The Book of Buried Treasure Part 19

"About twelve o'clock," he wrote, "we made the Sound of Mull. We saluted the Castle of Duart with five guns, and they returned three. I sent in my pinnace for the boats, and things you had left there; and in the evening we cast anchor in the Bay of Tauber Murry, which for its bigness, is one of the finest and fastest in the world. The mouth of it is almost shut up with a little woody island call'd the Calve, the opening to the South not pa.s.sable for small boats at low-water, and that to the North barely Musquet-shot over. To the Landward, it is surrounded with high Mountains cover'd with woods, pleasantly intermixed with rocks, and three or four Cascades of water which throw themselves from the top of the Mountain with a pleasure that is astonishing, all of which together make one of the oddest and most charming Prospects I ever saw.

"Italy itself, with all the a.s.sistance of Art, can hardly afford anything more beautiful and diverting; especially when the weather was clear and serene, to see the Divers sinking three-score foot under water and stay sometimes above an hour, and at last returning with the spoils of the Ocean; whether it were Plate, or Money, it convinced us of the Riches and Splendor of the once thought _Invincible Armada_.

This rais'd a variety of Ideas, in a Soul as fond of Novelty as mine.

Sometimes I reflected with horror on the danger of the British Nation, sometimes with Pleasure on that generous Courage and Conduct that sav'd a sinking State; and sometimes of so great an Enterprize baffled and lost, by accidents unthought of and unforseen....

"The first week the weather was pleasant, but spent in fitting our Engines, which proved very well, and every way suited to the design; and our Divers outdid all examples of this nature. But with the Dog-Days the autumnal rains usually begin in these parts, and for six weeks we had scarce a good day. The whole frame of Nature seem'd inhospitable, bleak, stormy, rainy, windy, so that our Divers could not bear the cold, and despairing to see any amendment of weather I resolved on a journey across the Isle of Mull, to the so much celebrated II-Columb-Kill,[3] in English St. Columb's Church....

"The first four miles we saw but few houses, but cross'd a wild desert country, with a pleasant mixture of Woods and Mountains. Every man and thing I met seem'd a Novelty. I thought myself entering upon a new Scene of Nature, but Nature rough and unpolished, in her undress. I observed the men to be large bodied, stout, subtile, active, patient of cold and hunger. There appeared in all their actions a certain generous air of freedom, and contempt of those trifles, Luxury and Ambition, which we so servilely creep after. They bound their appet.i.tes by their necessities and their happiness consists not in having much, but in coveting little.

"The Women seem to have the same sentiments as the men; tho' their Habits were mean, and they had not our sort of breeding, yet in many of them there was a natural Beauty, and a graceful Modesty which never fails of attracting. The usual outward habit of both s.e.xes is the Plaid; the women's much finer, the colours more lively, and the squares larger than the men's, and put me in mind of the ancient Picts. This serves them for a Veil and covers both head and body. The men wear theirs after another manner; when designed for ornament it is loose and flowing, like the mantles our painters give their Heroes.

"Their thighs are bare, with brawny Muscles; a thin brogue on the foot, a short buskin of various colours on the leg, tied above the calf with a strip'd pair of garters. On each side of a large Shot-pouch hangs a Pistol and a Dagger; a round Target on their backs, a blue Bonnet on their heads, in one hand a broadsword, and a musquet in the other.

Perhaps no nation goes better arm'd, and I a.s.sure you they will handle them with bravery and dexterity, especially the Sword and Target, as our veteran Regiments found to their cost at Killie Crankie."

Although Sir William Sacheverall, he of the facile pen and the romantic temper, brought no Spanish treasure to light, he helped us to see those fighting MacLeans and MacDonalds as they were in their glory, and his description was written almost two and a half centuries ago.

The "Spanish wrack" was handed down from one chief of the Campbell clan to another, as part of the estate, until in 1740, John, the second Duke of Argyll, decided to try his luck, and employed a diving bell, by which means a magnificent bronze cannon was recovered. It has since been kept at Inverary Castle, the seat of the Dukes of Argyll, as an heirloom greatly esteemed. This elaborately wrought piece of ordnance, almost eleven feet in length, bears the arms of Francis I of France (for whom it was cast at Fontainebleau) and the fleur-de-lis. It was probably captured from Francis at the battle of Pavia during his invasion of Italy, and the Spanish records state that several of such cannon were put on a vessel contributed to the Armada by the state of Tuscany. At the same time a large number of gold and silver coins were found by the divers, and the treasure seeking was thereby freshly encouraged. Modern experts in wrecking and salvage have agreed that the crude apparatus of those earlier centuries was inadequate to combat the difficulties of exploring a wreck of the type of the _Florencia_ galleon, built as she was of great timbers of the iron-like African oak which to-day is found to be staunch and unrotted after a submersion of more than three hundred years.

