Hunt treasure under the sea

陜西 殷芝青

幾百年前，一艘西班牙商船在巴哈馬海域沉沒，船上裝載的大量珍寶也散落在海底。

Carl Allen is a fisherman.He always comes to the Bahamas.But as an adult, it wasn't really fish that brought him to this place; it was the legend of a long-lost Spanish galleon (大帆船), the Maravillas,a kind of treasure ship.On one dark January night in 1656, the ship collided with another ship and sunk.

In 1972, an adventurer Robert Marx shocked the maritime (海事的) world by pulling up artifacts (手工藝品) that confirmed basically all the rumours about the Maravillas were true.“Some people claim it's one of the richest Spanish galleons,”said Michael Pateman, director of the Bahamas Maritime Museum.

The treasure they found ended up mostly in auctions and private collections around the world.But marine archaeologists like Jim Sinclair insist the main pile of treasure has yet to be found.“We're probably looking at well over another $100 million still sitting in the sand out here,”he said.

“If we don't do this, Mother Nature will get it.And that doesn't do anybody any good,” Allen said.Allen made his money in plastics, and in 2016 he sold that multi-million-dollar company in Dallas,and then told his wife that he was going fishing for the Maravillas.He bought a 55.8-meter research ship, and all the support boats to go with it.And to top it all off, he bought his own submersible (潛水器).“Everybody thought it was wrong.So many people called me a fool, a laughing stock,” he said.

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