a particular spot just off the coast of Donegal. Barges lay in her vicinity, barges laden with incredible tangles of pipes and cables. Boats pulled around from barge to ship, and fussy little launches came from the coast, remained an hour or two, and then departed. Occasionally a grim, grey destroyer glided up, moored for a time, and then steamed away. But the little ship remained, and strangers in those parts wondered what she was doing there.
That little ship was the salvage vessel Racer, engaged in the greatest treasure-hunt of modern times. Never before has there been such a treasure-hunt, for it was a national treasure-hunt, carried out on behalf of the British people by the British Navy, and backed by the whole power of the nation.
When the White Star liner Laurentic left the shores of England in January, 1917, she carried in her strong-room gold and silver ingots to the value of about £5,000,000 to settle some of Great Britain’s bills for the munitions that were pouring out of the factories in the United States. The Treasury was naturally anxious for the specie to reach its destination as quickly as possible, for that £5,000,000 was destined for the pay envelopes of thousands of American factory hands.
Many a time the Laurentic had made the passage with saloons brilliantly lighted and crowded with wealthy passengers, but never before had she borne so much wealth as on this occasion. The advent of war led to her conversion into an armed liner, and those aboard were now fighting for the freedom of the seas and civilization.
Northward she steamed through the Irish Sea and at last began to breast the open Atlantic and point westward to New York. Malin Head, on the north coast of Ireland, loomed up and began to drop astern, and just when it seemed that all would be well came the blow that sent her to her doom. A violent explosion shook her, made her lurch and shiver, and many gallant fellows, watchful at their posts, were instantly killed; many more were trapped and drowned by the rush of water into the ship.
The survivors sprang to their emergency posts, while the wireless operator sent out a call for help. The captain realized that the Laurentic’s days were numbered. Nothing could save her. The water poured through the rent in her side. More and more she heeled as the water gained. For a moment her bows lifted clear of the sea, then she disappeared in a swirl of foam, and the waves were strewn with wreckage and bobbing heads. When the tragedy was over, and the roll called, it was found that, of 475 officers and men aboard, 354 had gone to their last long rest.
The loss of life, the destruction of the ship, the sinking of the treasure, all were bitter blows. The gallant sailors were beyond recall, the ship was sunk for ever. As for the treasure, it was down in 120 feet of water, on a coast so fully exposed to the Atlantic gales that its recovery was an open question.
Prospecting for gold in the desert places of the earth has its difficulties and its disappointments, but what are these compared with the problems that confront the men who seek to wrest from the mighty ocean the gold it has swallowed? Unexpected dangers often confront those who seek the precious metals in the wild places of the earth, but the dangers of the diver are continuous. He trusts his life to a frail rubber pipe and a rubber suit, and directly the metal helmet is screwed round his neck, and he sinks into the depths, death starts to stalk him and does not give up the chase until the diver is once more aboard the salvage ship.
Some of the finest divers in the British Navy were told off for the treasure-hunt. They were eventually placed under the command of Commander Damant, who had played so important a part in the diving experiments carried out by the Admiralty a few years ago, and who had himself attained the record depth of 210 feet in August, 1906. The fact that the cleverest diving expert in the British Navy was detailed for the operation is proof that the Admiralty realized that the recovery of the treasure would prove no easy task. No one knew at the moment exactly how strenuous the fight was going to be.
The first salvage craft, which was later replaced by the Racer, went off to the Donegal coast and swept the area in which the Laurentic had disappeared. The salvors found the wreck in due course, and they had the satisfaction of knowing that they were within 120 feet of a stupendous fortune of about £5,000,000. A bare depth of 120 feet of water separated them from the greatest treasure-trove of modern times, but the treasure could not have been more secure had it been resting beneath 120 feet of solid steel. Indeed, had the treasure been so buried, instead of underneath 120 feet of water, it would probably have been recovered very much sooner.
Despite difficult conditions, a certain optimism prevailed that the treasure would soon be brought to the surface. But the optimists reckoned without the enemy. Somehow the Germans managed to find out where the Laurentic was wrecked, and their submarines quietly waited their opportunity and began to make things hot for those engaged in the treasure-hunt.
One enemy submarine haunting the vicinity discreetly vanished as a British torpedo boat came on the scene. A day or two passed, and the torpedo boat was called for urgent duty elsewhere. Meantime, there had not been the slightest sign of the enemy underwater craft, which had apparently recognized that that particular spot was rather unhealthy and therefore to be avoided.
Feeling fairly secure, the salvors, according to an unofficial report, determined to get on with their job. A diver donned his dress, his helmet was screwed on, and the air-pumps began to heave as he dropped down to resume operations. He had been down but a short time when he felt himself plucked off his feet by a mighty pull on his life-line and air-pipe. He struggled to right himself, but it was quite useless. An irresistible force dragged him upwards; then he felt himself being drawn through the sea like a salmon at the end of a line.
Something was running away with him. It was an awful experience. He wondered what had happened and how it would end. His senses began to reel; he found a difficulty in breathing.
