Fortune from Neptune

Two gold British sovereigns, one dated 1901, the other 1912, plinked to the mucky deck of the Italian salvage ship Artiglio II (artiglio = talon) last week as she rode off Brest, France. The sovereigns were but a tender of what the next clutch of the Artiglio IPs five-clawed dredge was to raise from the "treasure" ship Egypt 400 ft. below. The dredge dipped, scrabbled, rose 15 tense minutes later with two gold bars and a scattering of sovereigns. The Italian crew went hysterical. "Gold! Gold!" they howled. They screamed, wept, embraced. Three years of painstaking, hazardous marine engineering had at toilsome last succeeded. Fourteen men had died to bring that gold to the surface. One ship had been blown up.

Some $5,000,000 worth of sovereigns, gold bars and silver ingots were in the Egypt's strong room, placed there by one of the Egypt's officers named Cameron. The Artiglio's crew last week wished bad cess to Second Officer Cameron. For a decade he had kept to himself the fact that he had also stowed in the Egypt's strong room tons of silk, small arms & ammunition, and paper rupees worth, if they were valid last week, about $14,000,000. Italian divers had performed the prodigious feat of opening the strong room at a 400-ft. depth where pressure was 177.2 Ib. per sq. in. (at the surface it is 15 Ib.). Before they could get at last to the gold, the salvagers had to remove masses of rotted silk and other unexpected debris.

Commander Giovanni Quaglia of the Artiglio II eventually roared his hysterical crew to attention. "Pray for your dead comrades!" The men circled the little heap of retrieved gold, dropped to their knees, ostensibly prayed for several seconds.

Expectation was too acute for silence. Up leaped the men, scrambled to their posts. Down went the artiglio, its claws spread. Another 15 minutes, and again the dredge unclenched heavy gold.

"A sovereign to every man for a souvenir," laughed Commander Quaglia.

"Gold! Gold!" laughed the men and flew back to their labor.

At the day's end the Artiglio II's mucky deck carried about $200,000 in gold coin and bullion. Next day they clawed another quarter of a million from the Egypt; the third day enough to make $875,000 old, and one blackened silver ingot. More gold remained; and under the gold, stacks of silver. Commander Quaglia refreshed his men with champagne, and scurried for England. For the French were after him.

In Plymouth Harbor Sir Percy Graham Mackinnon of Lloyd's boarded the Artiglio II with the customs agents. Commander Quaglia was sitting in a deck chair under a huge sun umbrella. On their knees at his feet were two ship captains--one an Englishman, one an Italian--washing sovereigns in a basin, counting and bagging them. The ecstatic crew galloped at their jobs, contemptuously trampling and scattering bundles of rupee notes on the after deck. Commander Quaglia saluted his visitors. One of the customs men showed Commander Quaglia an official document: "Sorry, sir. A warrant for the arrest of the gold."

While the crew hissed and glared, the English agent fixed his Admiralty writ to the Artiglio II's mast. Later he transferred the writ to the ship's hold where the sacks of gold were stored.

A Brest fishing concern had thus impounded the Egypt's recovered fortune. One of the concern's tugs, the Iroise, had several years ago participated in a hunt for the Egypt's location. On those grounds the French wanted a share of the recovery.

If the French are blocked from their salvage claims, the British underwriters and the owners of the Artiglio II (the Sorima Co. of Genoa) will divide whatever comes up from the Egypt. Speaking for Lloyd's, Sir Percy assured the Italians that the French libeling of the Artiglio IPs gold cargo was but a legal incident which would not interrupt further work or profit. To Commander Quaglia, the Italian Minister of Communications Costanzo Ciano dashed a wireless message: "Warmest congratulations from Premier Mussolini to yourself and all the crew."

Another question was the value of the paper rupees grabbed from the Egypt. The Indian State of Hyderabad, for whose account they had been printed, canceled them after the sinking. But may a government cancel its legal tender?

Italian Jews developed the idea of bills of exchange in international commerce. From bills of exchange grew promissory notes and paper money, which is a government's promise to pay on demand. Italian lawyers last week adduced tradition & history for their opinion that Hyderabad might not legally repudiate the millions in paper rupees which the Artiglio IPs crew carefully cleared of sea slime and dried.

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