The diving bells of those times were dangerous and clumsy, and easily capsized. The men worked from inside them by thrusting out hooks and tong-like appliances, and dared venture no deeper than eight fathoms, or less than fifty feet. In other words, the treasure might be in the galleon, but it was impossible to find and bring it up. For another century and more, the _Florencia_ was left undisturbed until about forty years ago, the present Duke of Argyll, then Marquis of Lorne, considered it his family duty to investigate the bottom of Tobermory Bay, his curiosity being p.r.i.c.ked at finding the ancient chart, and other doc.u.ments already quoted, among the archives stored in Inverary Castle. More for sport than for profit, he sent down a diver who found a few coins, pieces of oak, and a bra.s.s stanchion, after which the owner bothered his head no more about these phantom riches for some time.

In 1903, or three hundred and fifteen years after the _Florencia_ found her grave in Tobermory Bay, a number of gentlemen of Glasgow, rashly speculative for Scots, formed a company and subscribed a good many thousand dollars to equip and maintain a treasure-seeking expedition by modern methods. The Duke of Argyll, like his ancestors before him, was ready to grant permission to search the wreck of the galleon for a term of years, conditioned upon a fair division of the spoils. He let them have the chart, without which no treasure hunt deserves the name, and all the family papers dealing with the _Florencia_. In charge of the operations was placed Captain William Burns of Glasgow, a hard-headed and vastly experienced wrecker who had handled many important salvage enterprises for the marine underwriters in seas near and far.

The contrast between this twentieth century syndicate with its steam dredges and electric lights, and that primitive age when the MacLeans were hara.s.sing Captain Adolpho Smith from their fort beside the bay, is fairly astonishing. The gentlemen of Glasgow were not moved by sentiment, however, and soon Captain Burns was spending their money in a preliminary survey of the waters and the sands where the galleon was supposed to be. Although the ancient chart was explicit in its bearings, and these were made when men were living who had seen a part of the wreck above tide, locating the _Florencia_ proved to be a baffling puzzle. During the first season, 1903, divers and lighters were employed in this work of searching, but the salvage consisted of no more than another bronze cannon loaded with a stone ball, several swords, scabbards, and blunderbusses, a gold ring, and some fifty doubloons bearing the names of Ferdinand and Isabella, and Don Carlos.

Two years later, in 1905, the work was fairly begun with a costly equipment. The bottom of the bay was photographed and a mound of sand revealed, which, it was concluded, covered the surviving part of the galleon. Digging into this bank, the divers found many curious trophies, among them more arms and munition, bottles or canteens, boarding pikes, copper powder pans, and other small furniture, much corroded and encrusted. It was surmised that the vessel lay with her stern c.o.c.ked up, and that in this end, indicated by the swelling of the sand bank, the treasure was hidden.

Powerful suction pumps worked by steam were set going to clear away this bank, and they bored into it steadily for three weeks while the divers dug shafts to clear away obstructions. At length, a ma.s.sive silver candlestick was fetched up, and the sand pumps clanked more industriously than ever. At the end of the summer, about one hundred square feet of the bank had been removed, but the whereabouts of the galleon was by no means certain.

As soon as the weather became favorable in the following spring, Captain Burns and his crew returned to the quest with more men and machinery than before. It was really impossible that such a business as this could be carried on without some touch of the fantastic and the picturesque. There now intrudes a Mr. Cossar, employed as "the famous expert, who, by means of delicate apparatus can indicate where metal or wood is buried in any quant.i.ty underground," and he spent the summer taking observations and buoying the bay with floats or markers. At these places boring was carried on means of steel rods to a depth of one hundred and forty feet, while the dredges were busy exploring the vicinity of the sand bank.

The area thoroughly explored was increased to eight acres in 1906, in water from seven to fourteen fathoms deep. That famous expert, Mr.

Cossar, and his delicate apparatus were reinforced by Mr. John Stears of Yorkshire, one of the most notable diviners of England. He operated with no more apparatus than a hawthorn twig and professed to be able to locate precious metals no matter how many fathoms deep, and more than this, _mirabile dictu_, to tell you whether it was gold, or silver, or copper that made his inspired twig twist and bend in his fingers. Mr.

Stears was taken as seriously as Mr. Cossar had been, and the findings of one confirmed the verdicts of the other. The powerful salvage steamer _Breamer_ with a large crew searched where the diviner told them to go, and several pieces of silver plate were recovered amid the excitement of all hands.

