Pieces of Eight Read online

leading to a point of the stubs of what were obviously the remains of the ribs of the shipwreck, then I swept the detector over a few lead sinkers to neutralize the detection beep for that base metal, after extending the handle of the detector so I would not have to swim to the bottom all the time I started at the eastern end of the area and swept all around the extremities ending up at the west, I kept on getting large lower pitched hits and knew that there was cannon, anchors or other large iron or in some cases the pitch told me bronze or brass objects down there under the sand.

  This took me about an hour and as I was heading back towards the beach I was snorkeling along in a 'zig zag' and sounding all the time, thank goodness I had set the detector to ignore lead because I suspected that there was a lot of it about from all the lost tackle from generations of fishermen, I could see a lot of sign of fishing line which would mean a lot of lead sinkers.

  Every now and then I would get a low pitched hit for some more iron articles, now and then another higher beep for bronze or brass, suddenly I got a high pitched squeal from the spectrum far to the other side of lead.

  The detector was set to beep at a different pitch for different metals and as I had only been getting the low beep of iron and brass or bronze as the only metal detected so far, this high pitched beep was unusual so I shortened the telescopic handle, took a deep breath and dived down to investigate.

  It took a few dives for me to first use my knife to cut all the tangled fishing line and then to sweep the sand and other debris away from where the signal kept repeating, some tiny fish were darting in and out of the gray cloud of dust snapping up miniscule prey.

  The bottom here was kept swept clear of fine sand by the action of the waves leaving only shingle and course sand and larger shell particles with a fine dust between and after a while I uncovered a concretion that was driving the detector crazy.

  I pulled it loose from it's prison in the shingle, picked it up, guessing that it weighed about five kilograms, it consisted of black and grey matter encrusted with layers of small worm tunnel like structures, as well as some or other coral, I placed it in my waist pouch and extending the handle of the detector again carried on sweeping the way back to the beach without getting another hit.

  I reversed out of the water at the cove and sitting down in the shingle above the water mark took the lump out to investigate.

  Smacking the metal pommel on the back of my diving knife against the concretion I was more than pleased when a piece broke off revealing a shiny gold coin, by the size I guessed there must have been more that fifty in the lump.

  I took my flippers off and walked up to the top of the dune where I had concealed my backpack in the fringe of the sea bush, I was intending to take off my wetsuit before drying off and pulling my clothes back on and heading home.

  When I came out of the water I had forgotten to switch the detector off so when I put it under the thick fringe of the sea bush, to protect it from the direct sun light, it gave another wild high pitched bleat!

  I poked it in and out of the bush but found only the one spot about four feet in from the fringe of the bush where it beeped, so taking my knife I cut a narrow access into the tangle of the sea bush, exposing the area that the detector had indicated and started to dig through the roots and decomposed leaves.

  I scraped about a foot of overburden away at a time, put the detector back and every time it beeped a little louder.

  At about three feet I found what had at one time been a hardwood box, I dug this out carefully, in it was a stiff dry old oil cloth wrapped bundle, carefully unfolding the wrapping, it cracked and broke at every crease as I did this, inside was the remains of what I believed to be a small leather pouch that kept a cache of ten gold coins fused together with what remained of the leather pouch, underneath this was a one hundred millimeter diameter three hundred millimeter long ceramic cylindrical vase with a tight fitting lid.

  Leaving the box behind I put all of my finds into my back pack and as it was now getting late I started to walk back to the car park and the drive home.

  The next day I sent the photographs of the wreck and a picture of the concretized lump of coins to the Archeological Department of the Rhodes University and the East London Museum.

  Within a week I had a call from a Professor Johnstone at the University asking for a meeting, I heard nothing from the Museum, by then I had been back at work for a few days but every evening I had searched the Web for any mention of a shipwreck or any found gold anywhere along the west coast from East London, there were plenty of mentions along the Transkei Coast to the north east and a few mentions of a suspected wreck at Cannon Rocks a lot further to the south west but no mention of my wreck.

