In 1694, as England and its allies battled French
expansionism for a fifth year, H.M.S. Sussex led a large fleet into
the Mediterranean to prosecute the war. It also had a secret
mission, documents show. The flagship, a new British warship of 80
guns and 500 men, appears to have carried a small fortune in
treasure to buy the loyalty of the Duke of Savoy, a shaky ally.
But a violent storm hit the flotilla near the Strait of Gibraltar
and the Sussex went down. All but two men died. The treasure —
apparently gold and silver coins in theory worth up to $4 billion
today — was never recovered.
Now, three centuries later, a team of entrepreneurs and
archaeologists working with the British government says it has
probably discovered the Sussex in the depths of the Mediterranean. A
half mile down, the team's robot has examined a large mound rich in
cannons, anchors and solidified masses of artifacts, and its
mechanical arm has gingerly lifted a few to the surface.
The identification of the tantalizing heap is not final, but the
circumstantial evidence is strong. When asked about the wreck, the
British Defense Ministry said in a statement that the recovered
artifacts "lead us to believe that those items came from a British
sovereign vessel, most probably the wreck of H.M.S. Sussex."
The discovery could rank as one of the most important from the
sea. If plans proceed for an excavation of the site, archival and
field research by the explorers suggests, the remains of the Sussex
could yield the richest treasure wreck of modern times and
illuminate a lost chapter in world history.
The loss of the Sussex's payment, historians say, appears to have
sent the Duke of Savoy into the French camp, altering the war's
outcome as well as a swath of European and American history.
"We're resurrecting history," said Greg Stemm, operations
director of Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc., a Tampa, Fla., company
that leads the project.
Although divers have gone deeper to retrieve lost artifacts,
miles in the case of the Titanic, those explorations were relatively
easy and superficial compared with the difficulty of teasing out
material and historical information from disheveled piles of
decaying ship remains. At a half mile down, the excavation would be
the deepest attempted in the annals of archaeology.
"We must not lose this knowledge," said Anna Marguerite McCann, a
marine archaeologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
who has studied Roman wrecks in the deep Mediterranean.
To search for the forgotten ship, Odyssey had to battle some
archaeologists' disdain of treasure hunters and win the blessing of
the British and Spanish governments.
Odyssey is working with the Royal Naval Museum at Portsmouth,
England, which advises the British Defense Ministry. The joint
venture is unusual. The Sussex is a sovereign wreck — an extension
of the state itself under maritime law. But Britain is letting
private explorers bear some of the responsibility for its discovery
and all of the financial risk.
While there is no question that the ship belongs to Britain, the
private company has invested substantial effort, time and money in
the project and can expect a fair return. The company is now
negotiating with the British government for a contract to excavate
the wreck and its potential riches. Typically, the finders receive
most of the valuables.
Mr. Stemm, a founder of Odyssey, said the company's hunt for the
Sussex had so far cost $3 million over seven years.
Neil Cunningham Dobson, a British marine archaeologist working
for Odyssey, told the Defense Ministry in a recent report that the
company's gamble had apparently paid off.
The submerged mound is the Sussex, he said, based on his analysis
of "the survey data, the historical and documentary sources, the
underwater investigations, the location, the size and shape of the
site, and the cannon distribution and sizes."
Technology is fast opening the deep, creating new opportunities,
as well as new conflicts among treasure hunters and archaeologists.
Mr. Stemm and his business partner, John Morris, have gained
reputations as peacemakers.
The Sussex caught their attention in 1995, Mr. Stemm said. A
researcher showed the company a diplomatic letter written shortly
after the sinking that said the ship carried a small fortune.
The Sussex had no special renown in nautical history, unlike
famous sunken galleons. So Odyssey hired researchers to comb
archives in England, France, the Netherlands and the United States
for clues to the ship's cargo and resting place. The attraction
grew.
Evidence of where the Sussex foundered came from the logs of
ships that witnessed the loss, as well as from the fleet secretary's
report. British court documents reinforced the idea of a rich
cargo.
"A great summ of money is sending hence for Savoy," said a
document of November 1693. Just before the fleet sailed, the royal
proceedings of Dec. 12, 1693, said the king had ordered the
exchequer to give the flotilla "a million of money," or one million
pounds sterling in coins. That would equal about 10 tons of gold or
more than 100 tons of silver.
Odyssey's study hinted at the ship's wide importance to history,
which promises to make recovered artifacts more valuable. It was
part of a grand alliance to counter France's global ambitions under
Louis XIV, the Sun King. The allies included England, Spain,
Holland, Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire.
Savoy, a small state on France's southeast flank that controlled
key invasion routes to and from Paris, was a pivotal but wavering
ally readily influenced by events, financial or otherwise.
"It doesn't look good when you lose a brand-new ship in a storm
in wartime," said Chris Ware, a British maritime historian who
helped Odyssey locate documents relating to the Sussex.
The loss of the large payment, and the defection of Savoy, helped
create a stalemate that reverberated widely. The standoff in North
America led to the French-English wars of the 18th century in which
beleaguered colonists increasingly looked to their own defenses and
institutions, a trend that culminated in the American Revolution.