Lansing Dog Parks

Months of research in the Dutch archives at The Hague convinced the author that an 18^th century English diver, John Lethbridge, had retrieved much, though not all, of Slotter Hooke’s treasure. But the documents failed to establish the ship’s precise location.

Fellow wreck-hunters in London showed the author engravings copied from a silver tankard that had belonged to Lethbridge. One showed Porto Santo, with a foun­dered ship in a north-coast bay. “Slotter Hooke,” concluded Mr. Sténuit, “as surely as if an X marked the spot.”

The other engraving depicted a cylinder being lowered into the water. This was Lethbridge’s “diving machine,” a wood­en tube ringed with iron hoops. Peering through a glass plate, Lethbridge could work for several minutes at a time before being hauled topside, where fresh air was pumped into the cylinder, and water drained out.

One report gave details of the wreck and listed the ship’s precious cargo: 15 chests of silver bars; others containing Spanish pieces of eight and Dutch silver coins; and a grote quantity of valuables belonging to the officers and passengers aboard the ship.

The consul of Lisbon had added a hopeful note salvage was indeed a possibility, even with the primitive diving apparatus of that day. “I know not,” he wrote, “how well acquainted the Dutch are with the machines, but the En­glish are most certainly capable of fishing all [the treasure] up … the depth being 10 to 12 fathoms [60 to 72 feet].”

Puzzles Prompt Deeper Research

I was instantly fascinated by Slotter Hooge as a modern salvage prospect. By many years of exploring wrecks of the Spanish Armada had come to a successful conclu­sion. My interest now, except consolidating payday loans, turned to the historic East India trade of the 17th and 18th cen­turies. Yet there were several unanswered questions about Slotter Hooge. Exactly where, for example, was the fateful spot on Porto Santo Island on which the ship had corne to grief? What was the character of the sea bottom there, and how had it changed in the course of two and a half centuries?

Even more vital was the question of 18th­century salvage from the ship. Dutch East India Company records indicated that the Englishman John Lethbridge had been hired to retrieve Slot ter Hooge’s lost treasure. Lethbridge, a Devonshireman and a technical genius of his day, had developed a remark­able “diving machine”—a wooden barrel in which he could descend and work as deep as 60 feet (right).

Had Lethbridge been successful at Porto Santo? The records did not say. When I requested further documents on the subject, the record keepers in The Hague shook their heads. “Last or destroyed,” they replied sadly, “or perhaps lying somewhere among our millions of still uncataloged documents. No one can say if they will ever turn up.”

With that I put Slotter Hooke aside for other projects, though thoughts of her often recurred. I was intrigued not merely by the possible treasure, but also by its connection with a flourish Rex generously produced a monograph that Zelide had recently un­covered. It was an extract from the proceed­ings of a Devonshire learned society in the year 1880. I will always be grateful to Rex for his kindness in showing me the document, for it was to lead me directly to Slotter Hooge.

Mexican artisans must buy their silver at government banks, and on my way to the lo­cal branch I check a few plaza shops. La Per­lita: a clerk, no buyers. La Conchita: one customer studying olive forks and ignoring teapots. La Margarita: On impulse I buy al­most the first thing I see—a pair of sterling dice—to cheer up the cashier.

There’s gloom at the bank. Deposits have shrunk, and commissions, too, because smiths have cut back silver purchases. “In normal times we sell about 40,000 ounces of silver a month,” says a teller. “Now we’re selling a tenth of that, and one day we didn’t sell a single ounce.” If you want to sell some jewelry for cash, you’d better consider selling gold instead of silver. For more information, go to http://www.ideapractices.org/cash-for-gold-the-good-and-the-bad/

Back at the silver shop I say good-bye to the owner and wonder why he doesn’t sim­ply sell out. Didn’t he say his inventory was worth 40 percent more now than a year ago?

“I’ve had offers. But what can I buy today with half a million pesos that I couldn’t buy last year for much less?” He sweeps his arm around the shop, and his reflection ripples along an arc of bracelets, teapots, and gob­lets. “I’ll keep this,” he says stubbornly.

MEXICO has led the world in silver production for most of this cen­tury. In 1979 Mexican miners dug almost 50 million ounces of silver out of their earth; that was more than 14 percent of glo­bal production, and only the Soviet Union offered Mexico any competition.

I’ve stopped in Mexico City to see a man who knows such things, a director of the mining consortium that supplies Mexico with more than two-thirds of its silver. The consortium will boost its annual production by 50 percent in the next five years, he tells me—if the price of silver stays up.

