The Lost Treasure Of King Charles

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] in 1633 a grisly clue washed up near the scottish town of burnt island one of the only pieces to a puzzle now 350 years old where is the ferry boat that vanished in a summer storm on a river called the Firth of Forth and what happened to its royal cargo half a tonne of silver and gold the riches of a king in the eighth year of his reign Charles the first lost a hoard of treasure so valuable it has been likened to the contents of King Tutankhamun's tomb it is one of the great lost treasures in history what Charles's treasure would represent would be the accumulated magnificence of generations and have it all in one lot would be a boon to art historians a boon to historians of monarchy and boons the nation it would be a complete age on display recovered for us in miniature we know less about Charles the first silver than about the periods before and the periods after it's simply gone so from that point of view there's a great big gap in European silver history which the wreck could fill what you've got done there is to a time capsule and our think capsule of that Charles the first ruled Britain from 1625 to 1649 his reign was riddled with tragedy most of which he brought upon himself Charles was arrogant and rigid heedless of what mattered to his subjects some say he was the worst king that Great Britain ever had his story begins in the independent Kingdom of Scotland here he was born in the year 1600 the second son of the Scottish King James the sixth a small and sickly infant Charles was not expected to live the week child matured slowly his legs were frail that he spoke was a terrible stutter the little attention was paid to the boys problems because nobody thought he would become King he seems to have been quite isolated in the nursery his father was never fond of him his mother never took much notice of him and so he ends up a rather lonely introverted shy painfully inadequate child with real reservations about his own abilities when Charles was young Elizabeth Queen of England and Ireland died childless next in line was her Scottish cousin James Charles father under James Scotland Ireland and England were united into a single Kingdom Sammis and raymond represents for britain a unique experiment and that is these three totally separate countries Ireland Scotland England's different churches different Parliament's and United only with a person of the monarch they don't have anything else in common they just have a person in charge and this means it's going to be very difficult indeed to keep all three of them equally happy King James did a reasonably good job ruling the three countries and carefully groomed his oldest son Henry to follow in his footsteps but Henry died of typhoid leaving the ill-prepared and ill-suited Charles as the royal heir at the age of 25 the Dominion of Scotsman became the second king of the new United Kingdom the Scots deeply distrustful of the English insisted on their own coronation of Charles in Scotland using the Scottish crown jewels the English suggested that if there was a second coronation needed it should be in London and that the Scotch is sent down the Scottish crown jewels which were of course a separate identity to the English crown jewels and the Scottish crown and that he should be crowned in London with the Scottish regalia but the Scots were too canny for that and they have ously decided that descent the Royal jewels down there they would never seen him again so they said no no send off the King and we'll have him corrugate here historian Bob Brighton became intrigued by this second coronation and began to research it he soon discovered that something had gone drastically wrong the evidence came from a 17th century account of a journey the King made across the Firth of Forth but as he is on the water in his a insight there perished wrong boat following after him having within her about 35 persons English and Scottish his own domestic servants and two of these only escaped with their lives as most his silver plate and household stops perished with the rest Brydon dug deeper and discovered the name of the lost ship the blessing of vert island a fairy that regularly carried people and goods across the seven miles of water between burnt island and lead person PCs come to light and it began to dawn on me that one of the things had not come to light was any recovery attempt on this particular ship that was promising but was there any further proof of the blessings precious cargo there was among the jewel house papers the official records of the British monarchy x' state ridges because silver and gold are valuable and have always been valuable and because servants have always had the opportunity I might say to remove improperly there's always been a paper trail where Silver's concerned because of this paper trail and we can say what was reordered by the jewel house for the Royal table the year after the wreck because we have the complete list and the weight of everything the weight of every sorcerer the weight of every bowl every dish every platter and every plate it's all there fifteen thousand ounces of silver was requisitioned to replace the state banquet service lost in Scotland that's nearly half a ton of precious metal all of it in the form of priceless museum-quality artifacts that was enough evidence to compel a group of Scots to join forces in 1991 to locate the Royal treasure of Charles the first and bring it up after two summers of searching they decided to bring in an experienced recovery team the Scots asked Barry Clifford and the American company global explorers group to join the quest they did in the summer of 1993 Clifford is a career treasure hunter most well-known for finding the widow the only pirate shipwrecked ever to have yielded treasure although none of its horde has ever been sold it's estimated worth is well into the millions I think I first became involved in shipwrecks when I was a kid I used to love to go on a rainy day and go to the library and look through history books and various accounts of sea captains and then actually be able