THE STORY ABOUT THE 7 TREASURE SHIPS
Zahiruddin Ali , in the year 1760 , was a tall warrior from Afghanistan . Nearly 7 foot 3 inches tall. Interestingly , people of his tribe were all around his height and were all ferocious warriors and excellent camel riders. Their long swords reached the necks of the enemy much faster than the enemy could reach theirs. Further, they would swipe, killing 3 to 4 enemy forces at one swipe, take a step forward, take another swipe and take another step forward. In the meanwhile, he had ten batteries of archers lined up one behind the other. While one would load, the one behind would fire. And while this line loads, the line behind would fire. The enemy was not allowed to stick their head out from under their shields. Zahiruddin was employed initially by one of the Malabar Kings to fight the enemy forces attacking the Malabar Kings empire.
The Malabar King was extremely wealthy but was a weak man. Zahiruddin brought in the tall army from his country and destroyed the opposition forces. He rose pretty fast in the ranks and became a General. But when you have weak Kings and strong Generals, the General becomes the King. And he thus imprisoned the King and became the Emperor.
He was not happy with one Kingdom. He now wanted to capture the fabled treasures of all the Malabar Kings. Pure Gold Thrones, Pure Gold Crowns studded with diamonds, rubies and emeralds, swords studded with diamonds, rubies and emeralds, pure gold statues of goddesses, diamond necklaces worn by various princesses, large diamonds from the Golconda mines and much more!
And thus began his raids on one Kingdom after another.
One specific King from the Malabar region gave a very good fight. His army used to jump and turn somersaults in the air while running their swords through the necks of their enemy. Thus the tall army of Zahiruddin Ali did face a wee bit of opposition. Zahiruddin's army beat the Malabar King's army. The King fled the huge fort through a secret tunnel that ran under the fort, under the river next to the fort and finally led to deep jungle. The jungle covered many hills and finally ended near the sea which was around fifteen days of walk through the jungle with women, children, cows, horses, and a hungry army of around five hundred. Travel through the jungle was a daunting exercise and very few survived the journey.
The King and his loyal subjects finally reached the sea shore where the army sergeant dressed as a villager went to a villager for some food. He was told that they were already feeding engineers of an army who were building cargo ships.
He peeped from above a sand dune and saw seven massive cargo ships under construction.
A ship was already in a position to be launched into the waters.
Then the ship was launched into the sea waters , and the rest were to be similarly launched, one by one.
The King, the Army Chief and some loyal subjects realized that this region which was under Zahiruddin Ali's control. They also realized that what they were seeing was the secret loading of a hoard of treasure looted from innumerable Indian empires in the Malabar region of India, onto seven large cargo ships.
When the seven ships were constructed, they were lined up at a distance between each other.
A wooden patch that led from the beach to the ship, helped the elephants , horse carts, camel carts and donkey carts to transport huge hoards of treasure onto the ships.
When the last ship was fully loaded, the King of Malabar attacked and ensured the release of the prisoners who were involved in the construction of the ships.
These prisoners joined forces and thus ensured victory.
Very soon, all the seven ships were under their control.
And they were able to sail safely away without much resistance.
Zahiruddin Ali was furious and sent his army to torture the local villagers who were assisting his forces with meals. He killed and destroyed the villages.
The 7 ships in the meanwhile faced terrible storms and bad weather.
Further many months at sea resulted in sea related illnesses.
Berri beri, skurvy, led to rationing of food and this led to mutiny.
Then the storms caused the damage that sank two ships and they sank with their huge hoards of treasure.
The remaining five ships sighted land and promptly landed after several months at sea.
The ideal site for the King & Queen was chosen
Deep into the island was a forest and a river ran through this forest into the ocean.
A large palace was built here and the queen named this island - "Nair Dvipa".
The rear courtyard was large enough to hold two football fields.
The fabulous treasures were kept in a room that was large enough to be two numbers of three hundred people banquet halls.
But all of above happened in the year 1760. And nobody knew about where the seven ships full of fabulous treasure had vanished.
Not until the nineteenth century.
A secret journal entry made by a French Officer and later found in the uniform of a British Officer worn during the 1770 was discovered in the year 1946 by his great great grandson.
You would love to read the rest.
Read the rest of the story titled, "Those Forgotten People" -
