History comes alive: a Canadian filmmaker is battling American treasure hunters over a watery grave.
Nearly two hundred years after the almost forgotten War of 1812 between Britain and the then fledgling United States, a new skirmish has broken out over the fate of a British warship wrecked off the coast of Nova Scotia and believed to contain precious artefacts hauled from the sacked White House in Washington.Posted by Alan at November 27, 2005 07:36 AMAmerican divers sparked the dispute after they recently located the wreck of what many believe is HMS Fantome, a British Navy brig that led a convoy of ships from Washington to Halifax after British troops stormed the American capital and burned down the White House.
A Halifax-based documentary film-maker and marine explorer, John Chisolm, has launched a campaign to petition the Canadian provincial government in Nova Scotia to rescind the permit it has given to a Massachusetts marine exploration company to explore the wreck, on the grounds that its divers are plundering important treasures.
Mr Chisolm argues that before anything else is taken, he or someone else should be authorised to visit the wreck and properly photograph it and determine what remains.
"We are not asking for the moon," he said. "We are just saying that before some silverware or other artefacts from the White House turn up on eBay we should stop for a second and figure out what we should be doing with the wreck."
If he gets no answer soon from the Nova Scotian government, Mr Chisolm intends going to the site himself to start work on exploring the wreck before nothing is left. Never mind, he says, that the gathering winter weather makes things "a little nutty out there right now".
The existing White House was built to replace the one that the British set alight. Only two items were saved for certain from the conflagration, according to historians. One was a painting of George Washington rescued by the then First Lady, Dolly Madison. The other was a jewellery box given to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 by a Canadian who said that one of his forebears had taken it from Washington.