Mystery of $10 Billion Buried Incan Treasure on Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island

Mystery of $10 Billion Buried Incan Treasure on Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island

According to the Santiago Times, American millionaire Bernard Keiser plans to search Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island for the fifth time. Keiser’s 12-year quest, the location of stolen Incan gold and jewels estimated to be worth $10 billion buried, or reburied, by British pirates. (We loved legendary buried treasure stories.) This story, kind of bizarre as, in 2005, the report from the U.K.’s Guardian the treasure had been found. Robinson Crusoe Island, the location of the true story of Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk and his man Friday who were marooned on the island in 1704 for four years and four months.
Selkirk’s story immortalized in Daniel Dafoe’s classic book ‘Robinson Crusoe’.

Santiago Times, December 20, 2010:

Keiser, whose treasure-seeking effort on the island the past 12 years has cost him an estimated US$2 million, is reportedly in the process of shelling out another US$100,000 dollars for this latest effort, which includes highly sophisticated mining video technology. Keiser, a history and political science graduate from the University of Jacksonville, made his fortune supplying NASA with material for their space suits.

But Keiser’s expenses will be well covered should he find the treasure: Chilean law will provide him 25 percent of any booty he discovers, and Keiser estimates the treasure’s value at US$10 billion.

According to legend, the treasure originated in the Incan Empire and was stolen during the Spanish conquest of Peru in the 16th and 17th centuries. When the treasure was en route to Spain around 1715, the navigator in charge of the ship landed on Robinson Crusoe Island and buried his cargo. Before he could return to unearth the booty, an English pirate named Cornelius Webb uncovered the Incan treasure and reburied it elsewhere on the island. The legendary stash is reported to contain 800 barrels of gold, including precious pieces of gold and jewelry.

Here’s where the story gets bizarre:

In 2005, the report from the U.K.’s Guardian the treasure had been found.

The Guardian:

The archipelago is named after Robinson Crusoe, but perhaps it should have been called Treasure Island.

A long quest for booty from the Spanish colonial era appears to be culminating in Chile with the announcement by a group of adventurers that they have found an estimated 600 barrels of gold coins and Incan jewels on the remote Pacific island.

“The biggest treasure in history has been located,” said Fernando Uribe-Etxeverria, a lawyer for Wagner, the Chilean company leading the search. Mr Uribe-Etxeverria estimated the value of the buried treasure at US$10bn (£5.6bn).




The announcement set off ownership claims. The treasure hunters claimed half the loot was theirs and said they would donate it to non-profit-making organisations. The government said that they had no share to donate.

Was the treasure found in 2005? On October 5, 2005, the report Wagner had ‘renounced its claim’ to Chile’s buried treasure.

According to Fernando Uribe-Etxeverría, lawyer for Wagner Technologies, the company does not believe it is capable of excavating the treasure; all the company wanted was the free press.

This abrupt turn of events surprised government officials who were prepared to discuss excavation permits and decide how to partition the treasure with the company. Wagner instead agreed to turn over the coordinates to the government on the condition that if the treasure is excavated, a portion would be given to a number of Chilean charities, as well as the island’s residents.

Uribe-Etxeverría’s announcement also surprised journalists because of the commotion the company generated with threats to withhold the location of the treasure unless the government agreed to give them a cut of the loot (ST, Oct. 3).

Wagner still maintains that “Arturito,” a mobile robot designed by one of their engineers, detected the presence of 800 metric tons of gold and jewels on the west side of Robinson Crusoe Island in southern Chile. Wagner claims that the treasure is located in a very difficult-to-reach spot that requires divers to enter through sub-marine caves on the island’s coast.

Wagner representatives said the company is withdrawing from the controversy that surrounded their claims because of the difficulty involved in removing the treasure.

“There is no company in the country capable of excavating this treasure,” said Uribe-Etxeverría. “For this, you will need something bigger: the State.” He also added that for Wagner, the treasure did not represent a business opportunity. Instead, the company’s exploration was meant to publicize the extraordinary capabilities of their robot.

