Christopher Davis has been combing the beaches of Galveston Island for years.
“Mainly sea beans, old bones, unfortunately, old coke bottles,” those are a few of the more interesting items he’s found.
None of them are nearly as unusual, though, as the prize he located in San Luis Pass late last month.
“As I was going along, I noticed in that pile, ‘hey, there’s one of those bundles,’” Davis said.
And there it was, a giant hunk of dark-brown rubber, covered in barnacles, with an ungodly smell.
“It was horrible, a horrible stench,” he said.
To say Davis was excited would be an understatement.
“I feel like a kid in a candy store with an unlimited budget,” he said. And he said he knew exactly what it was.
Serendipitously, the discovery was made on Memorial Day weekend.
Davis had heard stories about pieces of a Nazi loot lost during World War II washing up on Texas beaches. One was found on the Padre Island National Seashore back in March.
In 1944, American ships off the coast of Brazil spotted a German blockade runner called the SS Rio Grande
The USS Omaha and USS Jouet fired on the Nazi ship, sending it and its cargo three miles down to the bottom of the ocean.
The entire loot had remained there until about three years ago, when the floating bales of rubber started washing ashore.
What makes the finds even more exciting are the Nazi treasure they may contain, according to the tales.
“I think the gold came from the fact that a lot of people think that he (Adolf Hitler) would escape to Argentina and so he was packing the gold for him to have when he made it there, if he made it there,” Davis said.
He and his friends cut the rubber open. Their effort didn’t result in gold, though, only more of that nasty smell.
If anything, discovering the stinky load of latex has left Davis wanting to find more.
Source: Hawaii News Now
