Source: The Age, Melbourne, 25 February 2002

Wreck may hold treasure trove 800 metres down

By WILLIAM BROAD

In 1694, as England battled French expansionism, HMS 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 almost $US4 billion ($A7.8 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. About 800 metres down, the team's robot has examined a large mound rich in cannons, anchors and solidified masses of artefacts, and its mechanical arm has gingerly lifted a few to the surface.

The identification of the tantalising heap is not final, but the circumstantial evidence is strong.

When asked about the wreck, the British Defence Ministry said in a statement that the recovered artefacts "lead us to believe that those items came from a British vessel, most probably the wreck of HMS 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 that 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 swathe of European and American history.

"We're resurrecting history," said Greg Stemm, operations director of Odyssey Marine Exploration, a Florida company that leads the project. At 800 metres 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. Odyssey is working with the Royal Naval Museum at Portsmouth, England, which advises the British Defence 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.

Mr Stemm, a founder of Odyssey, said the company's hunt for the Sussex had so far cost $US3 million over seven years. "For me, as an archaeologist, it was quite a moment," he said, referring to his first glimpse of the sunken cannons. "To look and fly over the site was amazing, because it had not been disturbed. We were the first people to see it since the vessel went down."

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