LOOTING IN HIGH SEAS The Plunder of USS Charleston

APPARI, Cagayan – When it was still intact, the wreck of the USS Charleston was worth at least $20 million to the Philippine government.

Research indicated there are at least a million gold and silver coins in the wreck, with the gold coins reportedly fetching up to $6,000 a piece in the United States. Local dealers are selling these coins in the Philippines for only P70 to P200 each.

These coins are valuable because they are spoils of the Spanish-American War and are the first only coins ever to be available from an American warship or from any American treasure ship, said Dennis Standefer, director for Diving Operations of Pacific SeaQuest, a local salvage company.

Save for its debris, however, there is almost nothing left of the warship for the government to recover. Much of the Charleston has been plundered and looted, first by local divers and recently, by a US-based marine salvage company, a local salvage company, the Pacific SeaQuest, alleges.

Two local-residents, SPO3 Jack Peralta and Ameli Onda, who act as middleman between the local divers and buyers, confirmed and they have sold thousands of silver coins on several occasions to Steven Morgan, who showed papers from Pacific SeaQuest which supposedly give them the license to buy these coins.

Morgan, president of Mardive, a US-based salvage company, denied any wrong doing, saying his team has never worked on the Charleston’s wreck. He denied owing the Three Brothers, a local salvage boat, which was seen several times in the salvage site. He claimed not to have any association with Romeo Quesada, a local resident, when reports say is his front man. LOCALS BLAMED

Steven Morgan also denied having taken millions of dollars worth of coins from the salvage site. “As far as I know, local divers blew half of the wreck which lies in shallow waters. The rest of it, where most of the coins lay, is intact under 100 feet of water,” Morgan added.

The USS Charleston is a US battleship, which sank off southern coast of Camiguin Island of Cagayan on Nov. 2, 1899.

Local divers discovered the wreck five years ago, but the find was made public only in 1993.

Until now, many questions about the ship remain unanswered. How did the USS Charleston and end up in the waters off Camiguin? What was its cargo? Why did it hold so much treasure?

When they were surveying the waters around Camiguin in search of the hospital ship in 1992, the Pacific SeaQuest team found the wreck of the USS Charleston.

“We were not interested in the USS Charleston. We knew nothing about it. So we ignored it,” said Standefer, director for diving operations of Pacific SeaQuest, the company granted a permit to salvage the ship and 32 other vessels by the Philippines government.

LOOTING

Local divers from the nearby towns have been looting the wreck since 1989 when it was discovered by a local fisherman. Many of them thought they were salvaging the wreck of the Japanese hospital ship loaded with treasures the Japanese had loaded from the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia during World War II.

Initially, local divers recovered only a number of silver coins and the ship’s bell. The divers usually sold the coins in Cagayan for P12 a pound.

Then some local fishermen planted dynamite on the wreck to recover some scrap brass. The resulting explosion spilled out thousands of gold and silver coins, gold bars, and other items on the ocean floor.

Pacific SeaQuest found out that the Charleston rested in the salvage area granted to them by the Philippine Coast Guard and the Office of the President. Under their contract with the government, 50 percent of the worth of treasures found should go to the government and the rest to the salvaging company.

At the request of Pacific SeaQuest, the area was closed to all divers, fishing local residents.

RESEARCH

Standefer did research on the ship in several archives in the United States. He found the plans of the USS Charleston in a room the size of an airport hangar belonging to a private research historical society. The room is the final repository of all the plans of ships built by the US Navy.

Aside form the plans of the USS Charleston; he also found the complete logbook of the ship as ONE of valuable relies found in sunken wreck well as an inventory of what was loaded on board. What he found out, astonished him.

Using only primitive diving techniques, local divers have removed 100,000 coins without penetrating the hall of the ship. The estimated value of these coins abroad is $10 million to $15 million.

The Charleston was the first American man-of-war to completely abandon sails and to rely on steam engines exclusively, according to Pacific SeaQuest’s research. Its construction greeted by five years the building of the class of vessels called “battleships’. At the time the Charleston was the largest ship in the US Navy.

FROM GUAM

In May 1898, with the defeat of the Spanish fleets in Asia, several ships carrying troops and the Charleston were dispatched to the Philippines. Before arriving here, it was ordered to attack and capture the island of Guam, which was still under Spanish control.

On the same day the Charleston captured Guam, American reinforcements arrived at the Philippines. But the ship remained in Guam, where US forces set up a provisional American-controlled governmental and kept control of the island.

Pacific SeaQuest’s research showed that the contents of the Spanish treasury on Guam were loaded on the USS Charleston to be taken back to the us Mint in San Francisco, the ship’s home port, for smelting. In times of war, the hold of a heavily armed warship is supposed to be the best place for the storage of captured billion.

In February 1899, the ship arrived in the Philippines with a fresh supply of ammunition for the Americans forces, who after crushing the Spanish forces, had their hands full fighting an army of Filipino nationalists led by Emilio Aguinaldo.

By October 1899, the war with Spain had ended and the resistance in the Philippines had been crushed. The Charleston was dispatched to control the northernmost part of the Philippines and block supplies being smuggled in the country.

TREASURES TAKEN

On its second year, away from the United States the Charleston would be ordered home taking with her all the Spanish treasure confiscated and stored in her hold for safekeeping during the war.

The Charleston was to deliver the treasure to the mint in San Francisco where the silver and reissued as United States Administration silver peso and centavo coins, which would then be returned to the Philippines for general use.

But the Charleston cover made it back to San Francisco. By November 2, 1899, this ship had reached the northernmost end of Luzon, where many, small islands, atolls, and submerged reefs caused by volcanic activity had made it undersea land rise significantly.

It was here that the USS Charleston met its fate. Passing north Camiguin Island, the ship struck a submerged reef and instantly came to a halt. Strong ocean swells hit the side of the stranded vessel, causing her to roll badly, breaking her hull and tearing apart her iron plates. The crew was able to abandon the ship safely, but the USS Charleston was a total loss. (To be continued tomorrow)