Lin Shuo purchased an old-fashioned merchant ship "East Asia" with a displacement of 3,600 tons from Shanghai Maibian Foreign Co., Ltd. The reason why he bought this old-fashioned steamship was entirely because of the route from Shanghai to Nagasaki attached to it.
He was trying to corroborate the legend about the huge treasure cache of pirate William Gent discovered in the Ryukyu Islands.
William Gent was the most famous pirate in America from the late seventeenth century to the early eighteenth century.
At the end of the 17th century, between the coasts of Madagascar and Malabar, the great pirate Captain William Ginter plundered a fleet of Prince Aurangpus of the Mughal Empire in India. Countless trophies worth about one billion marks fell into his hands.
In the hands of
on an island.
Almost every sailor knows his life story in the early 18th century, which is far away now. The story about the Gent treasure has not been silent for a long time. To this day, archaeologists and those who believe in their luck are still telling the story.
Search for the loot of this Scottish pirate. This treasure contains not only gold bars, beautiful pearls and sparkling rubies, but also plum-sized diamonds and exotic and stunning jewelry. Many of these unparalleled treasures once belonged to Austria.
Prince Rampus - Mughal ruler of India.
William Gent was a privateer hired by the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, Belomont, to capture pirates. Without catching the pirates, Gent himself became a pirate. In 1697, William Gent had his
His men hung a red pirate flag on the top of the mast of his fleet and attacked a fleet of Islamic pilgrims from Merka in the Red Sea. From then on, he began a series of desperate piracy acts. In the next two years,
Here, William Gent became the "Terror of the Sea" between the coasts of Madagascar and Malabar, amassing untold fortunes in the process and finding a safe haven for them.
In 1699, Gent stopped at the Hispaniola Island in Latin America. After arriving at the port of Boston in July of the same year, he wrote a letter to Lord Belomont in Boston, hoping to get the Lord's support.
In order to obtain amnesty, he promised to pay 400,000 pounds to Lord Bellomont for this purpose. Lord Bellomont verbally promised to guarantee that Gent would enjoy complete freedom in the United States, but as soon as Gent and his sailors set foot on land, they
He was immediately arrested and thrown into prison. A bag of gold powder worth about 1,000 pounds, as well as silver coins and some other gold items were immediately found at his residence.
On February 16, 1700, Captain Gent was brought back to London as a prisoner of the King of Great Britain. He spent nearly a year in an English prison and was finally sentenced to hanging for piracy and murder. The authorities agreed with his
The wife went to the prison to say goodbye to her husband for the last time. During the meeting, Gent quietly gave his wife a small piece of parchment, and then whispered something. The guards observing outside immediately noticed the secret between their husband and wife.
handed over and confiscated the small parchment ball.
There are only four mysterious numbers written on the ball of paper: 44-10-66-18.
On May 23, 1701, Gent was sent to the gallows. After his death, more and more people began to consider the confusing numbers and legendary treasures he left behind. People continued to try to unravel the secrets of Gent.
The mystery of the missing treasure.
Soon, someone deciphered the numbers he wrote and thought it was a hint of 44 degrees 10 minutes west longitude and 66 degrees 18 minutes north latitude. According to these coordinates, one can be found at the eastern end of Long Island, not far from New York.
A small island called "Gardena". Therefore, treasure hunters came to this little-known island one after another in search of gold, diamonds and a large number of jewelry.
300 years later, there were still no clues about Gent's treasure until 1932, when an Englishman named Palmer bought a strange old sailor trunk with iron hoops in a thrift store.
A strange small wooden board was found in the box. He opened the wooden board and a piece of parchment fell out.
On the paper is a map of an island. On this map you can clearly see a bay next to the lagoon, and then a coral reef. There are also instructions indicating trees and clear steps. At the same time, on the side of the parchment
There was also a reminder on it: "If you want to find my treasure, you must follow this road. Captain Ginter, 1696." Palmer was stunned, he couldn't believe his eyes.
After calming down, Palmer fell into confusion again, because the piece of paper did not indicate which island, which region, or which sea area it was. Palmer spent the whole day in libraries, archives, and antique shops.
Looking at the yellowed broken sea charts, he took the trouble to inquire about information about Captain Gent and searched for the relics used by Captain Gent in the past. He spent more than a year looking for the answer to this question, but failed to find the answer.
The mystery has not been solved.
