Five shipwrecks found in Balaklava Bay in the Black Sea may include that of the long-sought-after frigate Prince, one of a flotilla of 34 British vessels that sank in November 1854.
The ship was supposed to have been carrying money to pay allied troops besieging Sevastapol during the Crimean War, and the many rumours about the vessel included that it was carrying “30 barrels of gold”.
The entire flotilla was wrecked during a severe storm. The ships were driven onto rocks while trying to negotiate the narrow entrance to Balaklava Bay and reach the shelter of its harbour, claiming 500 lives of those aboard.
Now archaeologists say that the wrecks of five ships have been located at a depth of 60m about a kilometre from the harbour in Yevpatoria in the eastern part of Russian-annexed Crimea. They were found during waterfront reconstruction work.
Three of the ships carried insignia indicating that they were British, and the other two are thought likely to be French. Analysis has indicated that storm rather than battle damage was likely to have caused their sinking.
Prince was a three-masted iron steamship, and local and international divers have long tried to locate the vessel that became known as the “Black Sea Prince”, though they were invariably defeated by the considerable depth of water at the entrance to the bay.
There are now plans to recover and display artefacts found on the wrecks.
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10-Dec-16
