Treasure islands, Nazi loot and the endless hunt to strike history’s forgotten gold
▶ Earhart’s plane might be found, but other mysteries are still rich hunting grounds. Gemma White reports
One of the world’s most enduring mysteries could be one step closer to being solved. Former US Air Force intelligence officer and real estate investor Tony Romeo claims he may have found Amelia Earhart’s plane about 90 years after the aviator and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared.
Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 during her quest to become the first woman to fly around the world. Speculation as to what happened has lasted decades, with historians and adventurers looking for Earhart and her Lockheed ever since.
Romeo sold his business to set up a deep-sea exploration company with the sole intention of finding Earhart’s plane, and claims to have spent more than $11 million on the search.
He told The Wall Street Journal: “This is may be the most exciting thing I’ll ever do in my life. I feel like a 10-year-old going on a treasure hunt.”
Romeo and his crew used an underwater drone to find the wreckage, posting images on Instagram of what looked like a plane on the seabed.
About 160km off the coast of Howland Island, the wreckage was found roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia.
Earhart and Noonan were last seen taking off from Papua New Guinea in July 1937 and were expected to land on Howland Island to refuel.
“There are no other known crashes in the area, and certainly not of that era or that kind of design with the tail that you see in the image,” Romeo added.
Although it has not yet been confirmed, here is a look at some of the world’s other famous hunts for treasure and ancient artefacts.
Also known as the Loot of Lima or the Cocos Island Treasure, more than $300 million (in today’s money) worth of gold and jewels have been hunted by the likes of American gangster Bugsy Siegel, New Zealand explorer Frank Worsley and former US president Franklin D Roosevelt.
Looted from Lima by Spanish invaders in 1820, the treasure was put aboard the ship Mary Dear for safekeeping. The ship’s captain and his crew killed the Spanish guards and buried the treasure on Cocos Island near Costa Rica, hoping to return for it.
The crew were all captured and killed, apart from captain William Thompson and his first mate who agreed to show the Spanish where they had hidden the loot. But when they arrived on Cocos Island, the pair escaped into the jungle never to be seen again – and neither was the treasure.
In 1994, the Costa Rican government banned treasure hunting on the island.
On the Trail of the Golden Owl France
In 1993, Regis Hauser (under his pen name Max Valentin) buried a bronze owl statuette in the French countryside, then wrote the book Sur La Trace de La Chouette d’Or (On the Trail of the Golden Owl) containing 11 clues as to its whereabouts.
Whoever found the owl would win an identical one made from gold, silver, rubies and diamonds, valued at around €230,000 ($248,000) today.
The book sparked a nationwide treasure hunt, but the owl was never found. Hauser died in
2009, leaving the envelope containing its location to the book’s illustrator, Michel Becker.
The Nazi treasure of Lake Toplitz Austria
The hunt for the rumoured treasure at the bottom of Lake Toplitz in the Austrian Alps has claimed the lives of five divers.
Towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazis – who had used the lake as a naval testing station in the 1940s – began dumping thousands of boxes into the water.
Theories about what was inside include looted artefacts, as well as documents about Swiss bank accounts where money and gold were hidden.
In 1959, investigators reportedly found £700 million of counterfeit notes in the lake, which Hitler had supposedly planned to use to sabotage the British economy.
The last dive took place in 2005, and it is now illegal.
The Crown Jewels of Ireland Ireland
A diamond, ruby and emerald-encrusted badge and star created in 1831 – also known as the Jewels of the Order of St Patrick – were stolen from Dublin Castle in 1907.
Though no one was convicted, the chief suspects were Sir Arthur Vicars; Ulster King of Arms; Francis Shackleton, who was the Dublin Herald of Arms, a military officer and brother of explorer Ernest Shackleton; and Richard Gorges.
Rumours persisted – but were never confirmed – the jewels had been sent to Amsterdam or Paris. Presented with new information in 1983, the Irish government conducted five searches in an undisclosed mountain region but nothing was found.
Amber Room Russia
Archaeologists and adventurers from Poland, Germany, Lithuania, Russia, the US and more have been searching for the Amber Room, once named the “eighth wonder of the world”, since it disappeared in 1944.
Constructed between 1701 and 1714 for King Frederick I of Prussia in Danzig, the chamber, decorated in amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors, was looted from the Catherine Palace in Pushkin by German soldiers and taken to Konigsberg Castle in Germany in October 1941.
It was last seen in 1944 before Allied bombers destroyed the castle. When the Red Army seized the city in 1945, no traces of the Amber Room were found. While many historians believe it was lost in the bombing, the 2020 discovery of the shipwrecked Karlsruhe steamer off the coast of Poland ignited the mystery once more.
The ship had set sail from Konigsberg in 1945 – as part of Operation Hannibal to evacuate troops – with a “large” unknown cargo, but was sunk by Soviet warplanes.
Ark of the Covenant
For millennia, it has been claimed the Ark, which is described in the Bible as the chest containing the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written, lies undiscovered in places such as Mount Nebo in Jordan, Edfu in Egypt and Chartres Cathedral in France.
The most famous Hollywood film about the artefact, Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark, placed it in Egypt.
While the New Testament’s Book of Revelation says the Ark is in a heavenly temple, the Church of Our Lady, Mary of Zion in Ethiopia claims to have it – though no outsiders have been let in to verify it.
A French writer sparked a nationwide treasure hunt by burying a golden owl and writing a book of clues on how to find it
Lost Imperial Faberge Eggs Russia
Of the 52 imperial eggs designed by the jewellery makers House of Faberge, six are missing. Created between 1886 and 1909, the Hen with Sapphire Pendant, Cherub with Chariot, Necessaire, Mauve, Royal Danish and Alexander III Commemorative, which were made as Easter gifts for the tsar’s wives and children, have been lost.
Hen with Sapphire Pendant and Cherub with Chariot disappeared in 1922 during the Russian Revolution. A description matching the latter was included in a catalogue of possessions belonging to the wealthy US industrialist Armand Hammer – great-grandfather to actor Armie Hammer – although it remains missing.
Necessaire was sold in London in 1952 for £1,250 ($57,000 today) with the buyer listed simply as “a stranger”.