El capitán Ted Falcon-Barker trabajando en cubierta (El Oro del Diablo sería el título del libro) y con una amiga
Entre los muchos personajes que tuve el placer de conocer y entrevistar en la Ibiza fecunda de los años 70-80, se cuenta este viajero 'Indiana Jones' de las aguas mediterráneas.
Descubridor y explorador del Epidaurus (de Yugoslavia) sumergido, y feliz extractor de las riquezas de una galera romana en aguas de Ibiza, su conversación está salpicada de aventuras, desde los peligrosos estudios con los riburones blancos del Mar Rojo hasta als Antillas o los placeres de la búsqueda y el hallazgo de tesores submarinos.
La galera romana extraída cerca de San Antonio en compañía de Hans van Praag y otros está muy bien catalogada en el libro. Huelga decir que a día de hoy sería imposible trabajar de esta forma.
Roman Galley beneath the Sea y 1600 years under the Sea, son los dos títulos más extensamente vendidos, el primero de ellos sobre la galera de Ibiza.
Algunos de estos episodios están recogidos en forma de libro.
Respondo a numerosas consultas: ¿Cómo encontrar el libro? Aquí va la ficha. Y las portadas.
Pero... Ted tuvo una muerte fatal, en el año 2000, en un accidente de coche. Estuvo varios días agonizando y la prensa especializada inglesa dio la necrológica y algunos rasgos de su trabajo.
Como ésta página web:
Diver-adventurer Ted Falcon-Barker was killed in a car crash in Spain last year while heading for Ibiza, scene of his earliest wreck-diving exploits. He was, by his count, 67.
I had asked for news of Ted in the September Wrecks Q& A and Reg Vallintine, another veteran of those early years of sport-diving in the Med, informed me of his death. Ted is believed to have had a heart attack at the wheel; the car rolled into a gorge and it was three days before it was found.
Ted was always a mystery man. It was rumoured in British diving circles in the '50s that he was a member of the Australian branch of the SAS, and he did seem to know some extremely unpleasant ways of close-in fighting. Ted encouraged such stories.
His tales were usually tall, but his discovery of a Roman galley off Ibiza was real enough. It was the subject of his first book, which might have led you to believe that here was a budding underwater archaeologist. His later books, however, owed more to his fertile imagination than the facts.
He was no archaeologist, but he made a lot of finds. While diving off the Yugoslavian coast on a Roman wreck with hundreds of intact amphoras, he would spend his surface interval calculating exactly how much its cargo would fetch when he sold it on the then-booming diving antiques market in Germany.
One day he drifted off that wreck and found himself on the amazingly preserved remains of an 18th century French ship. Ted, of course, sold most of it and its cargo.
Trouble seemed to be his buddy. Yachts sank mysteriously beneath him. On one voyage to tropical seas, one of his crew was killed by "pirates" - a Scotland Yard detective was sent to investigate.
Ted was, in other ways, a very lucky diver. He is reputed to have found a huge treasure while diving for galleons off South America, and located another gold-bearing wreck in the Bahamas. As a result of these dives, he was a big spender for two years. Then, suddenly, the money dried up.
Most of his contemporaries have horrendous tales to tell about Ted Falcon-Barker's diving and treasure-hunting. They should write a book about him - fact, not fiction.
(En www.divernet.com)
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