Not all that tempts your wand'ring eyes And heedless hearts is lawful prize; Nor all that glisters, gold.
Thomas Gray
From Robert Louis Stephenson's Treasure Island to Tolkien's The Hobbit, young minds have been fertilised and filled with the promise of the fantastical fortunes lying beneath the waves, all awaiting ownership. All old mariner's tales tell of treasure, sovereigns, doubloons, diamonds and gold bullion, their richness resonates, whetting our gold rush appetite.
Myths and lore have attributed many of the wrecks with "larger than life" contents. In May of 1588, Philip II of Spain dispatched the great Spanish fleet - the Armada - with the intention of invading England. Some 130 ships, carrying almost 28,000 men, crossed the bar in Lisbon. Their sailing instructions, issued by their commander-in-chief, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, were, according to Irish Wrecks of the Spanish Armada by Laurence Flanagan, quite explicit. The fleet should avoid the coasts of Ireland "for fear of the harm that might befall you".
The Armada, already besieged by bad luck, was thrown further off-course by the equinoctial gales that howl their way around the Irish coast every March and September. The banshee-like bawl - a tempest, Celtic-style - would have been the last thing many of those aboard would have heard as they were thrown to their doom on the west coast rocks. Their watery graves comprise only a small part of the estimated 12,000 wrecks off the Irish coast. About 8,000 of these have been accounted for in Edward J. Bourke's Shipwrecks of the Irish Coast, volumes one, two and soon-to-be published three. They are a fascinating catalogue of tragedy and loss, and provide any treasure hunter with their first clue as to where the booty might be located.
All ships carry treasure of some description. The captain of every ship carried a bag of sovereigns to trade with. Other worthwhile finds include cannons, cannon wheels, lead ingots, trinkets . . . even jewellery. Some of the Armada vessels carried noblemen and their personal possessions. A heavy gold ring, for instance, inscribed "Madame de Champagney MDXXIIII" (1524), which had been worn by her grandson, Don Thomas Perrento, constituted proof positive, thanks to the meticulous cataloguing by the 16th-century Spanish civil servants, that the vessel, found off Lacada Point in Co Antrim, was the Armada's Girona. Other exceptional pieces found include gold chains, a necklace of lapis lazuli portrait-cameos in gold mounts and a ruby-embellished gold salamander, all of which are on show in the Ulster Museum. The finds at the site of the Girona have been, according to Edward J. Bourke "real treasure, not just in terms of intrinsic value but also in the insight they gave into the lives of the people of 1588".
The Spanish Armada and a wealth of other wrecks may have held substantial cargoes, but the richest hauls of all were aboard 20th-century ships carrying gold bars during both world wars. There was huge movement of gold across the Atlantic and, like the ferryman, the sea claimed her portion in fees due. America, before she entered the wars, provided England with goods and munitions. These were bought in pounds using gold shipped from the Bank of England to support the purchases - ballast for the English trade with America. One such war victim was The Arabic, the 15-ton White Star liner, which lies 50 miles south of the Old Head of Kinsale, Co Cork, where she sank after being torpedoed in October 1915. Nigel Pickford, author of Lost Treasure Ships of the Twentieth Century and the Atlas of Shipwrecks & Treasure, alludes to a large quality of gold, some £100 million to £300 million in gold bullion, aboard this ship.
She was salvaged twice in the 1990s, but no gold was discovered. In 1996, a saturation diving ship, operated by Mike Owens of Aberdeen, is believed to have made a small hole into the mailroom and, using a suction dredge, raised 83 diamonds in a mass of paper.
Another is the Lusitania, probably the most discussed of all shipwrecks in Irish waters. Titanic-like tales of her passengers and the treasure they were carrying abound. Sir Hugh Lane, who died in the disaster, was thought to be carrying paintings of considerable value. There have been several diving expeditions to the wreck, and it is understood that Sorima, the Italian salvage company based in Genoa, recovered the ship's safes in 1937 - for when Oceaneering visited the site in the early 1980s, the safes were no longer aboard. The propellers from the Lusitania were made of phosphorbronze. One, thought to be a spare, is now on display at the Liverpool Maritime Museum
The Empress of Britain, a second World War casualty, lies off Tory, where she was sunk in October 1940. She was supposed to be carrying gold bullion. When a salvage crew visited the site in 1995, all they found was a skeleton in the bullion room. It is believed he was trapped while working on the salvage of the gold cargo when the ship sank. There is a yarn that intimates a secretive expedition visited the Empress in 1949, which might explain the missing gold.
The most extensive and successful salvage operation conducted in Irish waters was, according to Bourke, "the recovery of the Laurentic's gold". The 15-ton merchant cruiser went down off Buncrana, Co Donegal, in January 1917. She was on her way across the Atlantic with 40 tons of gold: 3,211 gold bars, worth somewhere in the region of £5 million at the time, £300 million today. While almost all the bars were recovered, James Dykes, a detective in Derry at the time, received a tip-off that there was a plot to steal the gold, and that two bars had already been taken. Nothing was ever proven, and after the 1923 salvage operation others tried unsuccessfully to locate the missing gold bars.
But gold is not the most valuable cargo. The most durable residue of a ship's wreck is her cannon. Most ships carried cannons as a defence against pirates and privateers. Salvage of cannons from the Armada wrecks as early as the 17th century was not uncommon, since nearly all ships are wrecked in shallow waters. Bronze cannons were the "cruise missiles of their day". They were slow to make, and the British military did not want to leave them lying around, for fear of inspiring insurrection in the Irish. The more recently sunk Glenholm, which went down in May 1915 west-south-west of Fastnet, the casualty of a German submarine, had a cargo that included 430 tons of tin ingots. Depending on market price, this could be worth up to £1 million. It's difficult to get "ground truth" on these stories. The phosphor-bronze propellers of the Lusitania would have been of considerable value, which is why they were the first items raised from the sunken vessel.
The issue of salvage is a complex one. Companies active in Irish waters today include Celtic Salvage and Towing and a Scottish firm, Deep Water Recovery and Exploration. Diving bells have been recorded as aiding recovery of salvage as early as 1829, but the concept has been around for a long time - Alexander the Great is supposed to have gone down in a primitive bell in the third century BC. Diving to a wreck more than 100 years old requires a permit from the Office of Public Works. By all means look: but don't touch.
Armchair explorers with an active imagination can join a diving club where, when suitably qualified, it is possible to go on organised wreck dives. Who knows, maybe some day you might strike gold!
For further information, contact Scuba Ireland at scuba-irl@indigo.ie