The _Breamer_ continued work in 1907, but during the next year the waters of Tobermory Bay were unvexed by the treasure-seekers. Then the syndicate went into its pockets for more cash, got its second wind, so to speak, and wrapped its operations in a cloud of secrecy, quite the proper dodge for a venture of this kind. A new and taciturn crew was hired for the _Breamer_, and whatever was found under water was hidden from prying eyes. The additional funds raised amounted to $15,000, and Captain Burns was told to obtain the best equipment possible. It was reported in the autumn of that year that "Mr. Cossar, the mineral expert, by whose skill the scope of the operations was more or less controlled, had broken down in health owing to the severe strain, and had gone home to recruit," but John Stears of Yorkshire with his hawthorn twig was still finding treasure which refused to be found by divers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Diving to find the treasure galleon in Tobermory Bay.

(Photographed in 1909.)]

The salvage steamer _Breamer_ equipped with suction dredge, removing a sandbank from the supposed location of the Florencia galleon in 1909.

The five-year concession from the Duke of Argyll had expired and was renewed by a syndicate organized in London, the manager a Col. K. M.

Foss, an American, who appeared in Tobermory and conveyed an impression of c.o.c.k-sure Yankee hustle. He announced that his agents were making historical researches in the libraries and museums of Europe and had already convinced him that the lost galleon was crammed with treasure; that the chart relied on in past searches was all wrong, and expressed his surprise that the extensive salvage operations of recent years should have failed to locate the exact position of the wreck. In a word, Scotchmen might know a thing or two, but your up-to-date Yankee was the man to crack the nut of the lost _Florencia_ and deftly extract the kernel. The appearance of this Colonel Foss in this storied landscape of Tobermory Bay has a certain humorous aspect. He hardly seems to belong in the _ensemble_ of the search for the treasure galleon which has been carried on for centuries.

This entertaining American may perhaps have unearthed information hitherto unknown, but the fact is worth some stress that all previous investigations had failed to prove beyond doubt that the _Florencia_ bore from Spain the thirty millions of money reputed to have been stowed in her lazarette. An ancient doc.u.ment known as "The Confession of Gregorie de Sotomeya of Melgaco in Portugal" contains a list of the treasure ships of the Armada. He was with the fleet in the galleon _Neustra Senora del Rosario_, commanded by Dom Pedro de Valdes, and he goes on to say:

"To the sixth question concerning what treasure there was in the fleet, I say there was great stories of money and plate which came in the galleon wherein the Duke of Medina was (_The San Martin_), and in the ship of Dom Pedro de Valdez which was taken, and in the Admiral of the galleons (_The San Lorenzo_), and in the Galley Royal (_The Capitana Royale_), and in the Vice Admiral wherein was Juan Martinez de Ricalde (_The Santa Anna_), and in the Vice Admiral whereof was General Diego (_The San Christobel_), and in the Vice Admiral of the pinnaces (_N. S.

de Pilar de Targoza_), and in the Vice-Admiral of the hulks (_The Gran Grifon_), and in a Venitian ship in which came General Don Alonzo de Leyna. The report goeth that this ship brought great stores of treasure, for that there came in her the Prince of Ascoli, and many other n.o.blemen. This is all I know touching the treasure."

The name of the _Florencia_ does not appear herein, yet the report of her vast riches was current in the Western Highlands no more than one lifetime after the year of the Armada. That men of solid business station and considerable capital can be found to-day to charter wrecking steamers, divers, dredges, and what not to continue this enterprise proves that romance is not wholly dead.

In the town of Tobermory, the busy, mysterious parties of treasure seekers, as they come year after year with their impressive flotilla of apparatus, furnish endless diversion and conjecture. The people will tell you, in the broad English of the Highlander, and in the Gaelic, even more musical, as it survives among the Western Islands, the legend of the beautiful Spanish princess who came in the _Florencia_, and was wooed and won by a bold MacLean, and they will show you the old mill whose timbers, still staunchly standing, were taken from the wreck of the galleon. In Mull, and oftener among the islands further seaward and toward the Irish coast, are to be found black-eyed and black-haired men and women, not of the pure Celtic race, in whose blood is the distant strain bequeathed by those ancestors who married shipwrecked Spanish sailors of the Armada, and perhaps among them are descendants of these two or three seamen who were hurled ash.o.r.e alive when the _Florencia_ was destroyed by the hand of young Donald Glas MacLean.