Family claims 100-year ownership of disputed 'buried treasure' land

The Tribune: Family claims 100-year ownership of disputed 'buried treasure' land
San Salvador - By CELESTE NIXON

Tribune Staff Reporter

cnixon@tribunemedia.net


A FAMILY is claiming it has owned the disputed "buried treasure" land at Fortune Hill, San Salvador for more than 100 years.

During a press conference yesterday morning, Dennis Bethel announced that the land being excavated on Fortune Hill belonged to his great-grandfather Nimrod Newton, by way of a Crown grant dated August 8, 1876.

The Newton tract encompasses "47 acres on Fortune Hill and includes an area of the 23 acres owned by Dorothy Black-Beal", Mr Bethel said, adding that the existing boundary makers were erroneously set.

Minister of State for Finance Zhivargo Laing revealed in a town meeting in San Salvador last Thursday that "Dorothy Black-Beal has been the only person found to have clear title" of the land.

Rumors of treasure buried on the land have been circulated in San Salvador for years.

Some believe the island may have been used in the past as a staging ground for pirates and that their treasures may still be hidden in caves in the area.

Mr Bethel claims to possess certified survey plan and a record of all supporting documents from the Department of Lands and Surveys, which he has already submitted to Minister Laing to dispute the boundary markers.

Mr Bethel said he has made numerous attempts to contact the government to have matter investigated but has had no response.

"This is a land matter that they are failing to settle, the government have sided with a foreigner", remarked Mr Bethel.

He again called on Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham and Mr Laing to intervene and stop the excavation in order to review the survey plans and properly ascertain the correct location of the Newton land.

Legal action will be taken if nothing changes, Mr Bethel warned.

According to Mr Laing, Mr Bethel will indeed probably have to take this route.

He said: "When people have title to their property, the state has no duty outside of the public's interest from preventing them from doing what they want on their property.

"You can dispute ownership all you want; that is your business. If you want to dispute it, go to court."

Emerald, Sapphire Found In Fish Tank

Another one of those "here's a plot for a story" articles.

Emerald, Sapphire Found In Fish Tank
Gemologist Estimates Stones To Be Decades Old

DETROIT -- Hundreds of thousands of dollars in precious stones may have been found in a fish tank that was being stored in a Detroit auction warehouse.

Gemologist Derek Wilson said Detroit police called him to the warehouse to help identify the stones that were uncovered.

Watch: 'Priceless' Emerald, Sapphire Found In Fish Tank

"We started looking through it and it was just full of faceted and unfaceted gems," he said.

Catching Wilson's eye were two emeralds and a sapphire, which he said could be more than 100 years old and worth more than $100,000 collectively. He said he has no idea why the precious stones would have been in the fish tank.

"We have no idea. We've been trying to figure that out all day," Wilson said. "We don't know if it was somebody trying to hide money, or maybe somebody bought it that way, or maybe somebody had precious stones that they thought they would try to hide somewhere."

One of the emeralds is 840 karats.

"I have nothing to compare this to, as far as doing an appraisal as a gemologist," Wilson said of the huge emerald. "I can't say, 'Well, one in the past has sold for this price.' So, we actually can't put a value on this stone. It's priceless.

Wilson said he wants to find the owner to trace the history of the stones.

With the exception of the large emerald, the other stones were set to be auctioned off Saturday.

Newly Developed Cloak Hides Underwater Objects From Sonar; 'We Are Not Talking About Science Fiction'

I posted this in my Ocean Sciences blog (Weareseaborn.blogspot.com) but the possibilities for techno-fiction writers is there as well, so thought I'd share it here, too.

Underwater Times: Newly Developed Cloak Hides Underwater Objects From Sonar; 'We Are Not Talking About Science Fiction'

CHAMPAIGN, Illinois -- In one University of Illinois lab, invisibility is a matter of now you hear it, now you don't.

Led by mechanical science and engineering professor Nicholas Fang, Illinois researchers have demonstrated an acoustic cloak, a technology that renders underwater objects invisible to sonar and other ultrasound waves.

