“William S. Meade, who is said to have made a fortune of $250,000 in a process discovered by him for the preservation of meat, recently died in a New York lodging house, penniless. After he made his fortune, while on the Pacific coast, he befriended an old sea captain, who claimed to know the resting place of a sunken treasure boat, and upon the captain’s death Meade was bequeathed a number of charts and directions in cipher for locating the craft. Meade’s whole fortune was wasted in an effort to find this boat. At his own expense he sent out three expeditions. Two of them came to grief on the coast of South America, and the third was abandoned after cruising along the coast of Chile and Peru for several years in search of the treasure.”
—Scientific American, August 1906
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