"priceless'' collection of 18th Century convict carvings found at Dockyard.

Collection owner Mr. Chriss Addams will be presenting the 2,000 piece collection to Government for sale pending the completion of an estimate.

Experts in the United States are currently evaluating the collection and an estimate is expected this week.

If Government rejects the offer, Mr. Addams will sell the carvings to a local collector, already poised to snap up the collection.

Numerous other local and overseas collectors have also expressed considerable interest in the carvings -- the largest and most elaborate collection of its kind.

According to Mr. Barry Capuano of Capcar Enterprises, a promotional firm hired to find a buyer for the collection, no carvings similar to the kind found by Mr. Addams have so far been discovered in Australia or elsewhere.

This means the eventual asking price is likely to be higher than originally expected.

"They (the carvings) are priceless,'' he said. "There is nothing else like them. Very few of those ships went down which makes the collection unique.'' Although last week Government pledged its willingness to buy any object of value to the Country, Maritime Museum director Dr. Edward Harris has countered that only a single purchase has been made by Government in 35 years.

Government even turned down the valuable Harry Cox collection, he said. He added that neither he nor the Maritime Museum had been consulted by Government over Mr. Addams' present offer to sell the collection.

In a letter to The Royal Gazette Dr. Harris took issue with statements by Finance Minister Dr. David Saul last week on Government's approach to the recovery of underwater artifacts.

Dr. Saul's comments that Government had limited use for "vast numbers of bottles and clay pipes'' illustrated "a misunderstanding existing in some quarters about archaeological sites'', Dr. Harris said.

Furthermore, Dr. Harris claimed, the value of the objects themselves was often overshadowed by the significance of the archaeological context in which they were discovered.

"The archaeological method is the only recognised scientific way of recovering historical information from shipwrecks,'' Dr. Harris claimed. "The problem with salvage work is that it rips the bottles and other artifacts out of their archaeological context, which not only preserved them but all the associated information about them.'' Archaeologists, unlike treasure hunters -- 95 percent of whom were interested only in finding objects deemed valuable on the art market, were concerned with the ships' fittings and vegetable seeds and pollen preserved in the sediment, Dr. Harris said.

"Where are all the records of the last 30 years of salvage work on Bermuda's shipwrecks?'' he asked.

"Government unfortunately continues to support the treasure-hunter approach to Bermuda's underwater heritage, perhaps by default than through ignorance.'' He added: "The Minister is mistaken to suggest that there are `unlimited numbers of underwater artifacts'.

"Much of what has been lost would have been of inestimable worth in "cultural tourism'', if it had been preserved in Bermuda's museums,'' he said.

Shipwrecks, like Bermuda's now protected coral and fish were a limited cultural source, he said, and could not be regenerated.

"They have only one chance at preservation, by being examined by archaeologists. If the law is not changed to retain this legacy for the country, it will not be long before it and all the heritage associated with it will have all been lost forever.''