The 'La Vierge du Bon Port ' One of the richest French shipwrecks never found.

[Crow]

Getting back to topic any such move on la Vierge du Bon Port will be met from opposition from France even if not exactly in thier territorial waters.

Here is an example of another ship wreck and 100 gold bars. And familiar person behind policing the artifacts found many years ago.

And yes Michel L’Hour, the former chief of France’s Underwater Archaeology Research Department was on the case.

gold ingots

People just do not know how to keep their mouth shut.

That is why you have be very selective on who take YOU on board for project. To day we have the snap chat tick tock generation so dumb they would be robbing a bank and filming themselves as they do it?

Crow

​

 

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[Crow]

Phillip Sayers and Damien Sanders has don extensive research on the la Vierge du Bon Port.

They wrote a book the French Indiamen la Vierge du Bon Port sunk off the west coast of Guernsey in 1666.

The French Eastindiaman La Vierge du Bon Port was sunk off the west coast of Guernsey in 1666 as it was returning from Madagascar with a cargo of gold and precious gems following a sea battle with the Royal Navy ship, HMS Orange. The wreck has never been discovered.

Two marine archaeologists have researched the contemporary French and British accounts of the battle to conclude her most likely resting place

Crow

 

[releventchair]

West side looking ugly.
Reefs. Rocks. Currents /hydraulics.
East side more tame. Less giant strainer effect.

Would towable devices work? R.O.V.'s. Looks dicey. But how dicey? Odds wise.

 

[Crow]

West side looking ugly.
Reefs. Rocks. Currents /hydraulics.
East side more tame. Less giant strainer effect.

Would towable devices work? R.O.V.'s. Looks dicey. But how dicey? Odds wise.

Good point!

I cannot put odds on it. other than few silent hail Marys! An old treasure hunter once told me a faint heart never F ----- a thing.

Currents and high tidal surges remains a problem. the French ship may not have the capacity to stay over wreck sight with out dropping anchor.

There is cheap method for a vessel that size 4 44 gal drums full of concrete dropped onto the sea floor with a line with a line and bouy. having found around the wreck site and vessel anchors off the bouy's. but that is only for keeping over wreck site when its identified.

( Years ago they did similar with larger ship to keep on position with Nigrara shipwreck WW2) A chance to see some of the old skills of the old salvors still relevant today?

In perfect world you have vessel with computer controlled self positioning system.

With the ROV in the exploration of magnetic anomaly targets. Their size and compactness they with still have to be tethered to the mother ship the small vessel. During exploration stage the vessel will drifting up current from the magnetic anomaly targets.

It must be remembered the ROV is only going to be used at selected targets. A bigger problem would viability. and battery life if Rov using more power against the current. It is the current hate of all rove operators is battery life and another factor the capacity of the small vessel to be able to recharge batteries.

Its a balancing act of being cost effect and practical at the same time.

Crow

 

[Crow]

Another thing manufacturers claim the world with their product until get get it out in field in real world situation and discover it a load of crap.

Another factor to consider.

Crow

 

[M. A. Nazario]

Thank you for all your research Crow, it's heartening to hear about what is still out there! Hopefully, if anyone does find, they learn to keep their mouth shut and not broadcast it to everyone about how rich they think they now are.

 

[Crow]

Thank you for all your research Crow, it's heartening to hear about what is still out there! Hopefully, if anyone does find, they learn to keep their mouth shut and not broadcast it to everyone about how rich they think they now are.

Ah its human failing people talk.

Crow

 

[Crow]

In the case of the La Vierge du Bon Port. It cannot be done by stealth. it is in high traffic area. It has to be a project of international cooperation between France and Uk, and we know politics will raise its ugly head. So, we have next to Buckly's chance to salvage the wreck.

One point though they cannot claim it was warship as it belonged to a private company. So, they cannot use the international agreement of military wrecks for national sovereignty.
The French East India Company cannot claim the wreck as the French East India Company was finally liquidated in 1794.


Crow

 

[Smithbrown]

I know the Dutch government are the "inheritors" of the VOC wrecks; are you sure the French government can't claim the old possessions of the French East India Company? Surely they took over their colonies, so possibly the physical remains as well.

 

[treasurediver]

The East India Company - Homepage

Explorers Since 1600, The East India Company delivers indulgent luxury hampers, teas, coffees, chocolates, biscuits and other fine foods alongside limited edition gold and silver coin collections. Visit us today and discover the world with us.

www.theeastindiacompany.com

How about the East India Company? Could they claim the shipwrecks of the EIC?