In quaint Tobermory whose main street nestles along the edge of the bay, the ancient foemen, MacLeans and MacDonalds, tend their shops side by side, and it seems as if almost every other signboard bore one of these clan names. If you would hear the best talk of the galleon and her treasure, it is wise to seek the tiny grocery and ship chandlery of Captain Coll MacDonald, a gentle white-bearded man, so slight of stature and mild of mien and speech that you are surprised to learn that for many years he was master of a great white-winged clipper ship of the famous City Line of Glasgow, in the days when this distinction meant something. Now he has come back to spend his latter days in this tranquil harbor and to spin yarns of many seas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Scabbards, flasks, cannon b.a.l.l.s, and small objects recovered from the sunken Armada galleon.]

Stone cannon b.a.l.l.s and breech-block of a breech loading gun fished up from the wreck of the Florencia galleon.

"The scour of the tide has settled the wreck of the galleon many feet in the sand," he told me. "I can show you on a chart what the old bearings were, as they were handed down from one generation to the next, but Captain Burns is not sure that he has yet found her. The money is there, I have no doubt. There was a bark in the bay not long ago, and when she pulled up anchor a Spanish doubloon was sticking to one fluke. Mr. Stears, the Yorkshireman with the divining rod, did some wonderful things, but the treasure was not found. To test him, bags of silver and gold and copper money were buoyed under water in the bay, with no marks to show. It was done by night and he was kept away.

He went out in a boat next morning and was rowed around a bit, and wherever the metal was hid under water, his twig told him, without a mistake. More than that, he knew what kind of metal it was under the water."

"And how was that!" I asked of Captain Coll MacDonald.

"He would hold a piece of gold money in each hand when the twig began to twist and dip. If the gold was under the water, the twig would pull with a very strong pull, so that he knew. If it was undecided like, he would hold silver money, and the twig told him the proper message. I watched him working many a time, and it was very wonderful."

"But he did not find the treasure," I ventured to observe.

"Ah, lad, it was no fault of his," returned the old gentleman. "The Spanish gold is scattered far and wide over the bottom of the bay, I have no doubt. Donald Glas MacLean did a very thorough job when he blew the galleon to h.e.l.l."

The present Duke of Argyll, brother-in-law of the late King Edward, bears among the many and n.o.ble and resonant t.i.tles that are his by inheritance, several which recall the earlier pages of the history of the Clan Campbell, the brave days of the feudal Highlands, and the ancient rights in the Armada Galleon of Tobermory Bay. He is Baron Inverary, Mull, Morvern, and Tiry; twenty-ninth Baron of Lochow, with the Celtic t.i.tle of the Cailean Mo'r, chief of the Clan Campbell, from Sir Colin Campbell, knighted in 1286; Admiral of the Western Coast and Islands, Marquis of Lorne and Kintye; Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland and of the Castles of Dunstaffnage, Dunoon and Carvick, Hereditary High Sheriff of the County of Argyll.

He once explained how the ownership of the _Florencia_ galleon came to his family by means of the ancient grant already quoted. The Campbells held the admiralty rights of the coast of Mull at the time of the Armada, and any wreck was lawfully theirs for this reason. The doc.u.ment was simply a formal confirmation of these rights. The _Florencia_ was flotsam and jetsam to be taken by whatever chiefs held the rights of admiralty. A case involving the salmon fishing rights of a Scottish river was recently decided by virtue of a charter of admiralty rights granted by Robert the Bruce, who ruled and fought six hundred years ago.

In order to complete the doc.u.mentary links of this true story of the Armada galleon, it may be of interest to quote from a letter recently received by the author from the present Duke of Argyll, in which he says:

The galleon was the ship furnished by Tuscany as her contribution to the Armada. She was called the _Florencia_, or _City of Florence_, and was commanded by Captain Pereira, a Portugese, and had a crew largely Portugese on board. We have found specimens of his plate with the Pereira arms engraved on the plate border. She carried breech loading guns on her upper deck, and you will see one of them at the Blue Coat School now removed from London to the suburbs.

On the lower deck were some guns got from Francis I at the Battle of Pavia. I have a very fine one at Inverary Castle, got from the wreck in 1740. Diving with a diving bell was commenced in 1670 and discontinued on account of civil troubles. Pereira foolishly took part in local clan disputes, helping the MacLeans of Mull against the MacDonalds. One of the MacDonalds, when a prisoner on board, is said to have blown up the vessel as she was warping out of harbor.

I found an old plan and located the "Spanish wrack" from the plan, but only sent a man down once from a yacht.

There was little obtained during the last divings, cannon b.a.l.l.s, timber, a few pieces of plate, small articles--about 70 dollars, etc.

Yours faithfully, ARGYLL.

Kensington Palace, April 25,--1910."