Claimants Grow in Galleon Find

(Salvador, Bahia — Por Favela Favor — November 12  ,2016)

The number of persons filing Rightful Claim on all or part of the estimated 7.6 million dollars recovered from a sunken Portuguese galleon has doubled since last night. The treasure, in Portuguese reales, dinhiero, Malacca Sebastieo and silver rupees, was recovered last week off the coast of India, near Goa, a former Portuguese colony.

At last count over 300 persons and entities have claimed the prize. Some are nautical, some are fortune chasers, but one local man has what appears to be a valid, albeit bizarre, link to the recovery deep on the ocean floor. Melvin Toole, a retired coal stoker from Colona, says he has a right to the entire booty due to family connections.

“I am the direct descendent of Amal Santa Villa Cabralia, the love child of the homely Queen Maria I of the Braganza Royal Family and the suave Domingos Antonio de Sousa Coutinho, the Portuguese Ambassador to Brasil in 1807,” said Toole.

The entire Portuguese court, all 1500 of them, had been relocated to Rio de Janeiro so as to escape the clutches of Napoleon Bonaparte whose armies were quickly closing in on Lisbon from the north. Prince John VI, who would become reigning monarch upon the death of Maria in 1816, refused to bless the union, calling for the head of Coutinho who fled to Salvador and out of harm’s way.

“That makes me the great-great-great-great grandson of Maria I,” snapped Toole carefully doing the math on his fingers. “I don’t see how there can be any other explanation. My Uncle Wilbur de Sousa, a notorious womanizer in his own right, spilled the beans on this story back when I was a kid but I thought he was just a senile old man babbling along. Now I wish I would have listened to him.”

Toole will undergo painful DNA testing tomorrow in hopes of putting the matter to rest. He has until next week to show further genetic proof that he is the heir to the fortune or the entire $7.6 million will go to the Portuguese Humane Society.

– Mr. Ha Ha