When the Lutine bell, hung at the entrance to Lloyd's underwriting room in Leadenhall Street, London, rings once, it signifies bad news for ship brokers.
When the bell rings twice, it means that a ship listed as lost or overdue has been at last reported. One day last week the Lutine bell gave two solemnly joyful clangs. The ship reported was the H. M. S.
Lutine herself, 32-gun pride of the British Navy, which sailed Oct. 9, 1799, from Yarmouth Roads, laden with gold ingots worth $10,000,000. Some of the gold was to pay off the English army fighting the French in Holland; the rest was to soothe a banking panic in Hamburg. Half her cargo was insured with Lloyd's. In the North Sea a storm hit her. With bare poles she ran before the wind, struck on the island of Terschelling at the mouth of the Zuider Zee, and sank in 50 feet of water.
Almost as soon as the weather cleared, divers went down after gold, brought up about $300,000 worth. Already sand was drifting thick across the Lutine's decks.
In the 139 years since, five salvage expeditions, French, German, Dutch, English, have recovered no more than $200,000, a few cannon balls, a spoon, some brass nails and the ship's bell which now hangs in Lloyd's. Meanwhile, the Lutine settled down 70 feet through loose sand till she rested on the clay bottom. Last spring, Lloyd's licensed Billiton Point Mining Co.
of The Hague to have another try. Billiton set up headquarters on Terschelling, hired 50 wooden-shod dredgermen from the village of Sliedrecht, sent out the Karimata, world's largest dredger, to claw a trench on the bottom of the sea 100 ft.
deep, 500 ft. wide, 3,000 ft. long.
For seven weeks the 130 scoops of the Karimata brought up 400 tons an hour— sand, and nothing else. Then the scoops reached the wreck, tore away great iron ballast blocks from the hull. Said a Netherlander named Eelke Ryn de Beer last fortnight: "I was standing at the edge of the dredger when suddenly at three metres distance I saw how the gold glittered!" It was a bar weighing 120 ounces, worth about $4,000. The scoops had reached the treasure chamber. Then the sand caved in again over the ship; for three days the scoops worked furiously, finally last week brought up a cannon.
Meanwhile, the gold bar was carried in procession through Terschelling, the Dutch fishermen following and cheering, to the house of the burgomaster. Flags went up all over the island. The dredger crew was given an extra issue of gin. Conspicuous among the jubilant Netherlanders was an unromantic representative of Lloyd's, who claimed title to 30% of the gold bar (Billiton Co. and The Netherlands Government will divide the rest) but who remembered that gold bars had been brought up from the Lutine before. Let a strong wind come up before the Karimata finishes work, and in the shallow waters of the North Sea even the world's largest dredger will scramble like a crab for cover.