In the summer of 1933, he bought a beveled writing cabinet used by King from an antique dealer.
He examined the writing cabinet very carefully and found a small parchment ball in an extremely tiny hole stuck with rosin and pitch. Palmer discovered that everything on the second treasure map was the same as the first.
Almost exactly the same, the only thing missing was a hint of the name of the island. Palmer found a few extra letters on the unfolded small ball of parchment, and he recognized the words "China Sea".
As it happened, in the same year someone sold Palmer a second ancient wooden box used by Gent. In the gap between the layers of a secret drawer in this box, Palmer found a third piece of parchment with the same drawing on it.
There is a treasure map that not only includes the outline of the mysterious island, but also marks the geographical longitude and latitude.
Holding these three treasure maps, Palmer was so excited that he could not sleep all night. In order to find this mysterious island, he decided to go to London and combine his three treasure maps with the map found in the Ordnance Survey Department of the British Museum in London.
Hundreds of new and old ocean maps were compared. In the end, this matter alarmed the British Admiralty. They carefully tested the authenticity of the three treasure maps. After confirmation, the British Admiralty agreed to provide Palmer with a ship.
Treasure ship and necessary help, but on the condition that Palmer must truthfully hand over all proof of the treasure to the British government. Palmer rejected this suggestion.
This time, Palmer made up his mind to follow his friends to find this island. However, fate played a trick on this treasure hunter. He died suddenly while he was preparing for the treasure hunt. His three treasure maps and Captain Ginter
The treasure is once again shrouded in mystery.
More than 20 years after Palmer's death, in 1951, a man named Braunley bought the English pirate captain's treasure map from Palmer's former housekeeper and sole heir for 5,000 pounds.
Finally, a two-masted sailboat named "Ramona" carried Braunley and a treasure hunting team composed of 12 treasure hunters from 5 countries, and set out to sea in a mighty manner. However, they did not expect that
The speedboat encountered a hurricane at sea. After drifting hard at sea for 4 days, they encountered a supply ship of the English fleet, and they could only be dragged along by the supply ship. Braunley ended the trip in frustration and full of hope.
treasure hunt journey.
In 1952, some Japanese fishermen came to a small island called "Jingmine Island" in the northernmost part of the Ryukyu Islands between Taiwan Island and Kyushu Island in Japan to escape a storm. By pure chance, they discovered a cracked stone.
A very rare goat stone painting on the wall.
This meaningful excavation brought endless reverie to Nagajima, an amateur pirate treasure researcher. Nagajima systematically visited this deserted island and finally discovered a passage behind the densest bushes.
Towards the entrance of the cave. So Nagashima lit a torch, groped forward step by step, passed through a stone door, and came to a darker stone room. He stopped there and quickly opened his eyes and stared at the entire cave.
There was an iron box on the ground. When he opened the heavy box lid, a strange sight appeared in front of him: not only were there so many unbelievable gold and silver coins shining there, but there were also wonderful jewelry and jewels.
This is William Gent's million-dollar booty—one of the largest treasures ever discovered. For more than two hundred years, these heavy treasure chests have been stored in that remote cave in the Ryukyu Islands.
The material value of Gent's wealth was of no great significance to the private researcher Nagashima. He only wanted compensation from the Japanese government for research and search funds, and even refused the bonus offered to him. The treasure was kept under the most rigorous scrutiny.
It was transported to Tokyo under protective measures. Later, the Japanese government and military discovered another batch of treasures worth billions of dollars near this batch of treasures. Some people even speculate that Japan’s rise again after World War II was related to this part of the treasure collection.
The treasures had a certain relationship. But in the end, Jint's hundreds of millions of treasures were still missing, and Jint's trophies once again disappeared into the vague fog full of legends and anecdotes.
As an archaeologist, Lin Shuo had personally visited these two so-called treasure hiding places in his previous life. Regardless of whether they were true or false, Lin Shuo wanted to confirm the authenticity of the two treasures on the "Pure Mine Island", and
His heart longed for this large sum of wealth, because the huge plan in his heart really needed a large amount of financial support.
Lin Shuo gradually replaced the crew members on the "East Asia" with his own people, and while running the ship, he deliberately deviated from the course and bypassed the Mineral Mine Island to find out the truth.
Jingmine Island is an uninhabited desert island. Even if someone goes there, it is to escape the wind, waves and heavy rain. There are actually many such islands in Ryukyu, and some of them are the best places for pirates to hide treasures.
