Famous shipwreck coins sell for over £6,000 at Harborough auction

A collection of coins from historic shipwrecks more than doubled its estimated hammer price of up to £3,000, selling for over £6,400.

The specialist auction at Gildings Auctioneers in Market Harborough featured 51 coins in four lots, grouped in the wrecks they were recovered from, ranging from 1686 to 1806.

An Isles of Scilly-based diver who was part of the team that recovered some of the coins from shipwrecks around the Isles of Scilly, in the 1970s, was among the successful bidders. As the finders of the coins, the divers were officially named as ‘salvors in possession’, having originally sold the coins at auction in 1975.

The standout lot in the auction was 17 coins from the Hollandia, which was wrecked on the Isles of Scilly’s Gunner Rock in 1743, resulting in the loss of 276 crew and passengers. The coins from this wreck, which included Dutch ducaton coins and Mexican pillar reales, or ‘pieces of eight’, sold for £2,700 against an estimate of up to £1,250.

Some 20 coins from HMS Association, which was wrecked on Scilly’s notorious Western Rocks in 1707 after serving the capture of Gibraltar, sold for £2,300 after being estimated between £1,000 and £1,500. A public outcry followed the fleet’s total loss of over 2,000 men, due to a catastrophic navigational error under the command of Sir Cloudesley Shovell. The disaster led to the £20,000 Longitude Prize, offered by the Government, to find an accurate way of measuring longitude – used by sailors to determine a ship’s position. The prize eventually resulted in the invention of the marine chronometer in 1759.

Eight coins from HMS Athenienne realised £850 against an estimate of up to £600. This 66-gun ship was lost on Esquerques Rocks off the Italian island of Sicily in 1806, resulting in the loss of 347 crew members, including the captain, Robert Raynsford.

The final group of coins, which was estimated between £80 and £120, sold for £380. It contained four coins from three different shipwrecks. The Princess Maria was lost off the Isles of Scilly in 1686, the De Liefde was wrecked off the Shetland Isles in 1711 and HMS Sprightly was lost on Hanois Bank off Guernsey in 1777.

Gildings director Will Gilding said: “These very special coins attracted bids from as far afield as California and Florida as well as here in the UK including Shetland and the Isles of Scilly.

“However, all of them found a home in the UK and it was a surprising but fitting twist in the tale to discover that our auction was able to reunite some of them with one of the pioneering underwater explorers who originally found them at the bottom of the sea during an era of unprecedented advances in diving technology, which enabled the exploration of wrecks that had lain undisturbed for 300 years.”

Visit www.gildings.co.uk for information on valuation and auctions.