to take that knowledge that I gleaned from that and go out and actually try to locate what somebody was talking about two or three hundred years ago I just developed this insatiable appetite to go back and explore when the American team first got involved the Scots thought they had pinpointed the area where the Blessing went down it was hoped that the Scottish sonar data combined with the American expertise would quickly lead to a fine let me know when you're ready shoot a pneumo but the shipwreck wasn't there that was the summer of 1993 now the team was back to square one they would have to do far more than recover the treasure they would have to find it first the next question is what's the gathers all existing sonar pictures of the river bottom commissioned two new surveys and began again to look for interesting shapes or anomalies the search would resume in the summer of 1994 terms of the magnetics area here on the Sun scan and yeah but in February of 94 a bit of serendipity comes their way at a press conference the Scottish and American partners announced that a Royal Navy vessel a mine hunter will help in the search you all know we conducted operations this summer in an attempt to locate the vessel in question here so hopefully this week with the help of the mine hunter and some of the sophisticated equipment that they have on board we'll have a chance to look into some of these anomalies that we located in the summer months and of course with a little bit of luck answer any questions you might have this collaboration couldn't be better on board the mine hunter a Swedish company is demonstrating a prototype ROV remotely operated vehicle this robot mini sub will join in the search for treasure the clipper team has chosen its two most promising targets to be investigated essentially this ship is involved in the same type of thing that we do which is to look for anomalies they look for minds we look for shipwrecks but essentially we do the same thing these people think the same way that we do we're in the hide-and-seek business the commander of the HMS cut is more is himself the member of the British royal family like Charles the first before him Prince Andrew bears the title Duke of York Andrew and the Coty's more crew gather was Barrie and the Swedish technicians to watch the video and sonar imagery the ROV sends back to the ship you can see why the diver couldn't find it once the first target turns out to be a modern anchor the ROV is directed to the second target that's that's its 1656 it's quite late on yes that's the second first yeah we think there was this possible [Music] I think we have a wreck and it's a very good location as well keep our fingers [Music] Royal Navy divers are sent to investigate [Music] but they come up empty the wintery force is not yet ready to reveal her valuable secret even to royalty [Music] in May of 1633 the royal banquet service of King Charles the first was readied for the journey to Scotland responsible for the hundreds of pieces of state silver and silver gilt was the king's cook or yeoman of the buttery Sir John carries such a post was a sign of royal favor and went to a high-ranking nobleman who is the honor went accountability if a piece of silver went missing fairies was responsible for its replacement if the wreck can be fined and the silver brought up for one thing it may be in wonderful condition because it's been down in the anaerobic silt and there hasn't been anything disturbing it we hope 300 more years but also it'll represent the only opportunity for us to open a window into the court of a very great heat connoisseur and collect her Charles the first may have been a bad ruler but he did have an eye for treasure he amassed one of the finest collections of art in Europe now if Charles couldn't have been a slightly lunatic country gentleman with some ample funds stocking up his stately home with pictures we'd loved him says thirty-day is one of the greatest benefactors Charles also commissioned works in gold and silver that reflected his sophisticated tastes there is no record of the personal treasures that accompanied the King to Scotland but there would have been many the conspicuous use of precious metals was a sign of social standing and at the top of the social heap sat the king in every aspect of the King's life gold and silver would glitter on his table of course he would be served in gold while those around him will be served in silver gilt he would drink from gold his washing equipment would be silver gold lace on his pillow a silver chamber port it was the way that the nobility to find themselves Charles the first was enjoying life in London he was not enthusiastic about the Scottish coronation years passed before a date was finally set July 10th 16:33 five years before the event Scotland began to spruce itself up though much poorer than the English the Scots would not disappoint their native son they almost be faced Scotland actually tell you the truth when this comes out when you read them the records of the period question themselves may be scanty regarding events in Scotland but they're not scanty when it comes to Iceland regarding repair work which cost money I have dozens and dozens of accounts for fixing woods waiting roids repairing bridges all thatch has been taken off and slitted so he couldn't see fast groups you know because it's my decease cons of Route country [Music] the Scots were hoping to their efforts would cause Charles to soften his oppressive policies concerning land ownership taxes and religion they plan to appeal to his Scottish nuts he wanted only to forget it from the moment the journey began Charles of the Scots were on a collision course [Music] it is the summer of 1994 the treasure hunt is back on the search area is a 2 square mile rectangle about half a mile offshore this area has been deduced from environmental and historical Clues such as local currents and winds where the dead bodies washed up reports that the sinking could be seen from land the Scottish and American team will work from a dive boat called Calypso to get down on conditions on the Firth of Forth or at divers night tidal currents