Golden Treasure:                               

                                                             

 One day in 1912, Ramon Gomez crossed the frontier from his native La Linea to start a new life in Gibraltar.  He came looking for work and he found it; in the workshops and businesses of the Devil's Tower Road. What was remarkable about young Ramon was that he was barely seven years old. 

 Years later, as his children grew, Ramon would tell stories of those early days.  By the age of 12 he was working as a coal-heaver at the viaduct; which is where this tale begins.  During the First World War all materials were precious.  In England people were surrendering their wrought iron garden railings to supply the armaments factories.  In Gibraltar any materials which could be salvaged or recycled, saved costly importation. So it was that a Dutch barge, said to have been used to accommodate transported prisoners, was brought ashore at Waterport to be broken for her timbers.  As the vessel was progressively dismantled, out came the decks, deck-beams, floors  and stringers until eventually the breakers had worked  their way  down to the keelson (a heavy timber along the top of  the  keel) and keel. This massive moulding was removed to the quayside where it was to await inspection by some men who would arrive later.  These ‘men-in-suits’ duly arrived, searched for and found graving pieces let into the beam.  They removed the pieces and recovered four small gold ingots from below. Well that's how the story goes.

 As youngsters, the Gomez children were in awe of this tale of hidden treasure. Was the gold hidden by a convict on his way to Van Diemen's Land or by a prisoner who had worked on the construction of South Mole? In later life they could find no logic to the story or to the inside information of the men-in-suits.

 Nowadays we think we know all the answers. Well, perhaps we do have an answer to this one.  Ramon would have used the word ‘barcasa’ which does mean barge but also means hulk.  In the days of transportation and convict labour, many prisoners were housed in hulks. The hulks in question were retired sailing ships, many were from the days of Nelson's Navy, which, once paid-off, had their masts taken out and their decks built over. The picture below shows the hulk of HMS Medway, employed as a prison ship at Bermuda in 1862. So the ‘barge’ being broken up, might easily have been a once proud ship of the line - and in this case - probably having once had four masts.

                           HMS Medway in use as Prison Ship at Bermuda in 1862.

For the men-in-suits knew that in the days of Nelson's Navy, it was customary when fitting out a new sailing vessel, to place a gold sovereign (for good luck) in the footwell of each mast  as  it  was eased  into place.  They knew that if they examined the keelson and located each mast step, they stood a good chance of recovering that gold and apparently they succeeded.  To Ramon they looked like ingots because after 80 or 100 years of being crushed by heavy, towering masts, each soft, gold sovereign had deformed into the shape of the socket it had sat in.

 

What an amazing tale… and all thanks to a sharp-eyed 12 year old, just over a century ago... and my thanks go to Freddy Gomez for sharing it with us.

First published at Gibraltar Magazine, revisited 2025.    Paul Hodkinson.