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Hunt for treasure of Bonnie Prince Charlie
IT started with an object no bigger than a button – but it could solve a 250-year-old mystery and lead to a hoard of thousands of gold coins.
Divers believe they have found the wreck of a ship off Anglesey carrying cash to fund Bonnie Prince Charlie and the doomed Jacobite Rebellion.
And today the latest phase of their work is getting under way as they attempt to unearth the long-lost bullion.
The story began in the 1980s when diver Kevin McCormack, then just 14, came across a tiny copper disc on the seabed at the foot of a rocky promontory near Porth Dafarch Beach, on Holy Island, to the west of Anglesey.
Divers had visited the wreck for years and a number of cannon had been recovered but no one was sure what it was.
The disc seemed unremarkable – a worthless penny – and it stayed in a drawer until experts from the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh were finally asked to look at it.
After more years at the museum it turned out to be a duplicate of the seal on the signet ring worn by Mary Queen of Scots.
Research has thrown up the tantalising possibility that the wreck could be related to failed attempts by Louis XV to send relief ships, laden with old coins, weapons and troops, to her great-great grandson the Young Pretender, in hiding in the Scottish Islands.
The team believe that the wreck is an English frigate, captured by the French, one of two used to unload weapons and bullion from two French ships, the Le Mars and La Bellone, which had limped back to the port of Nantes after an earlier unsuccessful relief attempt.
Buried in the seabed, under sand, gravel and boulders that have been washed in over the centuries, they believe are some of the 817,000 gold pieces which were on board when the ship smashed into cliffs on Holy Island, in a storm, possibly in 1746.
Getting to the wreck site has always been fraught with difficulty because of the weather.
But in the last four months the team – led by Kevin McCormack and his father, veteran diver Joe McCormack – have erected 120ft of scaffolding so divers can get down a platform just above high water mark.
Today, weather permitting, will be the first day they can get to work using airlifts and machinery to bring spoil to the surface where it can be sifted and examined. The divers will use ex police diving equipment with cameras sharper than the human eye and rather than using cylinders will use umbilicals connected with air compressors on the surface enabling them to stay underwater for longer.
Allen Ford, who spent more than 30 years in the car trade and lives in Hainworth, near Keighley, got involved after meeting Joe McCormack seven years ago and he says has "lived, breathed and slept" the project ever since.
Now the company secretary of Maritime Resurgence, which is salvor in possession of the wreck, he has invested thousands in the project and spent many hours researching the subject. He believes the seal was a token of authenticity and would have been carried on board to prove they were who they said they were and were not British spies.
Making a documentary about the work is the film director Howard Foster, from Ilkley, film producer Bob Griffin, from Menston and head cameraman Paul Kerrighan.
Mr Ford said: "It's a Boy's Own story and has fascinated me from the first moment I heard about it. A lot of people have put a lot of time and effort into it to make it work.
"I pray every night 'Dear God let's just find something. I don't want to be a millionaire - let's just find something to let us carry on.'"
He added: "We are getting artefacts all the time. We are getting nails – big ones – and cleats of brass which were used to hold the rigging together. We are definitely in the right place."
Joe McCormack said: "Everyone believes there isn't a wreck down there but we believe there is.
"We have modern techniques that tells us we have an iron signal 12ft down in the seabed.
"It could be a big load of pig iron – so let's not go bananas – but we think it could be the cargo."
For more information on the wreck and the hunt for its cargo see www.maritimeresurgence.co.uk.
Wild coast hides many riches
The wild stretch of coast where Bonnie Prince Charlie's gold is believed to have come to grief is littered with shipwrecks. Within a mile of the site there are two lighthouses – a pointer to how hostile it is.
It is not unusual for divers to turn up fragments inside the 160ft gully. Shipping has been coming to Holy Island since the Bronze Age.
So far the divers have turned up chain, bronze fitments and bronze pins – "the usual debris" that gives the century away but not the actual period. Tantalisingly just round the corner 12 years ago a gold coin was found by a fisherman's son, with the date 1746. Now they are hoping within days to have made the "most significant and astonishing" find of its kind off Britain.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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