run so swiftly that diving can only occur when the tide is slack a mere half-hour on either side of the high and low tides the water is cold and visibility it's very black the problem is is that we've got a lot of fishing done here in the Firth and there's been herring that's caught on various obstacles that come up off the bottom you have no sense of whether you're swimming into these nets or not you could be an arm's length away from the Empire State Building not had any idea that it was there at all you could also swim into the front door of the Empire State Building you meant even go up a set of stairs without having any idea that you've gone into it and then all of a sudden you realize that you're in something that you shouldn't be if it's that dark okay because of the dangers a number of safety measures are strictly follow a buoy attached to a piece of iron called a clump weight is dropped on each target creating a downline the diver uses this as a path to the bottom we clip this into the bottom and then we reel it out and hold on to this end and then we swim around the clump weight in a circle so that we cover the area most dives are to a depth of 90 to 130 feet divers can spend no more than 20 minutes on the bottom more time that these depths might cause decompression sickness hardly any light down there at all it's pretty much pitch black once you get down about 50 or 60 feet you lose all of your sunlight it gets pretty scary and you know you're about 50 or 60 feet on your way back up because you start seeing daylight again that's a good feeling it's not such a good feeling when you brush up against a lion's mane jellyfish this grotesque creature has tentacles up to 6 feet long its sting is painful and causes swelling fever and muscle spasms the Charles the first divers have been stung over and over as they search for the shipwreck you might want to investigate the bottom of that rock graduate on a good day the team can dive on four different targets more often it's to with every dives they try to expand their knowledge of the sea bed hoping always for signs of direct rock escapes with lots of shadows which is essentially what a shipwreck looks like on the sonar so yeah you got to check them out there's no other way to do it you have to say you know jump on them and give them what we call the blue dot we put a blue dot on our charts nothing there we spent today here we Dovan each of these blue dots today this is the airplane time every night the search team records that day's activities on their master chart and chooses targets for the next day the airplane because there's the rock yeah I think hunting is above all else a process of elimination requiring equal parts of method and madness we're going to there's a very specific blend of personality traits behind every success story Charley Burnham is the search technical director to be a successful treasure hunter you've got to have a sense of wonder about the past you've got to be able to convince other people that your treasure is real and it's there and they should invest their time and their money and maybe their lives in it and you've got to be incredibly persistent once you start looking for something you've got to be able to overcome adversity and you've got to be optimistic always about the future this is definitely a good target job and it's good some shadow and the day also has um it also has some scour marks it should be prioritized the treasure hunters are using a variety of 20th century tools as a bridge back to the 17th century one of these is the wreck finder because the search area is two square miles of featureless water and visibility below is so poor knowing where you are at all times is critical so Charlie invented the wreck finder a satellite positioning device attached to a laptop computer which displays where the searches are in relation to a target a treasure hunt or an archaeological investigation is an investigation into the past the interesting part about it to me is that it's always an investigation into the future as well because we're always looking for the latest way or a new way to detect the past so we're using the cutting-edge of the Machine age to go backward in time in that sense it's sort of time travel another important search tool is the magnetometer a highly sensitive underwater metal detects 17 2133 on the sensor or mag fish send signals topside to a printout device in Calypso's wheelhouse picked I'll go on the same box you got about 10 meters to go on to the target looks good let's go to the bag there's a head the magnetic hit that appears to jibe with the sonar anomaly leads the team to a very promising target in early September 1994 a shipwreck yeah I would see stuff that was it looked like it was providing like inside interior rigging Larry decides to go down himself and investigate I think it's the rack can you put that on you know what happens the wreck turns out to be a steamship from the 19th century it is added to a growing list of interesting disappointments [Music] the King's baggage trained it headed for Scotland in May of 16 33 was more than 50 wagons long and stretched back over 2 miles of road the royal party consisting of the king two bishops and over a dozen courtiers stopped at the castles of Dukes and Earls to sleep be fed and entertained while the king and his favorites were posited each night the less important noblemen Royal Guards and servants were lucky to have a roof over their heads travel anywhere in seventeenth-century is a nightmare if you travel by sea you're in danger of storms and shipwreck if you travel by land you're gonna be slowed down by mods blinded by dust and rained on for most the way if you're unlucky and so just getting an entourage from London up to Edinburgh as a colossal journey as I can army on the move you have to close it you have to feed it you have to clean it you have to deal ow sit and you have to get it there looking good and behaving well really costs in both money and patience Charles had been king for almost eight years his autocratic style was in full flow he had dismissed the English Parliament when it disagreed with him now he would