B5F20I1

Transcribed Text (OCR)

GARY MANGIACOPA ARCHIVE
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Title:      B5F20I1
Slug:       b5f20i1
Categories: Lost Treasure
Source:     https://garymangiacopraarchive.com/b5f20i1
Pages:      3 scanned, 3 extracted
OCR:        Google Vision API (document_text_detection)
Processed:  2026-06-06
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7 Out 1985 Monday Bridgeportlast
Vanishing buried gold
JACKSON, Tenn. (AP) - A treasure in gold coins unearthed by
city workers has vanished into the community, leaving officials try-
ing to figure out who owns the pre-Civil War coins.
The coins turned up three weeks ago when a backhoe excavating
a city parking lot broke a glass jar containing U.S. gold pieces dating
from the 1830s, '40s and '50s.
The workmen scooped them up and within hours were peddling
the treasure to gold dealers, coin merchants, bank tellers, business-
men and just about anyone else interested in the deal.
"It's been on everybody's lips," said June Crowley, a gold dealer
who bought some of the rare coins but isn't saying how many or what
she paid for them. "I'm trying to keep that a secret," she said.
Mayor Bob Conger, who has filed suit to recover the coins for the
city, said the nine-man work crew dug up at least 177 gold pieces,
probably more, and that they could be worth up to $3,000 each.
Chancery Court Judge Joe Morris has ordered the workmen to
quit selling the coins and ordered that buyers hold onto them.
Determining how many coins were discovered is tricky since the
city must depend on the workers to say how many coins they got.
In addition, the parking lot was left unguarded for at least 24
hours after the discovery and other people apparently visited the
site.
One workman traded eight gold pieces for a 1983 Pontiac, while
others may have sold their coins for as little as $50 each.

[PAGE BREAK]

Apt 1988
Man seeks wreckage
of ship that killed 1,547
United Press International
They
MEMPHIS, Tenn.
made movies about the Titanic
and a song about the Edmund
Fitzgerald, but the horrifying
story of the luxury steamer Sul-
tana has somehow escaped his-
tory's attention.
American ship accident ever
Though it was the worst
lives, the sinking of the Sultana
and took more than 1,500
near Memphis 123 years ago
Wednesday was obscured by
other events: the end of the
Civil War and assassination of
President Lincoln.
But the story holds a fasci-
nation for University of Ten-
nessee at Memphis forensic an-
thropologist Hugh Berryman,
who wants to find the
wreckage.
"It's extremely valuable as
an archeological find. It's with-
in the boundaries of our
country and yet it's been lost to
history," said Berryman.
It was early on the morning
April 27, 1865, when disaster
struck.
The Sultana had a legal ca-
pacity of 376, but some 2,200
passengers
homebound
Union soldiers freed from
Southern prison camps and
congregated in Vicksburg,
Miss. were crammed aboard
the steamer as it strained
through the dark Mississippi
River. Also aboard were hors-
es, mules and one alligator.
About seven miles north of
Memphis, a boiler blew, then
another, then another.
Many were killed instantly
by steam and twisted pieces of
shrapnel. The midsection of
the Sultana erupted, hurling
hundreds of passengers into
the river.
One survivor said that the.
"horrors of that night will nev-
er be effaced from my memory
such swearing, praying,
shouting and crying I had nev-
er heard."
The hurricane deck col-
lapsed to form a funnel that
fed passengers into the flames
and steam of the boilers, Berry-
man said.
"Many ran and jumped into.
the water. With all the panic
you had nonswimmers clinging
onto swimmers. Witnesses saw
several hundred go under in
mass," he said.
For freed soliders, celebra-
tion turned to tragedy.
"They felt they had sur-
vived the war. They were on
their way home. Then to see all
these people dying, people
caught in metal and unable to
get out. It was just a night-
mare," Berryman said.
In all, 1,547 persons died in
the Sultana disaster as com-
pared with 1,513 in the storied
sinking of the Titanic.
Because of the changing
course of the Mississippi River
during the years, the Sultana is
believed to be buried at least
20 feet deep in a soybean field
on the Arkansas side of the riv-
er, and Berryman would like to
take another stab at finding it.
The contents of the Sultana
should be well-preserved, he
said, judging by what has been
recovered from other ships
that sank at the time. The
bones of the victims may re-
veal what diseases the prison-
ers of war had and how they
were treated in notorious Con-
federate prisons.

[PAGE BREAK]

New Haven Register,
NN
27 oct 1992
Tuesday
Riches salvaged from 1500s wreck
Associated Press
MEMPHIS, Tenn.
What may
be some of the oldest gold, silver
and copper bars ever salvaged
from an ancient shipwreck were
delivered Monday to the offices of
treasure hunter Herbert Hum-
phreys Jr.
More than 200 bars, many of
them marked with stamps dating
back to the early 1500s, arrived by
armored car after they were
brought up a few weeks ago from
the wreck of an unidentified Span-
ish ship in the Bahamas.
Humphreys discovered the
cache of bars in 30 feet of water as
he and his divers were following
the trail of debris left by the drift-
ing wreckage of the Spanish gal-
leon Maravillas. He has been sal-
vaging the Maravillas bit-by-bit
over the past six years.
Altogether, about two tons of
bars were unpacked in a confer
ence room at Marex International,
the company Humphreys runs.
Although a few of the bars were
pure gold, most appeared to be a
mix of metals including gold, sil-
ver, copper and tin.
"We have no way of telling how
much they're worth until they are
assayed," said Humphreys, who is
also sending a researcher to Spain
to try to identify the markings on
the bars.
"Some are marked with tax
stamps from Emperor Carlos I,
[AD] who reigned from 1506-1556,'
Humphreys said. "But others bear
markings that have never been
seen by any one now alive."
The company believes the bars
were melted down from pre-Co-
lumbian Aztec and other Indian
idols and trinkets and were being
returned to Spain when the ship
sank.