Salvage Operations on the ROYAL CHARTER

Description

The above image shows the vessels that were employed by the owners and insurance underwriters of the ROYAL CHARTER to recover the cargo when the vessel was wrecked on the coast of Anglesey in October 1859. The ship is reported to have been carrying gold from Australia worth over £322,000 (1859 value) in small mahogany boxes, fragments of which had already come ashore. The salvage experts knew that the effect of currents would be negligible on heavy objects lying on the seabed. Gold from the smashed boxes would remain at the point where it had poured out, mostly inside or close to the wreck. The only question was the number of boxes that had been washed out whilst the hurricane was still raging and strewn amongst the rock crevices and shingle piled on the beach.

If you pass your mouse over the image, you will see that the smaller boats in the centre are actually diving tenders. One even has a diver in old fashioned diving gear climbing back on board. In the foreground, the artist has also included two workers undertaking the sombre task of recovering a body. To the right on the cliffs overlooking the scene, the artist has suggested some of the friends and relatives who descended on Moelfre to find out if there was any news of their loved ones.

When reports of the wreck arrived in Beaumaris, the local customs officer and Receiver of the Wreck, a Mr W H Smith quickly set put to assess the situation and secure the site. Having arrived at Moelfre and viewed the catastrophe, he sent to Liverpool and Chester to call upon detachments of the army and marines to help local police and coastguard. These troops were needed not only to stop theft from the wreck, but also to control the crowds of anxious and distraught relatives and sightseers.

Rumours of theft by locals and others who had descended on the wreck scene were received very poorly in the press who were shocked by the loss of life. The Daily Telegraph, for example, called for the death penalty for all those who were caught stealing. The coastguard and police were forced to conduct house searches to catch possible thieves and recover property. Few scavengers were actually caught or prosecuted, but those that were could expect a hefty fine and imprisonment with hard labour.

A small salvage fleet was assembled above the wreck. Ships carrying cranes and other heavy lifting apparatus known as Lumps were used to pull wreckage out of the water, while teams of men on the beach dragged parts of the ship ashore. Divers were sent down wearing standard hard hat diving suits, which had been in use since 1837. Air from the surface was pumped down to the divers allowing them to breathe and to equalise the pressure of the suit with the water pressure outside. Weights were often needed to help secure the diver so that they would not float, thus allowing them to walk along the seabed, and work underwater with greater ease. Full diving suits could weigh over 80 kilos.

Seeing the divers focusing on the recovery of property whilst there were several hundred bodies still missing enraged relatives and Rev Stephen Roose Hughes of the nearby Llangalgo church which had become a makeshift mortuary. In the second week of November 1859, with salvage work being undertaken, they began to see many more bodies being washed up and they believed this to be obvious proof that the disturbance of the wreck by divers was releasing them. However, Rev Hughes was threatened with legal action and arrest by the authorities if he attempted any interference with the ongoing salvage work. On 13 November 1859, responding to the pressure of relatives, the local MP, Sir R W Bulkeley, Bart, of Beaumaris wrote a strong letter to the Board of Trade demanding that they compel the owners to divert the divers to the recovery of bodies. The letter received widespread publicity just before the Board of Trade inquiry was to begin in Liverpool on 15 November.

However, salvage operations had been largely taken out of the hands of the owners, Gibbs Bright & Co, by the underwriters who were intent on recovering what they could to offset against the insured loss. Gibbs Bright did indeed employed local boats to scour the seas for floating bodies for several weeks after the wreck offering rewards for any recovered. They also employed a Lump to access part of the vessel where relatives believed bodies might still be trapped. The company would go bankrupt as a result of the ship's loss, but sent Rev Hughes £100 for his own expenses and to help remunerate Moelfre villagers for their rescue work.

Charles Dickens who visited the site two months later noted that the salvors continuing presence:

'On the shore by the water's edge, was a rough tent, made of fragments of wreck, where other divers and workmen sheltered themselves, and where they had kept Christmas Day with rum and roast beef, to the destruction of their frail chimney.'

