HMS Sussex (1693)

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Model of HMS Sussex, starboard

See HMS Sussex for other ships of this name.

HMS Sussex was an 80-gun English warship lost in a severe storm on 1 March 1694 ^[1] off Gibraltar. On board were possibly 10 tons of gold. This could be worth $4,000 million today, making it one of the most valuable wrecks of all times.

HMS Sussex was launched at Chatham Dockyard on 11 April 1693, and was the pride of the Royal Navy. As Admiral Sir Francis Wheeler's flagship, she set sail from Portsmouth on 27 December 1693, escorting a fleet of 48 warships and 166 merchant ships to the Mediterranean with a huge political bribe on board. Locked in a series of iron-clad chests stowed in the hold was one million pounds in gold coins, destined for Victor Amadeus II, the ruler of Savoy in north-western Italy.

Its purpose was to persuade the duke to attack Louis XIV on his poorly defended southern border at the height of the War of the Grand Alliance, which wasn't going very well for William III of England and his allies.

After a short stopover in Cadiz, the fleet entered the Mediterranean. On 27 February a violent storm hit the flotilla near the Strait of Gibraltar and in the early morning of the third day, HMS Sussex sank and all but two of the 500 crew onboard drowned, including Admiral Wheeler, whose body, legend has it, was found on the eastern shore of the rock of Gibraltar in his night-shirt.

Besides the Sussex, 12 other ships of the fleet sank. There were in total 1,200 casualties.

1 Treasure hunt
2 See also
3 Notes
4 External links

[edit] Treasure hunt

Between 1998 and 2001, an American Company "Odyssey Marine Exploration" searched for the Sussex and now believes that it has located the shipwreck at a depth of 1,000 metres.

In October 2002, Odyssey agreed a deal with the rightful owner, the British government, on a formula for sharing any potential spoils. Odyssey is to get 80 percent of the proceeds up to $45 million, 50 percent from $45 million to $500 million and 40 percent above $500 million. The British government gets the rest.

The Americans were then poised to start the excavation in 2003, but it was delayed amid a raft of complaints from some archaeological quarters, denouncing it as a dangerous precedent for the "ransacking" of shipwrecks by private firms under the aegis of archaeological research.

Just as Odyssey was about to start an excavation, it was stopped by the Spanish authorities, in particular the Junta of Andalusia in January 2006. In early June 2006, Odyssey provided clarification on all points to the Kingdom of Spain's Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the offices of the Embassy of the United Kingdom. Odyssey is awaiting final comments on the plan before resuming operations on the shipwreck believed to be HMS Sussex.

In March 2007, Andalusia gave her assent for the excavation to start with the condition that Spanish archeologists are to take part in the excavation in order to ascertain that the shipwreck to be excavated is indeed the Sussex and not a Spanish galleon.^[2]