"We are not talking about science fiction. We are talking about controlling sound waves by bending and twisting them in a designer space," said Fang, who also is affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. "This is certainly not some trick Harry Potter is playing with."

While materials that can wrap sound around an object rather than reflecting or absorbing it have been theoretically possible for a few years, realization of the concept has been a challenge. In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters, Fang's team describe their working prototype, capable of hiding an object from a broad range of sound waves.

The cloak is made of metamaterial, a class of artificial materials that have enhanced properties as a result of their carefully engineered structure. Fang's team designed a two-dimensional cylindrical cloak made of 16 concentric rings of acoustic circuits structured to guide sound waves. Each ring has a different index of refraction, meaning that sound waves vary their speed from the outer rings to the inner ones.

"Basically what you are looking at is an array of cavities that are connected by channels. The sound is going to propagate inside those channels, and the cavities are designed to slow the waves down," Fang said. "As you go further inside the rings, sound waves gain faster and faster speed."

Since speeding up requires energy, the sound waves instead propagate around the cloak's outer rings, guided by the channels in the circuits. The specially structured acoustic circuits actually bend the sound waves to wrap them around the outer layers of the cloak.

The researchers tested their cloak's ability to hide a steel cylinder. They submerged the cylinder in a tank with an ultrasound source on one side and a sensor array on the other, then placed the cylinder inside the cloak and watched it disappear from their sonar.

Curious to see if the hidden object's structure played a role in the cloaking phenomenon, the researchers conducted trials with other objects of various shapes and densities.

"The structure of what you're trying to hide doesn't matter," Fang said. "The effect is similar. After we placed the cloaked structure around the object we wanted to hide, the scattering or shadow effect was greatly reduced."

An advantage of the acoustic cloak is its ability to cover a broad range of sound wavelengths. The cloak offers acoustic invisibility to ultrasound waves from 40 to 80 KHz, although with modification could theoretically be tuned to cover tens of megahertz.

"This is not just a single wavelength effect. You don't have an invisible cloak that's showing up just by switching the frequencies slightly," Fang said. "The geometry is not theoretically scaled with wavelengths. The nice thing about the circuit element approach is that you can scale the channels down while maintaining the same wave propagation technology."

Next, the researchers plan to explore how the cloaking technology could influence applications from military stealth to soundproofing to health care. For example, ultrasound and other acoustic imaging techniques are common in medical practice, but many things in the body can cause interference and mar the image. A metamaterial bandage or shield could effectively hide a troublesome area so the scanner could focus on the region of interest.

The cloaking technology also may affect nonlinear acoustic phenomena. One problem plaguing fast-moving underwater objects is cavitation, or the formation and implosion of bubbles. Fang and his group believe that they could harness their cloak's abilities to balance energy in cavitation-causing areas, such as the vortex around a propeller.

US and Spain siding against treasure hunters

Odyssey Files Motion to Strike the United States Amicus Brief Filed in the "Black Swan" Case
January 5, 2011- Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. (NasdaqCM: OMEX), a pioneer in the field of deep-ocean exploration, filed a Motion to Strike the amicus brief filed by the United States which is in support of Spain in the “Black Swan” case. In the alternative, Odyssey asks the Court to direct the United States to amend its statement of interest to accurately reflect its interest in the case. The “Black Swan” case is currently pending in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.


Odyssey was named in several U.S. State Department cables obtained and recently released by the website WikiLeaks. The released cables suggest that the U.S. State Department offered special assistance to Spanish officials in the “Black Swan” case in exchange for assistance in acquiring a French painting confiscated by the Nazis during World War II and now on display in a museum in Madrid.