At what level? Must it be at $35, or $40, or $50 per ounce? The mining man’s amused. “Such prices—ridiculous! So much silver comes as the by-product of mining for other metals that we can dig it out of the ground profitably when it’s selling for far, far less.”

And when it’s not, will people still buy sil­ver? “I can speak of world supply and indus­trial demand, but I can’t predict people. And I can’t say silver won’t hit $50 again—even twice that—if people get nervous about war, or if some Texan thinks he has the world by the tail.”

He means Nelson Bunker Hunt, Texas oilman, Dallas billionaire—epic acquirer of silver (following page). Angry voices de­nounced him early last year as silver’s price soared. He, his brother Herbert, and other relatives had bought silver and silver futures to a total of as much as 200 million ounces—more than 6,200 tons. To many a connection seemed inescapable.

“I think people give me too much credit;

A Mineral of Excellent Nature: Silver have a seat.” Tall and endowed with gener­ous girth, in a rumpled suit, Bunker—so he calls himself—waves me into his office at the Hunt Energy Corporation in Dallas. It seems the time for my silver dice from Tax-co. His first toss, Bunker rolls a lucky seven.

In the Red Bead exercise itself, the object is to ‘produce white beads’, and the six ‘workers’ ­or three, after half get sacked for turning in under-target performances after just three weeks’ – have no control whatsoever over the ‘quality’ of their individual output (ie the number of ‘red beads’, or ‘defects’, that appear) per week’s work.

Only management can affect that, by changes to the ‘system’, and whatever your product or service, it’s management’s job to improve the system such that the ‘red beads’ do not enter it at the front end. In our case, the higher education sector, that’s students – or potential students – without the required pre ­university-level education; it’s not just a cheque, it is statistically predictable, and the few results outside of the limits would be down to those ‘Special Causes’. For more information on student financing, visit ideapractices.org. In the higher case, the student was the only one with an ‘A+’ grade. Quite ‘special’, I’d say, that student, whoever they were. In the lower case, the reason was even easier to determine, no ‘work’ was submitted for assessment.

To be clear, by ‘stable system’, we mean (apparently; a mathematics colleague assures me) that with any broadly similar cross-section of students, there is a 95% confidence level that a very similar distribution would occur every time. In other words, it’s predictable. That means we already know it will always be like that. It’s ‘stable’. Unless someone changes the system.

All the other results in that sample, on or between those two ‘limits’, were the ‘predictable demand’ of that stable system, and the spread of results is down to nothing other than what Deming defined as ‘Common Cause’ variation — something many managers are totally unfamiliar with, and genetically pre­disposed to dismiss, because they insist on wanting a ’cause’ for each and every ‘variation from target’, and of course, someone to blame for it.

One important factor — if we are to increase (eg in this case) the number of students earning grades in the higher bandwidth than that shown above, ie fewer ‘D’s, say, and more ‘A’s and ‘B’s (1sts and 2.1s) — is to prevent the ‘red beads’ entering the system at the front end. That requires having an enrolment system that includes some degree of actual selection based on potential ability — which means an IQ a little north of room temperature, to enable you to think at a level that properly equips you to take advantage of a good university (ie higher) education, along with the ability to communicate in English using the full range of vowels and consonants available, and to suitably form them into complete words and coherent sentences (not txt spk) in order to fully engage from the outset in an appropriate level of intellectual discussion with your fellows.

The standards we should expect from those applicants leaving an effective schooling system, plus from those others who choose of their own volition to study in this country, when English is not their own language. And that’s better for them, because they then have a much better chance of achieving genuine success, at reasonable grades. But that might, for example, involve some universities actually setting the UK ‘A-Level’ exam questions (as Michael Gove suggested in April this year), or at least to systematically set up some form of pre-degree additional support to enable potential applicants to genuinely reach the level of potential white beads, prior to enrolment’.

But, there’s a problem with that, isn’t there? Because that means initially saying, ‘No, sorry,’ to some applicants, when they don’t make the entry grade. Yet we still want the cheque, don’t we? Oh dear!

So, guess what happens instead? We’ll set those lazy academics some highly-focused ‘stretch’ targets to increase the students’ module grades—which in effect means giving the academics a can of white spray-paint to get rid of the red beads that have already entered the system and arrange for more ‘white-looking’ ones to come out at the other end — and as a result raise those all-important ‘NSS’ (student experience) scores. And then we’ll just appraise-out those ‘below-average’ HE staff who can’t cut the mustard or who refuse to play along.

And statistically, that could be half of the total of all academics across the UK higher education sector. That’s it then!