The Ultimate Detector and Treasure?

I’m a little behind the times on this one because the information I have is from 2005. I did a quick search on the internet for some updated information but didn’t find any right off the bat so I thought I would leave it to the readers if they wanted to do more.

“Arturito” Never heard of it? Me neither but according to it’s designers it is the ultimate in treasure finding equipment. “Arturito’ or Little Arthur but affectionately known as R2D2 is a robot designed by a Chilean company called Wagnor Technologies. It is said to use a mix of ground penetrating radar, magnatometry and one or two things they aren’t talking about.

According to Wagnor Technologies, during a scan of what is known as Robinson Crusoe Island off the coast of Chile they discovered 600 barrels of Spanish treasure that people have been looking for for centuries. The estimated worth of this treasure in 2005 (the date of the article I was reading) is said to be TEN BILLION DOLLARS!

How much has gold gone up in the last four years?

According to Arturito the treasure is located about 50 feet down in the center of the island. Wagnor technologies immediately began to apply for permits to recover the treasure and said they would give it away to charity. The Chilean government quickly stepped in and said “you can’t give away something you don’t own” and promised to take 100% ownership of any treasure on the island. Presumably this was done because they didn’t have a permit to search for the treasure in the first place.

Are you skeptical of Arturito? Me too but the little robot is not without it's own credits. Shortly after being put into service the robot solved a murder mystery by locating the body of a missing businessman. Arturito used some of it’s specialized sensors to analyse the soil and "identify the molecular composition of human bones". The police then dug exactly where the robot indicated and found the remains of the murder victim.

Want more, the Chileans had been trying to find a cache of weapons left behind by a rightwing sect known as Colonia Dignidad for several years with no luck. The arsenal included several rifles and rocket launchers. Along comes Arturito and bam, (no not really, it's a figure of speech) it finds the weapons. The stash was almost thirty feet deep but the robot “saw” them anyway.

As I said before, I didn’t find anything during a quick search to update the progress on the recovery of the 600 barrels of treasure but for some reason I think we might have heard about this through the regular news channels had it actually been recovered.

Does this treasure truly exist or is it just another one of those KGC myths? (sorry, couldn’t help myself) According to history the treasure is real. The treasure was supposedly buried on the island in 1715 by Spanish Captain General Don Juan Esteban Ubilla y Echeverria.

Apparently the General Capitan had his own plans and started secret communications with the English, in which he revealed the location of the buried treasure. These communications were eventually entrusted to English pirate British Admiral Lord George Anson, and he was told of the location of the treasure. The treasure is referred to by various names including the "Treasure of Vera Cruz" and "Lord Anson's Treasure".

So why didn’t General Capitan go back and get the treasure himself? You’ve heard of that Spanish treasure in Florida haven’t you, You know, the one from all of those ships that sank because they sailed into a massive hurricane? General Capitan Ubilla had the misfortune of being on one of those ships and perished during the hurricane.

The story continues:

“In 1761, British Admiral Lord George Anson dispatched the English sailor Cornelius Webb to recover the treasure that Ubilla buried on Mas a Tierra. According to a poor translation of The Juan Fernandez Commune, Webb arrived in Mas a Tierra in 1761 and recovered Ubilla's treasure, and set sail, however a storm split the mast of the Unicorn. Webb returned to Robinson Crusoe Island, reburied the treasure, and sailed to Valparaiso, Chile to repair his ships and then complete his mission. However, at this point, he learned the the crew planned to mutiny upon their return to Mas a Tierra, to seize the treasure for themselves. So, Webb promptly sailed from Valparaiso, and torched his ship, killing all hands at sea, and rowing himself back to Valparaiso. He was the sole survivor of the journey.

At this point, captain Cornelius Webb sent messages back to Lord George Anson, his sponsor back in England, explaining what had happened, and detailing the location of the buried treasure in code. Unfortunately, Anson died suddenly on June 6, 1762, 5 months before the arrival of Webb's envoy. These messages were presumed lost to antiquity. Then, miracuously, after 190 years, the documents resurfaced in Northern England. In 1950, a stranger contacted Chilean physician Luis Cousiño, a Crusoe Island resident, and sent him the documents.
One of the two letters that Webb had sent to Anson indicated that a third message was buried in Chile. After searching for a while, Luis Cousiño managed to find the third treasure map in the bath(beach?) of Horcón, (45 kilometers North of) Valparaiso, Chile.

In 1950, Chilean physician Luis Cousiño and the Italian Count Di Giorgio searched for the treasure on Crusoe Island, in the town of San Juan Baptist, on Powder Street, but were unsuccessful.”

And if all of that isn’t enough for you there were pirates, lots and lots of pirates arghhhh! that used this island. There are literally dozens if not hundreds of buried treasures that are supposed to be on the Robinson Crusoe Island and a lot of them are fairly large in size.

Make sure you get your permits from the Chilean government BEFORE you go looking for any of these!