“We have brought to the Court's attention the evidence suggesting that the involvement of the U.S. Executive Branch in the ‘Black Swan’ case goes beyond its interest in interpreting applicable laws. The U.S. Government's interest appears to have been related to a promise of support for Spain in exchange for assistance in obtaining this painting for a U.S. citizen. This calls into question whether there may have been any other offers of support in exchange for favors completely unrelated to this case. Any interest in the case of the U.S. beyond those stated in their filing should warrant striking the amicus brief or at the very least, require a full explanation of the motives behind their support of Spain,” said Melinda MacConnel, Odyssey Vice President and General Counsel.


After reviewing the cables that were released, Odyssey CEO Greg Stemm sent a letter on behalf of the company and its thousands of shareholders to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton requesting additional information and a review of the position taken by the U.S. in the “Black Swan” legal case. Neither Odyssey nor Stemm has received a response to this request.

About the “Black Swan”
In May 2007, Odyssey announced the discovery of the "Black Swan," a Colonial-period site located in the Atlantic Ocean which yielded over 500,000 silver coins weighing more than 17 tons, hundreds of gold coins, worked gold and other artifacts. Odyssey completed an extensive pre-disturbance survey of the "Black Swan" site, which included recording over 14,000 digital still images used to create a photomosaic of the site.

The coins and artifacts were brought into the United States with a valid export license and imported legally pursuant to U.S. law. Odyssey brought the artifacts under the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court by filing an Admiralty arrest action. This procedure allows any legitimate claimant with an interest in the property to make a claim.

The Kingdom of Spain filed a claim to the treasure alleging that the coins originated from the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, a Spanish vessel which sunk in 1804. Spain claimed that it owned all of the coins and that the treasure was immune from the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). Although it has not been conclusively proven the recovered cargo came from the Mercedes, Odyssey presented clear evidence to the trial court (including the ship’s manifest) that shows the primary purpose of the Mercedes’ last voyage was commercial in nature and the vast majority of coins on board were owned by private merchants, not by Spain. The United States filed an amicus brief in the case changing its previous position and supporting Spain in the “Black Swan” case by setting forth a re-interpretation of the language in the Sunken Military Craft Act (SMCA) to allow government-owned vessels on commercial missions to enjoy sovereign immunity. A number of individual private descendants (whose ancestors were transporting goods on the Mercedes) as well as the country of Peru have filed claims in the case. Without conducting a hearing, the district court sided with Spain and ruled that the treasure should all be turned over to Spain. The case is currently on appeal at the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. For more information on the "Black Swan," visit www.shipwreck.net/blackswan.php.

Odyssey’s significant legal filings in the “Black Swan” case can be viewed at http://www.shipwreck.net/blackswanlegal.php.


About Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc.
Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. (NasdaqCM: OMEX) is engaged in deep-ocean exploration using innovative methods and state-of-the-art technology. The Company is a world leader in shipwreck exploration, conducting extensive search and archaeological recovery operations on deep-ocean shipwrecks around the world. Odyssey also owns approximately 41% of Dorado Ocean Resources; a company formed in 2010 to discover and commercialize high-value mineral deposits from the ocean floor, and provides proprietary deep-ocean expertise and equipment to Dorado under contract. Odyssey also provides deep-ocean contracting services to governments and companies around the world.

Odyssey discovered the Civil War-era shipwreck of the SS Republic® in 2003 and recovered over 50,000 coins and 14,000 artifacts from the site nearly 1,700 feet deep. In May 2007, Odyssey announced the historic deep-ocean treasure recovery of over 500,000 silver and gold coins, weighing 17 tons, from a Colonial era site code-named "Black Swan." In February 2009, Odyssey announced the discovery of Balchin's HMS Victory. Odyssey also has other shipwreck projects in various stages of development around the world.

Odyssey offers various ways to share in the excitement of deep-ocean exploration by making shipwreck treasures and artifacts available to collectors, the general public and students through its webstore, exhibits, books, television, merchandise, educational programs and virtual museum located at www.odysseysvirtualmuseum.com.

How About That Cave Found in Vietnam?

Sure Start News: Vietnam Cave Largest In The World
A newly discovered cave deep in the jungles of Vietnam is the largest cave yet discovered in the world. It is 262×262 feet in many places, and is large enough to contain a half-mile New York City block, skyscrapers and all.