  When I met Professor Johnstone he was a friendly and really helpful type, he was interested in the fact that I had got a lot of hits with the detector indicating large iron and brass or bronze objects surmising as I had that it was more than likely the cannon or anchors from off of the wreck, he explained that usually when a wooden ship hit a submerged rock like the 'submarine' the ballast usually fell out first and to lighten the ship the crew usually threw the cannon off next, this would leave a debris field to follow but mine was slightly different.

  To him it appeared that the ship had been caught in a south easterly gale and was being driven on to the shore, the helmsman had aimed for the gap between the rocks as the best place to beach the craft, the rocks to the left and the beach to the right would both offer no protection but if he could wedge the hulk between the two 'Sisters' the crew and passengers would have a better chance of survival.

  Unfortunately the 'submarine' had gutted the boat fifty meters from the beach and it had not dropped the ballast but because the hull had filled with the added weight of water had settled on the lee of the rocks wedged itself right there, mostly sunken but protected from the force of the waves, it seemed the cannon had fallen off the boat, in situ, as it broke up over the next few weeks, the timbers and cordage that had washed up on the beach had been eroded by wind driven sand and storm surge waves until there was no trace of them, they may find some samples for dating when they excavated the dune behind the beach.

  The Professor said he had studied an old English manuscript which described the wreck of an 'East India-man' lost on this coast giving exactly the description of the geography for the area.

  There were a few survivors who had walked to Algoa Bay before being rescued.

  The manuscript had mentioned the fact that they had beached between two outcrops of rock, everybody had believed it had been wrecked further to the east, near the Kei River Mouth because geographically there were gaps in the rocks and beaches same as here as was mentioned, there also was a note of a river mouth open to the sea just a few miles to the west of the wreck site that they had swum across, obviously nobody had suspected that it was the Chalumna River and not the Kei as the mouth mentioned in the manuscript.

  After he studied the coins I had exposed from the concretization he said they were 'Gold Mohur' some were Ajmer weighing about ten to eleven grams and approximately twenty millimeters diameter and others looked like Agra of the same weight and diameter, he showed me how the Ajmer depicted the Emperor Jahangir enthroned and holding of all things a wine goblet, the Agra depicted a humped bull, there may be other types of coins in the middle but we would not know until the Archeological department had separated all the coins from the concretion.

  I did not mention my second find of coins because I had plans for that.

  I had 'Googled' the value of a single Gold Mohur at ten lakhs Rs or rupees which would equate to more or less eighteen thousand US dollars each and a Us dollar was worth twelve Rand so I was looking at two million Rand for the ten coins and I had all the time in the world to do the exchanging.

  That was my plan.

  Every evening I turned my attention to the ceramic cylinder, it was of a crazed offwhite fine china and the lid seemed to be stuck down by old pitch.

  I gone to the local hard
ware store and bought a plumbers gas blow torch, using this I heated the pitch up by gently waving the flame carefully back and fourth without overheating the cylinder or damaging the contents, until I could scrape a little of the pitch out of the small gap between lid and vase, this process took a long time almost three evenings until I could remove the lid.

  I found a further plug of ceramic on the inside with even more pitch around the side, another three days and I removed that as well to find a soft still pliable though delicate chamois leather pouch carefully stuffed into the inside of the top of eight ceramic Chinese tea bowls carefully packed with some kind of wax infused paper between the delicate bowls to prevent them rubbing against one another.

  Inside the nearly dry leather pouch was the most delicate Indian style jewel encrusted gold necklace and a palm full of diamonds, carefully wrapped in what had been a silk scarf.

  I had to wash the bowls in warm soapy water quite a few times before I cleaned all the wax off of them.

  They were of a beautiful white porcelain with a hand painted blue pattern fused into the actual porcelain, not printed on the surface, the blue had a luminescence ranging from a dark, almost cobalt centre bleeding to a delicate blue