Shipwreck Hunting in the Phillippines

Hello All

Here is an article below from about 15 years ago. I do not endorse the authenticy of the story. I remember hearing about some shifty business and a lot of fighting about this.

June 20, 1995, The Philippine Daily Inquirer Part 2 of 4 parts.

(This same four part article was on the front page in all six of the other major dailies in the Philippines, including Today, The Manila Bulletin, the Philippine Star, The Daily News, etc.).

Treasures from the wreck

APARRI, Cagayan ? When Fred Takaki discovered the sunken World War II hospital ship off the coast of Camiguin in 1986 after years of searching, he thought he was found what he was looking for the Awa Maru, believed to be history?s richest sunken treasure. The Awa Maru, which sank in the Formosa Strait on April 1, 1945 minutes after it was torpedoed by the US submarine Queenfish, is estimated to be worth between $500 to $5 billion.

Takaki, who was born before the war to a Filipina and a Japanese intelligence officer, first heard about a hospital ship loade4d with treasures in 1963 from four Japanese friends. They were the ones who got him started on treasure hunting, Takaki says. I was working in Ermita when I met a Japanese friend who needed help to check out a treasure hunting operation in Ipo Dam, Montalban Rizal. They showed me what they got, two Japanese samurais supposedly owned by General Kubota I told him what he was doing was dangerous.

He went back to Japan, Takaki recounts. Several years later, the Japanese returned and invited him to go to Baguio with him to check out some treasure sites. We stayed there for four months. He told me the story of the hospital ship. He said it was in Camiguin in the north. We went to Camiguin and started looking for it. He ran out of money. We never found the ship, Takaki adds. Takaki went back to Camiguin with another group of Japanese who were looking for treasure inland.

He saw it as his opportunity to look for hospital ship. ?Naglakad akong mag-isa, kinausap ko ang mga matatanda sa isla. May nakapagkwento sa kin na matanda da merong malaking barkong lumobog na malapit lang sa Camiguin. The ship was loaded I was told with at least 7,000 passengers many of them doctors, nurses, women and children when it was bombed by the Americans.

The story was consistent with what the Japanese told me about the Awa Maru. Only the Awa Maru could have as many passengers, Takaki says. I started scuba diving around the sea. There were a lot of sunken vessels down there, but none seemed to fit the description of the Awa Maru, he says. Then 1986, Takaki found his ship. Two-third of the ship was buried under 30 feet of sand but most of it is still intack.

(The PCJ agreed to withhold the exact location and description of the wreck to protect the interest of the finders.) By this time, Takaki had accumulated some equipment including a metal scanner and a small airlift, which he used to remove the sand from some of the cabins. It was a hospital ship all right. It could not have been a warship because there were no cannons on top or any type of armaments.

A warship does not have as many people in it as this ship. There were laboratories inside medicine containers and hospital equipment, Takaki says. What struck him was the inscription in the keys and the cabin doors were in English not Japanese, I believed then that I found the Awa Maru, the Awa Maru was of European make, he says. Takaki remove the letters molded in Bronze on the side of the ship and had the Japanese letters translated. The letters read ?Maru? which means ship.

Takaki set out his house in Camiguin to guard his found. He also conducted a small salvage operation on the site of the wreck. This very limited part time salvage effort resulted the recovery of over 2,000 items, including approximately 800 pieces of Chinese plates, cups, dishes and other ceramics from the Ming, Ching and Sung Dynasties. During the last three years he also recovered 11 small gold bars each one weighing about 100 grams and contained in small wood boxes. He also found dozens of other antiques such as large brass burners, some of them almost 1,000 years old.

Diving for gold Takaki also brought up thousands of bars of tin, brass, lead, zinc, and titanium as well as at least three 62-kilo bags of platinum group metals. Over the years however, Takaki and his native divers using minimal equipment have only manage to skim the surface of the wreck for treasure. Most of it lay underneath forms of sand and metal that was when he decided to look for a financier. He met up with Josue Mapaeg of Nueva Viscaya and Romy Callado of Cagayan, two long time treasure hunters together they looked for a financier who put up the capital needed to salvage all the treasure.

They approach Dennis Standefer bringing with them some of the artifacts that were brought up from the ship Standefer has been shuttling to the United States and the Philippines buying antiques and artifacts from local dealers and finding a market for them in the United States. He had also worked as a consultant to a several hunting projects in the Philippines during the Marcos and Aquino administrations.

I got a lot of these stories everyday. Out of fifty stories you?ll be lucky to hear one that isn?t pure baloney. They told n me about the hospital ship. They showed me artifacts from 500 to 1,000 years old that supposedly came from the ship. I saw the keys and some medical paraphernalia, I think I heard enough to decide the story was possible but there was very little research on it, Standefer says. Standefer went back to the United States to do more research and to confirm the existence of hospital ship that sank to the Philippine water.

He found the documents from the German military and several archives in the United States for which he claim to have paid $10,000. These documents list over 1,000 shipwrecks in the Philippines, state their exact location and describe their cargo. The hospital ship which sunk in 1945 off Camiguin was one of those listed.

The document says it has the biggest treasure on board. Excited, Standefer returned to the Philippines and went to Camiguin to see if the wreck really existed. His team conducted a visual survey of the ship, took videos and photographs of the site and outfitted a 32-foot survey boat. Diving equipment, communications, and a portable computer were transported to the area for survey operations.

Three new compressors were brought to fill scuba tanks used by local divers and to operate the airlifts. Aside from the wreck of the hospital ship, the team also saw the USS Charleston wreck and an additional four ships probably containing treasure. These include another unidentified hospital a third possible treasure carrying Japanese ship, a Spanish galleon with visible brass cannons and an American trading vessel Altogether, the team discovered a total of 33 World War II vintage sunken warship mostly Japanese.

On a clear day most of the wrecks can be seen from the surface, Mapaeg says. The ships are in different states of destruction. There are some, which are under 100 feet. There are ships lying on top of each other. A lot of them are just a pile of steel. One of them has an airplane sitting on top of it. Standefer says. The team found one hospital ship mostly intact but buried under 30 feet of sand . ( The PCIJ agreed not to decide the salvage condition of the shipwreck.) From the location and condition of the hospital ships wreck at least $7 million worth of equipment are needed to salvage the wreck. Standefer estimates, these would include a bigger boat, powerful airlift, underwater cutting torches and metal basket with cranes. Standefer went back the United States to invite foreign investors to bankroll the project.

Meanwhile his Filipino partners formed Pacific SeaQuest, a marine salvage company. In turn, the company signed a contract with Takaki, which give the latter 10 percent of SeaQuest?s 25 percent share of the find. By law the company is required to give 75 percent of the treasure to the Philippine government. The company applied for and was granted permits to salvage the 33 shipwrecks around Camiguin Island by the Philippine Coast Guard in 1993.

The Office of the President also gave the Pacific SeaQuest the salvage rights to the ships and their cargo including the treasure. One of the shipwrecks with Pacific SeaQuest?s salvage area is the Charleston. That was when the trouble with Steven Morgan a rival American fortune hunter began.

Properly the best person to hunt down is Tom Bennett. He may be still living in the Philippines on his yacht, back living in Wales or sailing his Yacht to some fantastic location. He has done fantastic research on shipwrecks in the Philippines. I recall he wrote a book on it But I cannot remember name.

Hardluck

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Shipwreck Hunting in the Phillippines

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