Somehow he managed to keep his head and act as the emergency demanded, closing the valve by which the air escaped from his helmet. A minute later he broke the surface.
He could hear the seas slapping the top of his helmet as he was dragged along at a smart pace. His heart pounded, a terrible humming droned in his ears, but he strove hard to retain his senses.
“What’s up?” he thought. “What on earth’s happening?”
He had no chance of finding out. He was prisoner in a metal helmet and a rubber suit. He knew he was at the surface, because of the light that filtered through the glass of his helmet and the seas that swished against the copper. As he was dragged along, he had a tendency to spin at the end of his line, which gave him a dreadful sensation.
In a dazed sort of way the diver was wondering how long the ordeal would last, when he suddenly felt himself plucked clear of the water. The next thing he remembers is something scorching his throat and the cool air playing about his head. He looked round and found he was lying on the deck of the salvage vessel, and he thanked his lucky star that all was well. Then he was placed in the recompression chamber aboard, so that the dangers of being dragged hastily from such a depth might be avoided, and the risk of bubbles of nitrogen forming in the blood averted. The air-pumps were set going to raise the pressure of the air in the steel chamber to the same pressure as that at which the diver had been working, and gradually the pressure was reduced until it was the normal atmospheric pressure and the diver was able to be taken out.
While he was on the bottom, a German submarine had stealthily approached the salvage vessel. Suddenly it started to attack, and the salvage steamer had to cut and run for it, dragging the unfortunate diver in its wake. The attack was so unexpected that there was no time to pull up the diver in accordance with the rules. To pull him up in the ordinary way would, as a matter of fact, have taken half an hour. There was no alternative but to tow him along willy-nilly and haul him aboard as they fled. The experience might easily have cost the diver his life, but the recompression chamber fortunately saved him from any ill effects.
After this rather exciting episode, it was decided that operations to recover the treasure would have to be postponed until more peaceful times. The treasure-seekers had their hands full in fighting the stormy seas and powerful currents, not to mention the great depth of water, without having to fight the foe as well.
At the end of the war, the battle with wind and wave for the treasure of the Laurentic was once more resumed. So exposed was her position that for fully half the year it was impossible for divers to work there at all owing to the storms that raged. Even in fine weather there were the currents to fight against. And their strength at times was almost incredible. They could swirl big boulders along the seabed as though they were but pebbles.
More than one diver, during his career, has experienced the sensation of being picked up like a feather and dropped over the side of the wreck on which he has been working. He might weigh roughly 160 lb. Slung over his back would be a 40-lb. weight, across his chest would be a similar weight, while each boot would be loaded with a leaden sole weighing 16 lb. Fully equipped he would turn the scale at about 3 cwt., yet the current has simply played with him as though he were thistledown. Its strength has been such that he could not fight against it. Consequently, he has been compelled to give up all ideas of work and return to the surface. It is indicative of what the salvors of the Laurentic had to contend with in this respect.
Two years at the bottom of the Atlantic had wrought a tremendous change in the once-proud liner. The divers found her plates corroded with rust, girders collapsing everywhere. The sheer weight of the water above her was crushing her flat, squeezing her into a shapeless mass just as you might crush a lily in your hand. Moreover, she was full of silt and mud. Strange fishes glided about her inky depths. Dread conger eels of mighty girth lurked in the labyrinths of the wreck.
In spite of the terrible condition to which the wreck had been reduced, the divers finally managed to locate the strong-room. The bubbles from their helmeted heads flowed ceaselessly upward as the exhaust air ascended to the surface. Slowly they made their way forward towards some bars, dimly seen within the recesses of the ship. They were in the treasure-room. The gold and silver lay about them. Some of the precious ingots barely peeped out of the silt.
The attendant on the salvage ship heard the telephone buzz.
“Hallo!” he said.
“We’ve found the treasure,” said a voice from under the sea. It was a squeaky voice, for, strangely enough, talking in compressed air gives the voice a high pitch, and at this depth it would be impossible for a diver to whistle. The pressure of the air on his lips would prevent him.
No time was lost in lowering cables, and one by one the ingots began to speed to the surface. Then, all too quickly, the signal was given for the divers to ascend, and the treasure had to be left for another day.
That season ingots valued at £500,000 were recovered from the strong-room, after superhuman labour on the part of all concerned. So extremely arduous were the conditions that our crack divers could only work two spells of fifteen minutes’ duration each day. Half an hour’s toil beneath the sea took as much out of them as the ordinary day’s work takes out of the ordinary man.
Once more the winter gales played havoc with the wreck, and next spring the divers found that the treasure was lost under a mass of twisted plates and girders. Imagine a street of lofty houses, then imagine that all the buildings were pushed suddenly down into the centre of the road, and you will arrive at some faint idea of what the ship looked like. Great girders were bent into all sorts of strange shapes; iron bars thick as a man’s wrist were twisted into fantastic curves.
