By immersing a bit of the metal in acetic acid, we would 

 be able to determine whether this was silver or merely a 

 piece of iron so badly decomposed that it no longer re- 

 sponded to the pull of the magnetic field. 



Slowly and ceremoniously Ed chiseled off a bit of 

 the metal and dropped it into a small cup of the acid. It 

 boiled madly and the metal disappeared. My dreams of 

 silver altarpieces also vanished. It was iron. 



When Ed repeated this test on the small coinlike ob- 

 jects that had been uncovered by the dynamiting, there 

 was no reaction. These were indeed what was left of 

 badly disintegrated silver coins. My disappointment fled, 

 and I was hopeful once more. Where there were a few 

 coins, there must be others. Perhaps we would be lucky 

 enough to find some in good enough condition to dis- 

 tinguish their origin. These bits of metal could have 

 dribbled from the corroded chests of the Spanish galleon 

 as Phips's divers labored to raise them. 



I was reminded of a very graphic account of the 

 salvaging of the treasure, written by John Taylor, a cap- 

 tain's clerk on H.M.S. Faulcon, the guard ship which had 

 been sent from Jamaica in 1688 to assist Phips on his third 

 expedition. 



... At first when Sir William Phips discovered the 

 wreck, the guns and pigs of silver and wrought plate 

 lay uppermost, so that in his first voyage he took up 

 13 copper guns and one half of his plate was pigs 

 of metal, dishes and other wrought silver which his 

 divers went down and fastened ropes to it, and so 

 they hoisted it in with their tackles. And so the dol- 

 lars they hoisted in by whole chests of 2000 dollars 

 together, for although the chests were rotted off and 

 consumed, yet the dollars, with rust, were so grown 

 together that they hung together as one lump — al- 

 though the middlemost of the chest was bright and 



276 Sea Diver 



