Mystery of what happened to 400-year-old ship carrying £4 billion worth of gold could soon be solved
The case of an ancient ship which has been missing for 400 years might be solved after a UK company has vowed to find its remains.
The ship, named the 'Merchant Royal', was said to have been carrying around £4 billion in gold and other precious metals when it disappeared on 23 September 1641 off the coast of Cornwall.
However, it’s never been found - but while people have, in fact, tried to find this goldmine before, but one company thinks they’re up for the challenge.
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The ship had been on route to Dartmouth for repairs, when it made a stop to the Spanish port of Cadiz to be loaded up with more cargo and repair work.
At the time, it was said to be carrying payment for 30,000 soldiers based at Flanders, and treasures such as 400 bars of Mexican silver and 500,000 pieces of eight.
However, according to Sky History, as it left Cadiz, it sprung a leak. The harsh weather didn't help things either as the ship began to take on more water before eventually sinking.
40 crew members, including the captain, were eventually rescued by a passing ship, while eighteen men died in the sinking.
Estimates on how much was actually lost varies, according to a pamphlet in the British Library, the ship was said to have gone down with ‘300000 in ready boliogne’ (bullion) and ‘100,000 pound in gold and as much value in jewels’.
However, Sky History believes these sources have been misinterpreted to mean 'weight' rather than 'currency' - they instead give a 'liberal estimate' of £150-300 million.
While the ship remains undiscovered, Nigel Hodge, a former commercial fisherman and diver has decided that he and his team of eleven at Multibeam Services, are more than able to locate it - and they are going to spend the rest of the year searching for it.
Specialising in finding lost shipwrecks, Hodge said he'll scour a 200 square mile area of the English Channel in an attempt to locate the wreck.
He told Metro in April in an interview that even though the ship would be worth billions, ‘the days of people finding a big pile of gold and becoming rich overnight are well and truly gone' - so he's not in it for the money.
And with the help of new technology, it could soon be solved.
The company has underwater vessels which can dive 6,000 meters and utilise sonar technology worth 3.5 million each - so they’re an investment to say the least.
But he doesn’t think it’ll be easy.
Hodge said: “There’s thousands of shipwrecks down there and the Merchant Royal is just one of them. So we’ve got to literally pick through a lot of wrecks as we’re doing them and then identify them.
“It’s not straightforward. If it was straightforward, it would have been done.”
Hodge has also employed the services of other ex-fishermen, which he thinks will help due to their knowledge of the local waters, and that they will stick to Isle of Scilly to avoid continuous travel from the mainland.
Hodge says that some believe it's like 'finding a needle in a haystack', however, he would slightly disagree: "‘I wouldn’t say it’s quite that but it is a large area and we’ve got the elements to deal with.
"We need to wait for certain conditions to be able to use the equipment."
Britt Jones