The only way to get to the treasure now was to blast a passage with explosives. The difficulties of the task were increased by the necessity of hoisting every bit of plate out of the wreck and towing it some distance before dumping it, in order to make quite certain that the plate would not again obstruct the divers. The placing of the charges in the most effective spots, and the withdrawal of the divers while contacts were made and the charges exploded, took a long time and entailed endless trouble. But the salvors kept at it doggedly, and bit by bit they cut away obstructing plates and girders weighing about 300 tons.
Thus they opened up a way to the treasure, and once more began to send ingots of the precious metal to the surface. Things began to look rosy, and there seemed the prospect of making a clean sweep of all the bullion, when a terrific storm arose and stopped operations. When the divers went down again they found that more plates had folded down over the treasure, as if deliberately to prevent its abstraction. It was a dreadful disappointment, for very soon afterwards the autumnal gales put an end to the hunt for the season.
The next year the Racer was back again off the Donegal coast, eager to resume the great treasure-hunt. But it proved a terrible season. The weather seemed to mock the hunters. For weeks at a time work was impossible. As soon as one storm abated, another sprang up.
Waiting with all the patience they could muster, the divers at length got a chance of going down to the wreck. What a change the gales had wrought! No longer did the wreck bear any resemblance to a ship. She was just a great mound of twisted metal, partially buried in the silt. Plates and wreckage lay scattered over the seabed in all directions, covering an acre or two of space.
Once more the dangerous task of blowing away obstructions was resumed. Carried out as expeditiously as possible, it yet proved all too slow for those engaged on the work. At long last they managed, after prodigious efforts, to open up a path, only to find the gold as far off as ever. It was buried many feet deep in sand and mud, and to dig it out with shovels was an impossibility, for the sea would wash the sand in just as quickly as the divers shovelled it out.
Forty yards above them lay the Racer—a floating workshop full of the most remarkable inventions that scientists and engineers could devise to assist submarine work. Aboard was a mighty 18-inch pump capable of sucking up a mountain of sand an hour. The mouth of this monster appeared from above. It was placed in position by the divers, and they watched the silt melting before it as if by magic, flowing up to the surface to be dumped a little distance away.
It is no uncommon thing to find such a pump sucking up chunks of rock weighing half a hundred-weight, and even trying to remove bits of girder and plate. But such objects, like deck planks, are rather apt to stick in the bend, and then the monster chokes and has to receive the attentions of the salvors.
Remarkable as was the work done by the gallant divers, the results of the season’s work were fearfully disappointing, for only seven bars of gold worth about £10,000 in all were recovered. In no wise discouraged, the treasure-hunters stole back to the old spot the following spring to try their luck again. The gales of the winter had torn great plates from the wreckage as though they were merely sheets of brown paper and dropped them yards away; the decks that had once resounded to the laughter of beautiful women were laid down flat with the seabed. Twisted and rusted iron lay for hundred of yards around. Looking for a needle in a haystack were an easy task compared with finding the treasure amid all this tangled debris.
A long, keen search revealed what had once been the strong-room. Great metal plates were piled over it, necessitating blasting operations once more. The divers toiled until the plates were cut and dragged away. Then incredible quantities of silt had to be eaten away by the sand-pump, the divers watching closely and coming on a bar from time to time. By the end of August, 1922, gold worth £150,000 had been secured, and early one morning H.M.S. Wrestler might have been seen slipping into Liverpool. Directly she moored beside the quay, case after case was landed from her and placed in a motor-lorry. Those cases—a dozen in all—were full of gold which had been recovered from the Laurentic, and each case represented a small fortune.
All through the season of 1923 the divers carried on, searching amid that chaos of rusted iron for the gold and silver bars, wresting them one by one from their hiding-places on the seabed. For seven seasons they have fought the ocean for that mighty fortune of over £5,000,000 and their heroic efforts have led to the recovery of £4,750,000. Considering the depth in which the Laurentic sank, and the perils and difficulties besetting the workers, the results are beyond compare.
Never before has there been a treasure-hunt of such magnitude, and how long this will last no one can say. A big fortune of £250,000 still lies hidden just off the coast of the Irish Free State, and, if the British Navy fails to recover it for the British Treasury, it will be for the simple reason that its recovery is humanly impossible.
For every £100 won back from the depths, the divers have received an award of 2s. 6d., so altogether they have shared among themselves the sum of £5,937 a sum that has been well and truly earned. It says much for the efficiency of the British Navy when it is known that the whole of this perilous treasure-hunt has been carried out without a single accident to any of the divers engaged.
Many rumours have arisen of wonderful machines being used to locate the treasure, of instruments with the power to divine the presence of gold, of scientists standing on the deck of the salvage vessel watching, with bated breath, a needle oscillate round a dial until it has indicated that the diver far below is in the vicinity of the precious metal. These rumours, however, have no foundation in fact, for the treasure has been recovered solely by straightforward diving. The estimates of the treasure sunk have also varied from £3,000,000 to £8,000,000, but the figures given here have been furnished me specially by the Admiralty, and they are therefore strictly accurate.