Salvage work was still being conducted in 1864 and other attempts to retrieve more from the wreck site have continued. It is always that ‘gold’ which has been the focus of efforts.

On 26 October 1905, the Caernarvon and Denbigh Herald was reporting ‘As announced in the "Herald" last week, a number of residents in the neighbourhood of Holyhead have decided to organize a further search for the treasure supposed to lie in the wreck... Apropos of the publicity which has been given to various statements about the suggested salvage of specie... it may be mentioned that there hangs on the walls of the secretary's office at Lloyd's an original policy on bullion shipped on board that ill-fated vessel. This policy is for £ 25,000 of gold dust, specie, gold ores, and treasure. On the slip attached are details of the salvage affected, and this document shows that 91 per cent of the insured cargo under this policy was recovered. When one deducts the salvage charges, it would appear that, so far as this particular line was concerned, the absolute loss was very small indeed. Probably the salvage operations on other parcels were equally fortunate, and for this reason those responsible for the present operations run the risk of gaining little from their salvage attempt.’

Follow this link to see the full article:
http://welshnewspapers.llgc.org.uk/en/page/view/3607603/ART68

In July 1985, the headlines were again all about the ROYAL CHARTER, reading ‘The Sunken Millions, Divers find Fabulous gold haul'. The stories told of the conflict between two rival diving teams who had fallen out over spoils from the wreck. More recently still, in 2013 SC4 aired a three-part programme on the ROYAL CHARTER, the Welsh Wreck of Gold, which continued to present this view of the vessel as a treasure ship (see http://www.itv.com/news/wales/update/2013-07-26/welsh-wreck-of-gold-epis...).

The vast majority of what has been recovered from time to time since the wrecking has little intrinsic financial value. They often comprise the small personal everyday items which are so evocative of the lives lost – a pair of spectacles, coins, medallions, a candlestick, part of a child’s shoe, a haircomb, etc. - some of these items can be seen here on the People’s Collection Wales website.

Many would argue that the wreck site should be treated with all the respect and reverence of a mass grave - that the true treasure of the ROYAL CHARTER is the unique window on Victorian Wales the ship's story provides; that the wrecking incident is one of many examples of the Welsh people coming forward and responding heroically to terrible human tragedy; and that the lasting legacy includes a world class weather service, the Met Office.

Treasure Salvage versus Archaeology
For many years there has been an ongoing debate between archaeologists and treasure salvors about the best way to manage historic wreck sites. Treasure salvors claim that in many cases they are the driving force behind the discovery of wrecks which would otherwise remain unknown. They say that the incentive of being able to profit from the sale of recovered cargoes or artifacts allows them to mount expeditions to locate and investigate wrecks. Archaeologists believe that the activities of salvors and treasure hunters cause damage to wreck sites and that valuable clues about life board and the last moments of the vessel are lost when salvors focus only on the recovery of commercially valuable items. When those items are sold into private ownership, then they are dispersed and lost from public view and from the opportunities to be researched further or used for school's project work.

The above ethical debate is not unique the UK, but evidenced in countries all around the world through international charters for the protection of heritage, the legislation of individual countries, and several high profile legal cases between Governments and treasure salvors.

Schools Activity: research the two sides of the above argument and see if you can identify ways in which the two sides - treasure salvors and archaeologists - could work together to achieve the better conservation and preservation of wreck sites underwater. Perhaps you might nominate a spokesperson to put each side's case and through discussion see if a resolution can be found?

How did diving suits and equipment develop?
Find out more about diving technology at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, by searching their web site using ‘diving’ as a keyword. For example, for the link below to read about the earliest treatise on diving printed in England.

http://www.rmg.co.uk/researchers/collections/by-type/archive-and-library...

Also see web pages of The Historical Diving Society:

http://www.thehds.com/