 

[Crow]

The East India Company - Homepage

Explorers Since 1600, The East India Company delivers indulgent luxury hampers, teas, coffees, chocolates, biscuits and other fine foods alongside limited edition gold and silver coin collections. Visit us today and discover the world with us.

www.theeastindiacompany.com

How about the East India Company? Could they claim the shipwrecks of the EIC?

Gidday treasurediver

Not a chance in hell. They was dissolved in 1874. They never owned the ships in the trade. Not in the 19th century at least. Any present day company today using same name of dissolved company 1874 as dating back to 1600 is false. The name does date back to 1600 but the present company legal entity does not.

The vessels was owned by private ship owners and cargo contents was insured in later vessels of company through Lloyds. a clearing house where a group of insurance companies would insure a vessel. Most of those shipping companies and marine insurance and cargo insurance companies do not exist today. Lloyds is insurance broker clearing house. Some insurance companies if they have paid out on the loss of vessel could have a claim. Providing they can prove they was the insurer and what cargo was insured. If they still exist of course.

In the aftermath of the Indian rebellion of 1857 and under the provisions of the Government of India act, the British Government nationalized the company. Yet is was done very diferently than the Dutch with VOC.

The British government took over its Indian possessions, its administrative powers and machinery, and its armed forces.
The company had already divested itself of its commercial trading assets in India in favour of the UK government in 1833, with the latter assuming the debts and obligations of the company, which were to be serviced and paid from tax revenue raised in India.

In return, the shareholders voted to accept an annual dividend of 10.5%, guaranteed for forty years, likewise to be funded from India, with a final pay-off to redeem outstanding shares. The debt obligations continued beyond dissolution and were only extinguished by the UK government during the Second World War.

The company remained in existence in vestigial form, continuing to manage the tea trade on behalf of the British Government (and the supply of Saint Helena) until the East Indian Stock Dividend Act redemption in 1873. came into effect, on 1 January 1874. This act provided for the formal dissolution of the company on 1 June 1874, after a final dividend payment and the commutation or redemption of its stock.

Shipwrecks belonging to the East India company of before 1833 could be subject by claims of ownership from the Crown?

After 1833 Ships and cargo due to nationalisation was owned by various seperate stake holder companies.

Crow

 

[Crow]

I know the Dutch government are the "inheritors" of the VOC wrecks; are you sure the French government can't claim the old possessions of the French East India Company? Surely they took over their colonies, so possibly the physical remains as well.

VOC was dissolved and nationalized as the Dutch East indies. So yes the Dutch government are the successors of company as it was nationalized

The Compagnie Française des Indes Orientales.and on 3 April 1790 the monopoly was abolished by an act of the new French Assembly which enthusiastically declared that the lucrative Far Eastern trade would henceforth be "thrown open to all Frenchmen" The company, accustomed neither to competition nor official disfavor, fell into steady decline and was finally liquidated in 1794.

Liquidated not nationalized. So the French government has a very weak claim to ownership of what was in essence a private company.

Even as the company was headed consciously toward extinction, it became embroiled in its most infamous scandal. The Committee of public Safety. had banned all joint-stock companies on 24 August 1793, and specifically seized the assets and papers of the East India Company.

While its liquidation proceedings were being set up, directors of the company bribed various senior state officials to allow the company to carry out its own liquidation, rather than be supervised by the government.

Thus in no way the French government can be a successor to private liquidated company.

Crow

 

[releventchair]

The Dutch had created a near enough monopoly on the spice trade ; near complete but starting downhill around the era of the Treaty of Breda (1667.) From humble beginning of thier ships being go to transportation on the water to violent murder to take hold and secure Nutmeg growing in/on the Bandas islands.
Between then and the end of the seventeen hundreds bankruptcy of the Dutch East Indie Company was a slope.
Multiple factors broke that monopoly.

run was a prize. Or so it was thought.
Goofy terrain , little island. But the principle mattered. Till it no longer did...

Main Blog > The Nutmeg Wars

The Nutmeg Wars​

Miss Cellania • Monday, August 6, 2012 at 5:15 AM
The following is an article from Uncle John's Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader.

In the 17th century, all Europe was mad to have the little brown nut from Indonesia- nutmeg. Especially the Dutch, who monopolized its cultivation and, in doing so, built their tiny nation into one of the wealthiest trading powers on the planet.

