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SUNKEN TREASURE

Those who enjoy a good yarn may find appeal in the story that an Armada galleon carrying untold treasure was destroyed close by the pier in 1588, and that great wealth, if you can find it, lies deep in the silt of the bay. There are numerous versions of the story, and of the ‘detail’ of how the galleon was blown up just as it was readying to sail. The most charming is that the Witch of Lochaber, engaged by Lady Maclean of Duart Castle to retrieve her husband from the attentions of a beautiful Spanish princess on board the galleon, called up an army of fairy cats, which swam out and savaged the crew. One, in pursuing a sailor, set off loose powder in the magazine with sparks from its fur, and so destroyed the galleon. While there can be little doubt that such a tale is perfectly true, Alison MacLeay gives an alternative version in The Tobermory Treasure, to which contemporary thinking ascribes greater veracity. The wreck was long thought to have been the man-of-war, the Florencia, but was, in fact, a Mediterranean carrack, the San Juan de Sicilia.