Some phrases have been removed from the text.

Read it and insert the missing phrases at the bottom in

the corresponding gap 1-9. The use of capital letters has been disregarded. There are two sentences you do
not need to use. 0 is an example

Diamond shipwreck
This remarkable story would have been lost forever if a company geologist (0)… in the beach sands of
Namibia back in 2008. While he was working in the area, he came across a copper ingot. The ingot was the
type (1)…. Archaeologists would later find a staggering 22 tons of these ingots beneath the sand, as well as
cannons, swords, ivory, muskets, chain mail and exquisite gold coins bearing the coat of arms of King João
III of Portugal. From this evidence, historians have pieced together the following story.
One bright spring day in 1533, the great ships of the Portuguese India fleet sailed grandly down the Tagus
River and out into the Atlantic, flags flying. These ships were the pride of Portugal, off on a fifteen-month
mission (2)… that were familiar ports of call thanks to Portuguese navigating skills. The ships were strong
and capable; two of them were brand-new and owned by the king himself. One was the Bom Jesus,
captained by Dom Francisco de Noronha and carrying 300 crew, soldiers and merchants. She had on board
a fortune in gold and ivory (3)….
But four months after its departure from Lisbon, the fleet was struck and scattered by a huge storm. (4)…,
because the fleet commander’s report has been lost. All we know is that it mentioned that the Bom Jesus
had disappeared in wild weather somewhere off the Cape of Good Hope. We can guess what happened
next: the ship was caught in powerful winds and currents and driven helplessly northwards for hundreds of
miles. Somewhere near the Namib Desert, (5)…. The blow broke off a big chunk of the ship’s stern, spilling
tons of copper ingots into the sea and sending the Bom Jesus down.
And the sailors? ‘In a storm, getting ashore would have been just about impossible,’ says the archaeologist
Dieter Noli. ‘On the other hand, if the weather had calmed, the ship might have drifted ashore.’ And then
what? This is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, an uninhabited wasteland of sand and scrub. It
was winter. Any survivors would have been wet, freezing and exhausted. No ship was likely to pass, since
they were far away from the trade routes. As for getting back to Portugal – they (6)….
Yet, in spite of its bleak environment, this place held an extraordinary secret. It was a desert rich in high-
quality diamonds; so rich, in fact, that in the 1900s, the explorer Ernst Reuning made a bet with a
companion about how long it would take to fill a tin cup with gems found in the sand. The job took ten
minutes. Over many centuries, millions of diamonds (7)… from deposits in the mountains far inland. Only
the hardest gems, some weighing hundreds of carats, (8)…. They spilled into the Atlantic at the river’s
mouth and were washed up the coast, carried by the same cold current that would one day sweep the Bom
Jesus to its end.
None of the sailors of the Bom Jesus ever returned home. They died somewhere near this mysterious coast,
unaware that beneath their feet were more than a hundred million carats of diamonds. They had no idea of
the irony of it. (9)…, and now here they were, on a shore of unimaginable wealth.
A - details are sketchy
B - had been washed down to the shore
C - had not made an astonishing discovery – 0 Example
D - it struck rocks 150 metres from shore
E - might as well have been shipwrecked on Mars
F - survived the journey
G - they had set off on a journey in search of riches
H - to bring back pepper and spices from distant places
I - to trade at a spice port on the coast of India
J - traded for spices in the East Indies in the 16th century
K - which unexpectedly came up
L - would have been pushed down the river

GAP 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PHRASE C
GAP 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PHRASE C J H I A D E B F G