In 1641 This Ship Sank Off The Coast Of Cornwall, Taking A Trove Of Treasures With It, And The Wreck Has Recently Been Found
In 1641, an English ship called the Merchant Royal sank off the coast of Cornwall, taking a trove of treasures with it.
Ever since then, numerous attempts have been made to find the shipwreck; however, it has remained undiscovered.
But recently, a U.K. fishing crew near Cornwall found the ship’s rusty anchor tangled up in their nets. After investigating the anchor’s size, age, and location, experts confirmed that the anchor was from the Merchant.
The long-lost Merchant Royal is also known as the “El Dorado of the Seas.” It was 157 feet long and weighed 700 tons.
Built in London at the Deptford Dockyard, it set sail in 1627. Between 1637 and 1640, it traded with Spanish colonies in the West Indies.
When a ship in Cadiz, Spain, that was meant to carry gold and silver to pay Spanish soldiers caught fire, the captain of the Merchant Royal, John Limbrey, offered to transport the treasure.
Unfortunately, the vessel started leaking after leaving Cadiz. It is thought to have gone down somewhere between the Isles of Scilly and Land’s End during a storm.
A total of 18 crew members drowned, and 40 were rescued by its sister ship, the Dover Merchant. The treasure on board, which was made up of 100,000 pounds of gold and 400 bars of Mexican silver, went down with the ship. The precious cargo is estimated to be worth more than $1.3 billion.
The discovery of the anchor has given researchers a place to start with hunting down the ship’s wreckage.
Andrew – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
However, there are several challenges that come with this endeavor, such as a lack of trained divers, bad weather, and the competition to see who can get their hands on the bounty first.
“The spot where [the anchor] was found is about 300 feet deep—there are very few people qualified to dive that deep,” Mark Milburn, the co-founder of Maritime Archaeology, said.
“I’ll be going out there to have a look, but we’ve got to wait for the right conditions, and because the conditions are so treacherous, the window is very narrow.”
Milburn added that independent treasure hunters will be searching for the loot as well. His main concern is that people will remove objects from the site without letting experts know. If any treasure is found, the valuable discovery must be reported to the British government.
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