Gold from Royal Charter wreck to be sold at Shropshire auction
Ten gold pieces salvaged from the famous wreck of the treasure-laden steam clipper Royal Charter off Anglesey in 1859 are to be sold at a Shropshire auction in March.
Valued at £4,000, the six sovereigns, one half sovereign, eternity and signet rings and nugget pin were discovered by a diver in the 1970s. Now his widow, who lives I Shropshire, has decided to sell them in fine art auctioneers Halls’ fine pictures, silver, jewellery and coins auction in Shrewsbury on March 22.
“We are very fortunate and privileged to be able to sell these rare items, which were found by someone who actually dived on the wreck of the Royal Charter,” said Derek Ainsworth, a silver, jewellery and coins consultant at Halls. “It’s such a tragic story as many of the passengers were so close to home having made their fortune in the gold fields of Australia.”
A photograph of the divers is included in the book ‘The Golden Wreck: The Tragedy of the Royal Charter’ by Alexander McKee in 2000.
The gold laden Royal Charter was wrecked off the beach of Porth Helaeth near Moelfre on October 26, 1859 after being caught in an exceptional storm on the final leg of its voyage from Melbourne to Liverpool.
About 450 lives were lost, the highest death toll of any shipwreck off the Welsh coast. The precise number of passengers and crew who died is uncertain as the complete passenger list was lost in the wreck. Only 21 passengers and 18 crew members, all men, survived.
The passengers included many miners returning from the Australian gold fields and the hold was full of gold in boxes, each labelled with the owner's name. The contents of the boxes were valued at £322,440, which today translates to multi millions of pounds.
Much more gold was said to have been carried by the passengers themselves in their luggage or sewn into their clothes. It is claimed that many of the passengers drowned because they were weighed down by the gold belts they were wearing as they tried to swim ashore.
A large quantity of gold was said to have washed up on the beach at Porth Helaeth and the wreck was extensively salvaged shortly after the disaster.
Gold sovereigns, pistols, spectacles and other personal items have been found by divers over the years and, in 2012, treasure hunter Vincent Thurkettle found Britain’s biggest gold nugget while scouring the waters just off Anglesey. He kept his find secret until 2016 as he and friends continued to search for other debris from Royal Charter.
Built at the Sandycroft Ironworks on the River Dee, the Royal Charter was a clipper ship with auxiliary steam engines and was one of the fastest ships of its time when launched in 1855.
It left Australia on August 25, 59 days before the disaster and was making its way across the Irish Sea towards Liverpool from Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland. Captain Thomas Taylor had aimed to get from Queenstown to Liverpool within 24 hours but hadn’t planned for a hurricane force 12 storm, which swept the ship against rocks just 50 yards from the shore.
Maltese crew member Joseph Rodgers aided the rescue of the survivors by tying a rope around his waist and swimming to shore. Many of the bodies recovered from the sea were buried nearby at St Gallgo's Church, Llanallgo, where the graves and a memorial can still be seen.
