Now that the summer is finally here my thoughts have been turning to the sea.
Not so much to the prospect of dipping my toes in it, but to all the weird and wonderful things that are hidden there.
Trains, for instance.
Colin Eastman found two of these off the coast of Cornwall. But they were thirty-five feet long and had wheels six and a half feet high. They were twice as large as the tank engines that he was trying to find – engines that had been sunk en route to France in World War 1. What are the chances of looking for two specific steam engines under the sea and finding two completely different ones? Better than you might think, actually, because according to Railway Magazine there are no fewer than three hundred steam engines down there, sunk when their transporting ships were struck by bombs, torpedoes or storms.
Somebody else who has made a find is Stuart Bacon. He has been looking for something for thirty-five years. It is St John’s Church.
Now you may think that a thirteenth century church should not be so very hard to spot, especially when it is known to be in Suffolk. Not only that but it is known to be in the coastal village of Dunwich. The difficulty arises because most of Dunwich is now under the sea.
Natural disaster
In the thirteenth century Dunwich had a population of three thousand. It was a prosperous ship-building port and so important was it to the defence of the realm that in 1205 five Royal Galleons were moored there, the same number as in the Port of London. But its fortunes took a decisive turn for the worse on January 14th 1328. A high wind drove the sea against a spit of land called the Kings Holme, shifting the shingle and blocking the entrance to Dunwich harbour. Despite the best efforts the harbour was never reopened and many of the inhabitants and much of the trade moved along the coast to Walberswick, leaving Dunwich to crumble into the sea.
In the fourteenth century coastal erosion claimed four hundred houses, two churches – there had originally been six - shops and windmills and in 1540 St John’s finally slid down the cliffs to its watery grave. There it lay undisturbed until Stuart Bacon came along.
Archaeologists and historians may be interested in trains and churches, but sub-sea treasure hunters are interested in ships. Over the centuries thousands of ships have sunk.
Off the coast of Spain alone there are said to be seven hundred shipwrecks containing more gold and silver than lies in the vaults of the Bank of Spain. This has provoked a recent spat between Spain and the Nasdaq-listed Odyssey Marine Explorations which relieved the sunken ‘Black Swan’ of its cargoes and was apprehended before it could make its way back to the USA.
‘Spanish archaeologists’, a Government official said, ‘do not see the goods on board a wreck as something to make money out of. We don't talk in terms of treasure. We are interested in research and what research can tell us about the past.’
‘It is all very well that Spain is talking about protecting its sunken treasures,’ retorted one of the founders of Odyssey, ‘but if it doesn't do anything about them, they will just remain at the bottom of the ocean, where they are likely to be destroyed.’
Well, maybe. But what interests me is not sunken treasure, or even the fabled lost City of Atlantis. What does interest me is the industrial potential of the oceans, and this is increasingly of interest also to governments and to business.
Take Japan for example. In the East China Sea it is looking for what it calls the ‘vitamins of industry’, those rare metals without which its world-beating electronics industry could not function.
Some experts believe that metals such as gallium, germanium or indium could be found within huge black sub-marine boulders. Others say they could contain copper and zinc. If true these could release Japan from its dependency upon China for its supply of natural resource raw materials.
This is just one example of the interest in what may lie beneath the sea – interest that has been heightened by the boom in metal prices. I have been finding out what might be down there; who owns it; and whether it could provide a jackpot for adventurous shareholders. For all the answers, read the August issue of Red Hot Penny Shares.
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Regards,
Tom Bulford
for The Penny Sleuth