try to bully the Presbyterian Scots England and Scotland were both Protestant countries but the Scots were strict fundamentalist so then the whole point of the church was it should be independent from the government itself answering only to God and there should be nothing distracts the mind from the Bible and from the preached word whereas at least other Protestants celebrated Christmas the skulls even abolished that Charles thought this austere form of worship was sacrilege he preferred the pomp and ceremony of high church a ritual the Scots feared Roman Catholicism the king was married to a Roman Catholic even worse Charles believed in the Divine Right of Kings that his will was God's bidding he really truly believed he was an icon a divine icon he believed that he was gifted by God to Great Britain to rule her correctly and anything he said a dead must be utterly correct [Music] the King's taste for elaborate religious ritual was much in evidence at the coronation on June 18th 16:33 to fight roads and surpluses of the bishops the crucifix before which they bound the anointment as Samuel didn't ideal it to be king though shall be honored and established King in this kingdom over the people when the land beloved God has given Rudy the puritanical Scots were aghast at these signs of po fishness this blasphemy enacted in a presbyterian church from the child's the crown glory and righteousness but the rights of God whose kingdom endureth forever amen in July of 1995 the treasure team is back in Scotland and hopes were high [Applause] computers oh yeah American poem Elias and his yo scan system have joined the search Houston is a breakthrough in data collection its sonar sensors can see objects both on and under the seafloor they not only sees it memorizes both the sonar images and their location I have a lot of confidence that we're gonna see this wreck with this equipment and there's a lot of experience here I think within the group knowing exactly what we're looking for the problems gonna be if that ship if that image that we're looking for is hiding in and around all of this very complicated geology it is hoped that EO scan will penetrate even the crevices of the river bottom vo scans sub-bottom sensor or trip fish looks straight down into the seabed then bounces a picture of buried objects back to onboard computers it's much like looking at a layer cake and cutting a slice through it looking at it from the side if there's something in that layer cake along that edge that you've just cut you'll see it the side scan fish which detects objects resting at atop the seafloor is towed behind the book well we've detected objects the size of a beer bottle in fact literally a beer bottle and we've done some of our searches we've detected 55-gallon drums quite easily shipwrecks ladders cans just about anything that's been thrown in the ocean is detectable we can get off Barry and Paul monitored the imagery in the hold Charlie navigates keeping a close eye on the topography of the seabed seeing the 10 meters plays a closer the sights can fish flies to the bottom the better the images but $30,000 worth of technology could become a worthless hunk of metal if it flies too low and hits a rock they say that's where they sit up and you get fish and you've got a little indentation you see that do you see anything under some other things do we have any mm the survey takes two full weeks but it produces an extremely comprehensive picture of the search area now all targets surface and buried past and present are displayed together with precise positions attached there are over 200 of them some have already been explored and eliminated approximately 45 a new and promising the new surface targets will be explored first as long as the weather cooperates the team will dive every six hours during daylight seven days a week [Music] when divers can't be in the water they will continue to study the bottle verifying data gathering new details every day that we go up there we really believe that we've got the wreck every target that we investigated you have to say to yourself this is it but you have to do that really go after the wreck with enthusiasm and then you know you go home you're depressed you know and you next day you come up with another target and ready to go again yeah you really have to be optimistic like every day has to be the day nothing the team has found in three summers work is older than late 18th century some 150 years after the Charles the first wreck [Music] the obvious targets have all been explored funds are running short and diving conditions are deteriorating as the autumn approaches a decision is made to move the expedition into a new phase for the first time in the five-year history of the search the treasure hunters will pierce the bottom of the first of four they will dig [Music] King Charles had been touring Scotland for almost a month since the coronation his last scheduled stop was at Falkland palace where he hosted a banquet on the evening of his arrival it was July the 9th the royal party was to stay for three nights but Charles was weary of Scotland weary of the road his wife was pregnant and he longed to return to her side to the order and refinement of English court life [Music] [Applause] [Music] that night Charles the first change desire generally one final time he would leave Falkland palace in the morning it was to be a costly swim while servants made ready the Royal baggage King Charles summoned two ships to carry himself his baggage and his entourage across the water from Bert Island to Leith port of it it's a picture of almost total chaos in a strange way he orders everything to move back to Stirling and across the Stirling Bridge and get to Edinburgh that way but he's going to take the more important items and more important people across the first the fourth the quick way be a bomb Thailand and all this in the rain the King's baggage kept coming and coming taxing the blessing of burnt islands beyond her capacity Sir John fairies The Omen of the buttery was charged with seeing that everything got on board whether the ferry was becoming dangerously overloaded or not the