DATE: Sunday, September 21, 1997            TAG: 9709210091

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A16  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: Paul Clancy 

LENGTH: 51 lines

BEACH FIRM IS A RIVAL FOR JUNO'S DISCOVERY

In March 1987, a scalloper dragging his nets about 40 miles off Assateague Island snagged an immense and heavy object, a 2,500-pound bronze bell. On the second pass, he pulled up another intriguing item, an oak sternpost from a centuries-old ship, complete with bronze rudder hinges.

He took his findings to Quicksilver, then a fledgling Virginia Beach company hoping to plunge into the tantalizing world of treasure hunting. An archaeologist studied the objects and came to an exciting conclusion: They were from the ill-fated Spanish treasure ship Juno.

Almost immediately, the company swung into full-time operation, pulling in investors and buying a 155-foot salvage vessel, a diving bell and decompression chamber.

It offered 500 units in a limited partnership, Juno Associates, at $5,000 each - a total of $2.5 million. And it got a federal salvage permit to operate within a 15-square-mile area of the bell and sternpost finds.

Quicksilver's theory is that the Juno went down at that spot, 180 feet beneath the surface. And, indeed, there's something there. The company's magnetometer readings show what could well be cannons and other large metal objects.

But every time divers have gone down to the site, adverse weather has intervened and the objects have vanished below shifting sands. Undaunted, the company continues its search.

But now a rival company, Sea Hunt, has begun looking at a site only a few hundred yards offshore. Its owner, Ben Benson, believes that what Quicksilver has found is a debris trail left as the Juno was breaking up and its crew desperately discarded objects overboard.

Quicksilver disagrees. It has examined Benson's ``proof,'' a dinner plate and large anchor, and determined they didn't come from the Juno. The ``Juno'' lettering on the plate, it says, is ``Jane'' and an anchor of the size found was not listed in records from the Juno.

Company officials also express doubt that the Juno, with over 400 people aboard, could have sunk within a mile of shore without a survivor or a body reaching land.

Said Quicksilver chairman Glynn Rogers, a one-time Virginia Beach banker, ``We're comfortable where we are.''

One of Quicksilver's intriguing theories is that French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was counting on the Juno's treasure to carry out his war efforts. France then controlled Spain and its pipeline to treasure from the New World. Then, the theory goes, when news of the sinking reached Napoleon, he was forced to sell France's newly acquired Louisiana Territory to the United States. KEYWORDS: SUNKEN TREASURE RECOVERY SALVAGERS

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