The captain and many crew members were rescued by its sister ship, the Dover Merchant, but the treasure was lost. So the captain of the Merchant Royal agreed to add that gold to his ship and deliver it to the soldiers (for a fee, of course).īut on September 23, 1641, 30 miles off the coast of Cornwall, England, the ship ran into a storm and sank.

The Merchant Royal Sunk Off the Coast of EnglandĪfter completing its trading in the West Indies, the Merchant Royal stopped in Cadiz, Spain, where it learned that a Spanish ship had caught fire and couldn’t deliver its treasure to the soldiers waiting in Belgium. However… this is not the ship from Outer Banks. “News of this sinking soon spread throughout Europe and it had an immediate effect, a profound effect on the traders and bankers and the insurers and that’s not even talking about the 30,000 Spanish soldiers in this payday,” said Schmidt, referring to the soldiers who were in Flanders, Belgium, and were to be paid with the treasure from the Merchant Royal. Schmidt says that amounts to over $2 billion in today’s money, making it one of the most valuable shipwrecks in the world. It sunk carrying 100,000 pounds of gold, 400 bars of Mexican silver, and 500,000 pieces of eight and other coins, according to History Collection. Schmidt, the Merchant Royal (or Royal Merchant, as it was also known) was a real British commercial ship that did trading in the West Indies. According to NPR Chicago’s 2014 interview with historian John R.

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