Piedmont (“Lyme Bay wreck”), sunk in 1795 in Lyme Bay, south of England One of a huge fleet of 300 ships on their way to the West Indies to suppress a French uprising, the Piedmont was forced into Lyme Bay during a hurricane on November 18, 1795, that scattered and sank the ships of the fleet all along the Dorset coast. The Piedmont and five other ships (Aeolus, Catherine, Golden Grove, Thomas and Venus) broke apart on Chesil Beach and came to be known collectively as the “Lyme Bay wrecks.” About 1,000 men lost their lives in the disaster, including well over a hundred from the Piedmont alone. In the early 1980s the wrecks were salvaged by divers Selwyn Williams and Les and Julia C. Kent, who discovered many silver cobs of the late 1600s on the wrecksite of the Piedmont. It is presumed that the coins had been captured or recovered from a 17th-century wreck and stored in the vaults of the Bank of England for about a century before being transported and subsequently lost again. These coins are usually recognizable by their uniformly dark-gray coloration, a bit sea-worn but not overly corroded. A significant group of extremely rare Colombian silver cobs from the Piedmont (but not identified as such) was offered at auction in 1995.
Leocadia when she departed Paita, Peru, bound for Panama in a convoy of merchant vessels. On November 16, 1800, the Leocadia struck a shoal and broke apart 100 yards from the beach at Punta Santa Elena, with a loss of over 140 lives in the disaster. Within the next year the Spanish salvaged about 90% of the registered treasure, leaving more than 200,000 pesos (not to mention the expected contraband) behind to tempt divers in our time. Judging from the paucity of coins from this ship on the open market, it is reasonable to assume that many more are still to be found. S.S. Central America, sunk in 1857 in deep water off North Carolina Sunk in a hurricane on September 12, 1857, the mail steamer Central America took with her over 400 lives and over three tons of gold. The wreck lay undisturbed until 1986, when Tommy Thompson and his ColumbusAmerica Discovery Group located the ship in 8500 feet of water. After ten years of legal struggles, the salvagers were awarded about 92% of the treasure, with most of the rest going to insurance companies who had paid the claim when the ship sank. Widely touted as the greatest treasure ever found, the gold from the Central America has been very heavily promoted and cleverly marketed.
HMS Lutine , sunk in 1799 off Terschelling Island, the Netherlands Sunk in a heavy gale on October 9, 1799, the British Royal Navy frigate Lutine was taking a cargo of some £1,200,000 in gold and silver ingots to the continent to provide German banks with funds to prevent a stock market crash, which indeed occurred due to the loss. Only one person survived the wreck. Immediate salvage attempts (up to 1804) were thwarted by silt, which covered the wreck right away. Lloyd’s of London, which insured the cargo, authorized salvage attempts throughout the 1800s, with limited success. The most famous item to be recovered (in 1858) was the ship’s bell, which was mounted in the Lloyd’s offices and traditionally rung once (up till 1979) when a ship went missing and twice (up till 1989) when the missing ship had arrived. (The ringing of the bell ensured that all the brokers and underwriters were notified at the same time.) Most of the cargo remains on the wreck to this day.
Egypt, sunk in 1922 off Ushant, France In May of 1922, the Egypt encountered thick fog off the northwest coast of France and was accidentally rammed by another ship, the French cargo steamer Seine, sinking the British ship within twenty minutes. The Egypt was carrying some 15 tons of silver and gold bullion in addition to British gold sovereigns totaling £1,054,000 (1922 values). Nothing was salvaged until the early 1930s, when an Italian company recovered an estimated 95% of the treasure from the ship’s depth of 420 feet, an amazing success for its time. “Manila Bay treasure,” dumped in Manila Bay, the Philippines, in 1942 Under siege from the Japanese, the U.S.-run government of the Philippines retreated to the fort of Corregidor in 1942 with the entire treasury of some $3 million in U.S. currency, $28 million in Philippine currency and over five tons of gold. All of the gold and some of the silver was loaded as ballast onto the submarine U.S.S. Trout and eventually made it to the U.S., but some 350 tons of silver pesos had to be dumped into the Bay, the exact location recorded and sent by radio to the U.S. The advancing Japanese did manage to recover about 2 million pesos, but the rest was recovered by the U.S. 7th Fleet Ship Salvage Group.
Leocadia, sunk in 1800 off Punta Santa Elena, Ecuador This wreck, salvaged periodically in the late 20th century, typically yielded portrait (bust) 8 reales from Lima, Peru, but more recent work in 2001 brought up a handful of small silver cobs of the mid- to late 1700s mostly from the Potosí mint. These were probably from a small, private purse and not part of the more than 2 million pesos of registered silver and gold cargo aboard the
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