Emily Chan
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.
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