On April 29, 1899, the "East Asia" arrived at the Pure Mine Island under the cover of darkness. This time Lin Shuo came well-prepared. He brought two teams of officers and soldiers from the naval battalion under his command. The ship anchored in the southwest of the Pure Mine Island.
Shuo personally took more than 150 people ashore in small boats. Afterwards, everyone, led by Lin Shuo, headed straight for the legendary treasure location.
Although the scenery on the island more than a hundred years ago was completely different from that of later generations, Jingmine Island was not very big. Lin Shuo quickly found the goat stone painting indicating the location of the treasure. According to the instructions on the painting, the group
In the middle of the night, they found an entrance to the cave among the dense trees. So everyone lit torches and groped forward step by step in the dark cave. They passed through a stone door and came to an even darker stone room.
After entering, everyone stopped there. The artificially decorated stone room in front of them was filled with iron boxes and wooden boxes. When Lin Shuo opened a heavy box lid with excitement, a strange scene appeared in front of him.
, the box was filled with all kinds of beautiful pearls, sparkling gems and exotic and extremely dazzling jewelry. Everyone's eyes were dazzled, and they even suspected that they were in a dream.
After opening a few more boxes, Lin Shuo was able to determine that most of the treasure boxes here contained gold and silver coins minted by the Spanish and Dutch in the 15th century, and another part contained gold and silver ingots used in ancient Japan, as well as
Some gold and silver ingots of the Ming Dynasty style in China made Lin Shuo curious about the origins of these treasures, but he was certain that they were by no means the so-called pirate treasures of William Gent.
Another thing that gave Lin Shuo a headache was that according to his estimate, the gold of this treasure was about 160 tons, but the silver was more than 800 tons. Transportation was a big problem.
Lin Shuo asked Uncle Li to lead the people to carry it, and some people stayed behind, while he led a dozen people to search for another batch of treasures nearby.
At dawn, Lin Shuo and his party found another treasure in a cave not far away. Although this time it was not as rich as the treasure in the stone chamber, there were also several boxes of jewelry and more than 200 tons of gold and silver.
It took the treasure hunting team three full days to move all the treasures in the two caves to the cargo ship. During this period, Lin Shuo had been worried about any accidents. Fortunately, everything went well. There was not even a fishing boat near the desert island.
No shadow was seen.
In the early morning of the third day, the "East Asia" set sail again, and Lin Shuo finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Lin Shuo carefully studied the origins of these two batches of treasures on the ship. Some written records in them showed that the larger of the treasures belonged to Li Dan, a Chinese merchant who lived in Japan in the late Ming Dynasty, and the other batch belonged to Li Dan before
Another great Chinese pirate, Wang Zhi.
Li Dan was the largest maritime business leader before Zheng Zhilong in the late Ming Dynasty. He controlled all shipping routes in the South China Sea and Japan for more than 20 years. He was later murdered by Zheng Zhilong and died violently. Zheng Zhilong's son Zheng Chenggong accumulated a fortune through maritime trade.
The huge wealth was finally able to separate Taiwan in the early Qing Dynasty. According to historical records, Li Dan's annual trade profits during his most powerful period were more than 13 million taels of silver, while the Ming Dynasty's annual wealth income at that time was less than 300,000 taels of silver.
, is definitely a truly wealthy country, no wonder it can accumulate such a huge amount of wealth.
Strictly speaking, these two treasures should belong to China. Afterwards, the Japanese government will of course keep its content and value strictly confidential. Firstly, it is afraid that China will ask for this part of the treasure. On the other hand, the hidden location of this treasure is also sufficient.
It proves that the Ryukyu Islands were already territories developed by the Chinese in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.
Two days later, the ship finally sailed back to Haimen safely. Under the strict protection of heavy troops, this large amount of gold and silver treasures was temporarily transferred to the Dongjun Arsenal in Haimen. When all the treasures were safely moved into the specially vacated underground
In the warehouse, everyone who was almost exhausted from exhaustion cheered.
After counting, this batch of treasures and jewelry has more than 13,000 pieces, including 3.87 million taels of gold and 33.6 million taels of silver. The total value exceeds 120 million taels of silver, and there are many more.
It can be called a priceless treasure and cultural relic.
There is no eternal secret, Lin Shuo just doesn't want people to discover it too early.