The cave, Hang Son Doong, is just one in a network of approximately 150 caves in the Annamite Mountains of central Vietnam. The first explorers to enter the cave traversed 2.8 miles through the underground cavern before rising floodwaters forced them out again. They believe that the passage goes even deeper.

Andy Eavis, of the International Union of Speleology, was the discoverer of the previous record holder, the Deer Cave in Borneo.

“This one in Vietnam is bigger,” admitted Eavis.

Apparently, locals have known about the cave for some time, but have never entered into it’s depths because the noise from the cascading river inside was “intimidating.”

Son Doong actually houses it’s own underground river and a jungle, even cloud formations at times.

Adam Spillane, a member of the expedition, said that an explorer has to be “very close to the cave to find it.” Spillane added, “”Certainly, on previous expeditions, people have passed within a few hundred meters of the entrance without finding it.”

See the pictures of the world record cave at National Geographic

Local diver eyes old boat remains in in Fort Loudoun Lake

Knoxville News: Local diver eyes old boat remains in in Fort Loudoun Lake
The Star of Knoxville, a modern paddlewheel cruise boat, and the Volunteer Princess, a sleek multimillion-dollar cruise yacht, lie anchored in Fort Loudoun Lake.

But submerged in the waters and along the shoreline between them lie the scattered skeletal remains of other boats from a long ago time, when moneymaking vessels on those waters were not a rarity but commonplace.

"They were the trucking industry of their time," said Jim McNutt, a Knoxville lumberman and scuba diver with a passion for history and marine archeology.

He wants to see the wreckage salvaged for historical and educational purposes.

There may be many as four wrecked boats in the same general area. Most likely, they are all simple flatboats or keelboats. But there is a chance that the wreckage lying closest to shore is that of a classic steamboat, McNutt said.

"It could be a lot wider than it appears (on the surface), and that increases the possibility" of it being a steamboat, McNutt said. "Once we get to the underside of it, we will know for sure."

He said he has heard stories from several people, including a woman whose grandfather was a steamboat captain, that a steamboat was wrecked or abandoned at that site. And the type of wood is more likely to have been used in a steamboat, he said.

But whatever type of boat it turns out to be, he said, "it is likely that some artifacts have settled down into the wreckage over the years. I'm certain that we will find some artifacts."

In a maritime salvage claim filed in U.S. District Court, McNutt - owner of Marine Geographic - is asking that he and his firm be named "substitute custodians" of any artifacts recovered from the site by professional marine archeologists.

"This wreck belongs to the people of Tennessee," McNutt said. "Marine Geographic will act as the curator of the site and will donate the artifacts to the public education cause."

While the claim is pending in court, McNutt is working to drum up interest and support from a variety of organizations, including the University of Tennessee, TVA and the East Tennessee Historical Society.

McNutt hopes that eventually there will be educational public displays and exhibits pertaining to the history of river traffic placed along Riverfront Landing.

"If we can't get the help we need over the next two or three years, we'll just have to abandon it," he said. "We're moving now because (the wrecks) will eventually erode completely over time. And once a site is gone, you can't reconstruct it."

For historical and archival research, McNutt turned to Bob Davis, retired engineer and local amateur historian who was instrumental in setting up a steamboat history display at the Historic Crescent Bend House.

Davis said that Knoxville depended upon river commerce until the 1850s, when a railroad bridge was built over the Tennessee River at Loudon. Steamboats went into decline but continued to operate until the early 20th century.

Davis said he feels there is a "slim" chance of the wreckage being that of a steamboat. His historical research has identified some steamboats known to have ended their days in the same general vicinity.

McNutt said he believes the site has historical value no matter the type of boats, but that a wrecked steamboat would make it even better.

"The difference would be like waking up Christmas morning and finding out that your present is a trip to Tahiti instead of to Pigeon Forge," he said.

McNutt is looking for volunteers to help with the project. He can be contacted at jim@marinegeographic.com.