A Fistful of Louis

Some claim that the captain had sworn not to tell what he was carrying; some, that he never knew. One thing was certain: if the cargo lashed down in the hold of the brig Telemaque that January night in 1790 was really nails and tar, as the manifest stated, it was wrapped in astonishing secrecy. As the little vessel passed the Seineside village of Villequier on her way to Le Havre and the open sea, a cutter of the revolutionary government decided to investigate, and ordered the Telemaque to heave to. Instead, she made a break for it, and raced down the Seine on the crest of the tide. Off the village of Quillebeuf, she hit a sandbank, broached to and capsized. By the time her captain and crew of twelve had swum the 120-odd meters to shore, the Telemaque had sunk.

For three months, the soldiers of the Revolution tried to pull the Telemaque off the bottom. While they grappled, speculations on the nature of her true cargo spread up & down the river's bank. She was loaded, it was said, with the fortunes of some 30 fleeing aristocrats, close to 3,000,000 francs in gold sent out by Louis XVI and a fabulous diamond necklace (reported value: 1,500,000 gold francs) belonging to Marie Antoinette.

Four times since then, salvage experts have tried to bring up the Telemaque. In 1939 a diver, wallowing through the mud at the Seine's bottom, reached blindly into a barrel in the sunken hulk and came up with a fistful of gold louis. His employers decided to bring up the brig whole. They slung cables under the wreck and hauled away, but when the slimy mess at last came to the surface, it consisted of only the forward part of the brig. The after part, presumably containing the treasure, still lurked on the bottom. By that time, Hitler's armies were bearing down on France, and the salvage operation was called off.

Last week, in a Seineside workshop near Paris, salvage engineers were once again assembling equipment for a try at the Telemaque treasure. Anything they find must be split 50-50 with the government. They hope the brig will yield 25 billion francs. Wasn't that estimate a little high? the engineer in charge was asked. He shrugged his shoulders and stared riverward with a look peculiar to dedicated treasure hunters. "If we find just 200,000 gold francs, we break even," he said. "All the rest will be clear profit."

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