Published: Wednesday, 14th May, 2008 9:00am

No fool's gold as Bob finds buried treasure trove

Bob Burrell shows one of the gold coins unearthed during the excavations

IT would have been the perfect April Fool's joke.

Gala-born Bob Burrell was just doing his job as Head of Namdeb"s Geological Department, investigating a mining site, when he discovered what could be plundered booty-literally.

A former Gala first team rugby player, Mr Burrell has been Head of Namdeb"s Geological Department for about 10 years now.

Namdeb Diamond Corporation, the joint venture partnership between the Government of the Republic of Namibia and De Beers, mines diamonds on the south-western coast of Namibia, in the Diamond Area.

Also known as the Forbidden Area, some of its operations entail literally pushing back the sea by means of massive sea walls and mining the seabed that has been exposed.

And so the Borders-born geologist - the son of Bob and Margaret Burrell of Galashiels - found himself, on April 1, paying a visit to one of the company"s mining operations to see if he could better understand a geological problem they were having.

The group he was working with had been exploring the area and had found an elephant tusk-not too unusual, given that over the years several tusks and other remains had been uncovered in the group"s mines and beaches.

But then the local man had a stroke of luck.

Said Mr Burrell: 'Our group was about to leave the mining site, which measured in area about 100 metres wide by 400 or 500 metres long along the coast, to carry on with our geological excursion, when I decided to return on my own.

'I took photographs of the dark coloured gravel and overlying pale brown sand so that I could explain the problem to the De Beers Managing Director, Gareth Penny, who was to visit Namdeb the following week.

'After having taken several photographs, I was attracted to a dark patch of gravel that, when I went closer, I saw was accompanied by large segments of timber that had been ripped up by a mining excavator.

'At the same time I noticed at my feet a quartzite boulder, which is a common constituent of the gravel ore body, about the diameter of a side plate, that had been neatly split in two, I presumed by the forces of river or sea that had deposited the gravel.'

He spotted the other half and went to pick it up, but found that it wasn"t easy to lift-and then it struck him that it was not a boulder, but copper.

'On looking further around I saw that there were dozens of these objects,' he said.

He called back his team, and what they found was impressive.

They observed hundreds of what they guessed were copper ingots, and pipes that resembled the remains of three bronze cannons.

'We had no doubt that we were dealing with a wreck of some sort,' Mr Burrell said.

Upon returning to the office, the team contacted Dr Dieter Noli, a desert archaeologist with whom they"d worked for many years.

'We speculated that the ship could have been carrying copper either from Port Nolloth in the late 1800s or from Central Africa, which would have made it centuries older,' Mr Burrell said.

That evening, however, Dr Noli confirmed from photographs that the bronze cannons were even older, as they were of a breech-loading type popular around 1530.

Meanwhile, the manager of the mine immediately cordoned off the area and instructed the excavators to move off, and an excavation began.

Predicted to take years to scientifically investigate, it has yielded six bronze cannons, several tons of copper, over 50 elephant tusks, pewter tableware, navigational instruments, weapons, personal items, and thousands of Spanish and Portuguese coins.

Most the coins are of gold and all appear to have been minted in the late 1400"s and early 1500"s-raising the distinct possibility of the ship having been a contemporary of those used by the likes of Diaz, Da Gama and Columbus - thus making the site of immense national and international importance.

And although the mystery remains of exactly how the treasure-laden ship came to its watery grave some 500 years ago, Dr Noli expressed confidence that he"d get to the bottom of it.

'One thing is for certain,' says Dr Noli, 'and that is that without Namdeb"s current mining operations, this wreck would never, ever have been either found or excavated.

'It is, quite simply, the archaeological find of the century.'

And for Mr Burrell, it was perhaps the find of a lifetime.

'As we drove away from the site,' he said, 'I reminded my team of the date - April Fool"s Day - and conjectured that no-one perhaps would believe us!'

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