BACKGROUND

Spices have been used by human beings for millennia for food preparation and preservation, medicine, and even embalming. But until modern times they were largely an Asian commodity, and controlling their flow to the spice-obsessed West meant power and fortune for the middleman. Over the centuries, these hugely successful merchants were the Phoenicians, Persians, Arabs, and later, Venetians.

Many of the great European explorations of the 15th century were driven by the need to bypass the Arab and Venetian monopoly. Crying, "For Christ and spices," the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama shocked the Arab world when he sailed around Africa's Cape of Good Hope in 1498 and showed up in the spice markets of India. It marked the beginning of the decline of Arab dominance and the rise of European power. For the next 100 years, as Spain and Portugal fought for control of the spice trade, the tiny countries of England and the Netherlands looked on in envy, waiting for their chance to get a piece of the action. It came first for the Dutch.

THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY

Always in danger of being overwhelmed by their much larger neighbor, Spain, the Portuguese began subcontracting their spice distribution to Dutch traders. Profits began to flow into Amsterdam, and the Dutch commercial fleet swiftly grew into one of the largest in the world. The Dutch quietly gained control of most of the shipping and trading of spices in Northern Europe. Then in 1580, Portugal fell under Spanish rule and the sweet deal for Dutch traders was over. As prices for pepper, nutmeg, and other spices soared across Europe, the Dutch found themselves locked out of the market. They decided to fight back.

In 1602 Dutch merchants founded the VOC -the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, better known as the Dutch East India Company. Other trading nations had formed cooperative associations like it but none were more successful than the Dutch. By 1617 the VOC was the richest commercial operation in the world. The company had 50,000 employees worldwide, with a private army of 30,000 men and a fleet of 200 ships. Yet even with that huge overhead, the VOC gave its shareholders an eye-popping annual dividend of 40% of their investments. How'd they do it? With sheer ruthlessness... and nutmeg.

MUST-HAVE

By the time the VOC was formed, nutmeg was already the favored spice in Europe. Aside from adding flavor to food and drinks, its aromatic qualities worked wonders to disguise the stench of decay in poorly preserved meats, always a problem in the days before refrigeration.

Then the plague years of the 17th century came. Thousands were dying across Europe, and doctors were desperate for a way to stop the spread of the disease. They decided nutmeg held the cure. Ladies carried nutmeg sachets around their necks to breathe through and avoid the pestilence of the air. Men added nutmeg to their snuff and inhaled it. Everybody wanted it, and many will willing to spare no expense to have it. Ten pounds of nutmeg cost one English penny at its Asian source, but had a London street value of 2 pounds, 10 shillings -68,000 times its original cost. The only problem was the short supply. And that's where the Dutch found their opportunity.

BRUTAL RULERS

Why was nutmeg so rare? The tree grew in only one place in the world: the Banda Islands of Indonesia. A tiny archipelago rising only a few meters above sea level, the islands were ruled by sultans who insisted on maintaining a neutral trading policy with foreign powers. This allowed them to avoid the presence of Portuguese or Spanish garrisons on their soil, but it also left them unprotected from other invaders.



In 1621 the Dutch swept in and took over. Once securely in control of the Bandas, the Dutch went to work protecting their new "investment." First they preempted any resistance by the islanders by executing every male over the age of 15. Village leaders were beheaded and their heads displayed on poles to discourage any rebels who might have survived. Within 15 years, the brutal regime reduced the Bandanese population from 15,000 to 600. Next the Dutch concentrated all nutmeg production into a few easily guarded areas, uprooting a destroying any trees outside the plantation zones. Anyone caught growing a nutmeg seedling or carrying seeds without the proper authority was put to death. In addition, all exported nutmeg seeds were drenched with lime to make sure there was no chance a fertile nut would find its way off the islands.

I'LL TAKE MANHATTAN

The Dutch had their monopoly ...almost. One of the Banda Islands, called Run, was under control of the British. The little sliver of land (a fishing boat could only make landfall at high tide) was one of England's first colonial outposts, dating to 1603. The Dutch attacked it in force in 1616, but it would take four years for them to finally defeat the combined British-Bandanese resistance.



But the English still didn't give up; they continued to press their claim to the island through two Anglo-Dutch wars. The battles exhausted both sides, leading to a compromise settlement, the Treaty of Breda, in 1667 -and one of history's greatest ironies. Intent on securing their hold over every nutmeg island in Southeast Asia, the Dutch offered a trade: if the British would give them Run, they would in turn give Britain a far-away, much less valuable island that the British had already occupied illegally since 1664. The British agreed. That other island: Manhattan, which is how New Amsterdam became New York.

