It is a coast which is neither sea nor land, strewn with wrecks, and with somber memories even more tragic. Where is now the entrance of the Zuyder Zee was unbroken terra firma until the thirteenth century when a terrible hurricane piled the North Sea through the isthmus separating it from the large lake called Vlies by the natives. A wide channel was cut by this inroad, and in 1287 the North Sea scoured for itself a second inlet at the cost of a hundred thousand human lives. Ever since then, the channels have been multiplying and shifting until what was once the coast line has become a maze of islands and sand-banks, the Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland, and hundreds of lesser ones which confuse even the mariners born and bred among them.
With a wind which should have enabled him to give this perilous shore a wide berth and to keep to his course up the North Sea, Captain Skynner plunged into a death-trap from which there was no escape. The sole survivor could give no coherent account, and he died while on the way to England before his shattered nerves had mended. There was no more frigate, and as for the hundreds of drowned sailors, they had been obliterated as a day's work in the business of a great navy, so the Admiralty left the mourning to their kinfolk and bestirred itself about that five and a half million dollars' worth of treasure which the sea could not harm. Vice-Admiral Mitchell was informed by letter that "their lordships feel great concern at this very unfortunate accident" and he was directed to take such measures as might be practicable for recovering the stores of the Lutine, as well as the property on board, "being for the benefit of the persons to whom it belongs."
The underwriters of Lloyd's with an eye to salvage, were even more prompt than the Admiralty in sending agents to the scene of the wreck. The greater part of the immense amount of coin and bullion had been fully insured, a transaction which indicates the stability and ample resources of this association as far away in time as 1799. The loss was paid in full and with such promptitude that only two weeks after the disaster, the Committee for managing the concerns of Lloyd's addressed a letter to the Secretary of the Admiralty in which was requested "the favor of Mr. Nepean to lay before the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty the information that a sum of money, equal to that unfortunately lost in the Lutine, is going off this night for Hambro, and they trust their Lordships will direct such steps as they think expedient for its protection to be taken."
The request was granted somewhat grudgingly. Apparently the Admiralty regretted the employment of one of its frigates as a merchantman. Admiral Lord Duncan was directed to send a convoy this time, but was told also "to let them know that their lordships have done so in this particular case; but that they must not expect the packets can again be convoyed." With this letter ends all reference to the Lutine and her treasure in the correspondence preserved in the Record Office of the Admiralty.
Having paid their losses, like the good sportsmen that they were, the underwriters of Lloyd's thereby clinched their right to the ownership of the treasure, provided they could find it. The situation was complicated because England was at that time at war with the Netherlands whose government claimed the wreck as a prize, although inconsistently refusing to let it be adjudicated by a prize court. On this account, Lloyd's could make no attempt to fish for the treasure, which delay was very much to the benefit of the sturdy Dutch fishermen of the islands at the mouth of the Zuyder Zee. The sands and the surf held a golden harvest. The wreck of the Lutine was partly exposed at low ebb tide, and a channel ran close to the side of the ship.
The clumsy fishing boats or "showts" swarmed to the place and never was there such easy wealth for honest Dutchmen. Their government soon put a watch on them and took two-thirds of the findings, giving the fishermen the remainder. They toiled in good weather for a year and a half, and recovered treasure to the amount of eighty-three thousand pounds sterling. The official inventory reads like the hoard of a buccaneer, including as it does such romantic items as:
58 bars of gold, weight 646 lbs. 23 ounces.
35 bars of silver, weight, 1,758 lbs. 8 ounces.
41,697 Spanish silver pistoles.
179 Spanish gold pistoles.
81 Double Louis d'or.
138 Single Louis d'or.
4 English guineas.
At the end of the year 1801 the fishermen quit their task, thinking they had found all the treasure. For a dozen years the Dutch forgot the melancholy fragments of the Lutine, while the sailors of the desolate islands guarding the Zuyder Zee began to weave superstitious legends around the "gold wreck." In the midst of the crowded events of the great war against Napoleon, England found no time to remember the Lutine, and her memory was kept alive only by the kinfolk of the drowned officers and sailors.
After Napoleon had been finally disposed of, the treasure was recalled to public notice by an ingenious gentleman of the Netherlands, Pierre Eschauzier, a sort of lord of the manor under the government, holding the post of "Opper Strand vonder," or "Upper Strand finder," who lived at Terschelling and took a lively interest in the wreck. After a great deal of investigation and cogitation, he arrived at the conclusion that the greater part of the treasure dispatched from England in the Lutine was still hidden among her timbers. His argument was based on the fact that the bars of silver and gold already recovered were stamped with certain numbers and letters indicating series or sequences, and that thus far these were very incomplete.
For instance, among the gold bars previously found, were thirteen marked with the letters NB, in three separate lots; the first numbered from 58 to 64; the second from 86 to 90; and the third from 87 to 89. Other gold bars with different letters and a variety of numbers went to prove that there were a hundred numbers to each letter, which would yield a total of six hundred gold bars, of which only thirty-one had been recovered in the years 1800 and 1801.