The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-11-21
SEARCHING FOR s14O,oOo,ooO.
New Device to Raise Spanish Galleon.

NeW DSNlee Lo tldlSe SDaIlSn GdlleonS
 Sunk in the Bay of vigo in 17O2.
 The latest and perhaps the most promising hunt for hidden treasure ever organized is now going actively forward in the Bay of vigo, on the northeast coast of Spain. ...
 large yacht is there stationed jealously guarded day and night by a Spanish warship, having on board the inventions of an Italian-Cavaliere Giuseppe Pino-with which he hopes to discover and recover certain treasure that has been lying at the bottom of the sea for the past two hundred years. The existence of the treasure is beyond dispute. Twenty galleons of Spain, newly returned home with a treasure harvest of four years gleaning in Mex ico,, went down in the bay on a day in october, 1702, and, although repeated attempts have been made to recover the ships and their gold, silver and pre- | cious stones. every one has failed. Cavaliere Pino is certain that his in- yentions put the treasure at his mercy. Its value is estimated at one hundred and forty million dollars by the Span } ish government. .> l The first of the inventions Is the "hy- droscope," which is nothing less than a l telescope for use in sea waters. This instrument is fitted with special lenses 1 that give it's inventor the power to ex- \ anime the sea bed, however deep the { water may be, almost as easily as he | may view landscape through a pair of field glasses. During the last four months thorough survey has been made with the hydroscope of the sea bed at Vigo, where the ships went down, and already nine of the galIeons have been located and identified. The 1 second invention is the elevator a l simple contrivance for raising objects from the sea bed. This is unlike any of the existing machines. for wreck raising. Each elevator consists of two platforms of steel, between which can vas bags are fitted. The platforms have special devices for attachment to sunkon objects, whether monster ironclad or a toy gun. There is no Him. it tD tho possible power of an elevator, for this depends only on the number of the air bugs and the amount of com pressed air that is driven into them.
 When the eyes of the, hydroscope have discovered any sunken object 1t may be desired to raise, divers take the elevator down ard make 1t fast, Then the compressed air is pumped into the bags, and the object is forced up, like balloon in air, to the surface. With these two machines Cavaliere Pine claims to have the power to solve all the secrets of the sea. The ships and the treasures hidden by all the waters of the world are, he says, at his abso- lute mercy. Work at Vigo has beer somewhat slow hitherto, since the lost ships lie near the mouths of two sandy rivers. But the Spanish government has as much confidence as the inventor himself in the recovery of the treasure at no distant date. a. | Twenty per cent. of the value of eve. rything found is to go to the govern. ment-hence the pressure of the war. ship that watches, on the government behalf, every detail of the work that goes forward from Cavaliere Pino's yacht. Pino himself after maintaining masterly silence for months, in the face of urgent inquiry, gave some ac- count the other day, at Paris, of his schemes.
 'sSea treasure" remarked the inven. tor, lis not common property; every sunken ship has an owner somewhere My manager has made contracts with the Spanish officials giving us the right to seek for lost treasure in five other places-Trafalgar among them. We are thinking of sending an elevator quite soon to Port Arthur, to raise the ironclads lost there, valued even now at twenty million pounds, I am told Then, when consider the fish in the sea that my hydroscope can reveal tc us, the pearls, the coral banks, the sponges-when I remember the three ships, one big and two small, that gc down in the worlds waters every day