MONOPOLY OVER

The Dutch now had complete control over the nutmeg trade. A happy ending for Holland? Hardly. By the end of the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company was bankrupt. Constant wars with rival powers, rebellion from the islanders, and just plain bad luck -some might say bad karma- eventually broke the back of the Dutch spice cartel.

Strike 1: In 1770 a Frenchman named Pierre Poivre ("Peter Pepper") successfully smuggled nutmeg plants to safety in Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa, where they were subsequently exported to the Caribbean. The plants thrived on the islands, especially Grenada.

Strike 2: In 1778 a volcanic eruption in the Banda region caused a tsunami that wiped out half the nutmeg groves.

Strike 3:In 1809 the English returned to Indonesia and seized the Banda Islands by force. They returned the islands to the Dutch in 1817, but not before transplanting hundreds of nutmeg seedlings to plantations in India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Singapore. The Dutch were out; the nutmeg monopoly was over. While they would go on to have success trading steel and coal (not to mention tulips), the Netherlands declined as a colonial power, and they never again dominated European commerce.

The Nutmeg Wars

The following is an article from Uncle John's Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader. In the 17th century, all Europe was mad to have the little brown nut from Indonesia- nutmeg. Especially the Dutch, who monopolized its cultivation and, in doing so, built their tiny nation into one of the...

www.neatorama.com

 

[treasurediver]

In 1621 the Dutch swept in and took over. Once securely in control of the Bandas, the Dutch went to work protecting their new "investment." First they preempted any resistance by the islanders by executing every male over the age of 15. Village leaders were beheaded and their heads displayed on poles to discourage any rebels who might have survived. Within 15 years, the brutal regime reduced the Bandanese population from 15,000 to 600. Next the Dutch concentrated all nutmeg production into a few easily guarded areas, uprooting a destroying any trees outside the plantation zones. Anyone caught growing a nutmeg seedling or carrying seeds without the proper authority was put to death. In addition, all exported nutmeg seeds were drenched with lime to make sure there was no chance a fertile nut would find its way off the islands.

What a story!!!
The "civilized" world against the "savage" world.
Has the world changed?

 

[treasurediver]

Gidday treasurediver

Not a chance in hell. They was dissolved in 1874. They never owned the ships in the trade. Not in the 19th century at least. Any present day company today using same name of dissolved company 1874 as dating back to 1600 is false. The name does date back to 1600 but the present company legal entity does not.

The vessels was owned by private ship owners and cargo contents was insured in later vessels of company through Lloyds. a clearing house where a group of insurance companies would insure a vessel. Most of those shipping companies and marine insurance and cargo insurance companies do not exist today. Lloyds is insurance broker clearing house. Some insurance companies if they have paid out on the loss of vessel could have a claim. Providing they can prove they was the insurer and what cargo was insured. If they still exist of course.

In the aftermath of the Indian rebellion of 1857 and under the provisions of the Government of India act, the British Government nationalized the company. Yet is was done very diferently than the Dutch with VOC.

The British government took over its Indian possessions, its administrative powers and machinery, and its armed forces.
The company had already divested itself of its commercial trading assets in India in favour of the UK government in 1833, with the latter assuming the debts and obligations of the company, which were to be serviced and paid from tax revenue raised in India.

In return, the shareholders voted to accept an annual dividend of 10.5%, guaranteed for forty years, likewise to be funded from India, with a final pay-off to redeem outstanding shares. The debt obligations continued beyond dissolution and were only extinguished by the UK government during the Second World War.

The company remained in existence in vestigial form, continuing to manage the tea trade on behalf of the British Government (and the supply of Saint Helena) until the East Indian Stock Dividend Act redemption in 1873. came into effect, on 1 January 1874. This act provided for the formal dissolution of the company on 1 June 1874, after a final dividend payment and the commutation or redemption of its stock.

Shipwrecks belonging to the East India company of before 1833 could be subject by claims of ownership from the Crown?

After 1833 Ships and cargo due to nationalisation was owned by various seperate stake holder companies.

Crow

Crow, thank you for the interesting and detailed information.

Here is one more link to the modern EIC company. They are also minting and selling coins. https://collections.theeastindiacompany.com/
It makes me dream about the "Old EIC" shipwrecks with many hundreds of thousands of silver coins, still resting on the bottom of the oceans.

 

[Crow]

What a story!!!
The "civilized" world against the "savage" world.
Has the world changed?

We once had kings and queens running the show the flag has changed but the song is the same amigo you still have wolves and you still have the sheep.

Crow