Treasures of the deep bring £10,000

[Neil]

BBC Wales 29th April 2000

A treasure trove of artefacts recovered from ship wrecks off the Welsh coast has been auctioned off in west Wales.
The Swansea-based Adventurous Divers' Club has spent the last year exploring the wrecks of 14 ships which sank off the Gower and Pembrokeshire coasts. In order to pay for their expeditions, many of the items discovered on dives were auctioned off at the Pembrokeshire Shipwreck Auction 2000.

The auction at Pembrokeshire Motor Museum has attracted significant interest and raised £10,000.

Items recovered from the wrecks include rings, a strongbox full of coins and china plates with the names of shipping lines.

In all, 85 artefacts from 14 shipwrecks went under the auctioneer's hammer. The event is the biggest shipwreck auction that any sub-aqua club in the UK has ever organised.

Enquires about the auction were received from the USA, Canada, Holland and Agentina. Among the items up for sale were artefacts from the SS Hematite from Glasgow, which disappeared on 5 January, 1936.

The ship was reported lying about two miles off Whitesands Bay, near St. David's Head. But in fact she had drifted off the rocks and sank in the middle of St. Bride's Bay, about five mile away.

Other items sold included a number of full beer bottles recovered from the Loch Shiel, wrecked 1896, on Thorn Island, Milford Haven.

For the curious coin collector, the divers recovered a strongbox from the MV Lucy, which sank in 1967.

Mark Scowcroft and Paul Edwards pictured below with decanters from the Nimrod