THE TREASURE OF THE GREAT REEF

Readers of Indian Ocean Adventure, which Clarke wrote with Mike Wilson, will remember Clarke's skin-diving adventures along the Great Reef off of Ceylon. Since that book, Wilson has discovered a sunken treasure ship down in a valley of the reef and, in 1961, he and Clarke jumped into the Ceylonese legal arena to secure rights to their find. Then, to finance salvage operations, Wilson shot a two-and-a-half hour Technicolor epic for local consumption, so that it wasn't until recently that diving began in earnest. They were joined by young Peter hrockmorton of the University of Pennsylvania, who had recently discovered a wreck 33 centuries old off the coast of Turkey. Because of the incredibly dangerous seas around the reef, salvaging could only proceed for two months of the year. The wreck on the bottom is a smashed up mess; most of the ship has entirely disappeared but cannon is jumbled everywhere, cannonballs, pistols and bags of silver bullion rusted together (and thus preserved). Much of the treasure is still down there waiting for Wilson, while much of the mystery surrounding the ship is slowly rising.