blessings owner must have seen clearly the potential for disaster but was powerless against the will of the king as the blessing grew heavy in the water the wind grew stronger and stronger [Music] the team has put their remaining resources into exploring the sub bottom they will work from a barge that has been custom fitted with a room a remote underwater excavator the Roo has an extensive support system but is itself fairly simple a Hutchison is president of global explorers group Roo is basically a big fan blade actually it works in principle very much like a household fan you turn a fan on and it draws the air in from one side and spits it out the other side and it's throughs doing the exact same thing except to use his water we pump water down to it to move fan blade and that draws in the seawater which sends it out in a column down towards the seabed the water column digs a hole in the seabed this is the first time a roo has been used to look for a shipwreck because the roux is expensive to operate only a few sub-bottom targets can be investigated choosing them takes on a certain urgency you know I was the Von Roxas top there working the search team members are exhausted they have been in Scotland for almost two months straight with no more than a couple of days on how many things like jumped out at originally going through it and you really felt were good targets [Music] and you have to make sure that where we're digging but there's something to dig into you know this areas here that are solid rock that's not rock I don't I don't think so there's a structure here that's these areas are all deep enough to hide a wreck it's right in the vector and I think what we do is we stick right to our original plan which was to work the sub bottom targets in the vector because God knows we've done all of side-scan targets you know for three years and have looked at a hundred side-scan targets now I think we have to totally trust the you know totally trust the sub-bottom and rely on it oh it's great it's a great looking target thank you so much that's it too big to approach the jetty the Man O'War dreadnought lay anchored outside the harbor awaiting the king the weather continued to worsen [Music] but a falling tide in a rising wind the blessing set sail for lease the Scottish crew and English passengers together numbered 35 should it be seen from the Dreadnought as she left the safety of Bert island heart she could be seen from the land as the first force called [Music] [Music] of the 33 drowned only two bodies washed ashore one of them who is Sir John ferries the rest who had never seen again nor was the treasure [Music] it is late on the fourth day of the five allotted for digging in the morning divers will go down one last time [Music] we win in the hall or I thought was a cop Jack's SCH and split [Music] to the mascara droned outside deserves any debris at Kauai to cover all this a shell but there was a good sky if anything more than there would have been blasted out and would have been on the sky I would have seen anything it's kripak radius around the whole sauce right um you could still put your hand in the bottom little ball not in not in the pit no one outside of it compares with yourself dystonia was the first the sinking presented a thorny problem the King Scotty subjects together this board sinking was an act of God and punishment to the king for holding Episcopalian services in Presbyterian churches the King was forced to counter the claim of the Scottish clergy that God had intervened and punished him by suggesting to the whole of Britain that it was sinking and the tragedy and loss of life was the work of what she's 16 witches were rounded up in the English county of Lancashire they were charged with doing the devil's work and then the whole incident was pushed up an embarrassment to be put to rest as quickly as possible the lost treasure was soon forgotten but Charles behaviour to his countrymen still rankled after 1633 and they actually got a close look at him they realized they had a king who was going to have to be corrected somehow by force if necessary after 1653 the rebellion of the Scots which occurred and swept away Charles of three Kingdom is in the end was only a matter of time unless Charles reformed himself completely and that's the last thing he was gonna do six years after the coronation journey Charles tried to raise an army against his country but he reconvened Parliament which refused to help him then itself declared war on the king the bloody civil war lasted seven years it ended in the Kings defeat and arrest [Music] Charles the first was the only British monarch ever to be put to death by his own people hey rocky search for the lost treasure of Charles the first is over for this year Barry Clifford clay Hutchison Charlie Burnham and Paula Mathias have not found the treasure yeah they know in their hearts it is there waiting hidden how about a toast you guys it's been a long summer yeah I just wanted to thank everybody and I think we had you know it was a it was a very successful season you know you don't find these things overnight and I think like Paul said earlier today you know we somewhere on our records you know the blessing of burnt Island is hiding and it's just a matter of time you know until we find it so absolutely thank you very much I will go find it you'll find him I'm gonna find it there's no question about that I mean that was there until finding no pain is not a matter [Music] coming up right now as Discovery Sunday continues a great Spanish vessel the San Diego goes down in 1600 and withered 350 souls and all record of his four hundred year old story why was a merchant ship engaged in battle what was its priceless cargo and why did it sink so quickly take the plunge as modern science goes in search of the missing pieces the treasure of San Diego right now as discovery Sunday continues every Sunday

Channel: Nowhere Man

Views: 255,021

Rating: 4.5672517 out of 5

Keywords: Shipwrecks, King Charles, Charles I, English Civil War, Lost Treasure

Id: g1rMMj16cEA

Length: 45min 19sec (2719 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 11 2017