The mythical gold of the "Black Prince" sunken in the Crimea: why it was not possible to find untold riches. "Black Prince"

The shadow of the legendary "Black Prince" has risen more than once from the pages of Russian literature. A.I. wrote about the Black Prince. Kuprin, S.N. Sergeev; Tsensky, M. Zoshchenko, E.V. Tarle, T. Bobritsky and many other writers.

…Back to top Crimean War The British government chartered more than two hundred merchant ships owned by private companies to transport troops and ammunition to the Crimea. Among them was the sail-propeller frigate "Prince". On November 8, 1854, together with other English ships, he arrived at the outer Balaklava raid. Five days later, a southeast hurricane of unprecedented strength swept over the Crimean peninsula. Thirty-four ships perished on the coastal cliffs of Balaklava Bay. This fate befell the "Prince".

What was on board? The Illustrated London News wrote on December 16, 1854: “Among the goods accepted by the Prince were things: 36,700 pairs of woolen socks, 53,000 woolen shirts, 2,500 sentinel sheepskin coats, 16,000 sheets, 3,750 blankets. In addition, you can still name the number of sleeping bags - 150,000 pieces, woolen shirts - 100,000, flannel pants - 90,000 pairs, about 40,000 blankets and 40,000 waterproof hats, 40,000 fur coats and 120,000 pairs of boots.

The war had not yet ended, and rumors had already spread around the world that the English steam frigate Black Prince had died off the coast of Crimea with a cargo of gold intended to pay salaries to the troops. The ship in question was never called the Black Prince. The name of this vessel, from the moment it was launched on the River Thames at Blackwall in 1853, has been "Prince". Why the ship began to be called the "Black Prince" is hard to say. Perhaps the tireless hunters for his gold or the English soldiers who did not receive another monetary allowance are to blame for the romantic epithet "black"?

Almost immediately after the conclusion of peace, the search for the remains of the "Black Prince" began. The ship was searched equally unsuccessfully by Italians, Americans, Norwegians, Germans. The primitive diving technique of those times did not allow one to go deep enough.

In 1875, when a diving suit had already been created, a large joint-stock company with large capital was established in France. French divers searched the bottom of the Balaklava Bay and all the approaches to it. More than ten sunken ships were found, but the Black Prince was not among them. The work was carried out at a depth that was huge for the end of the last century - almost 40 sazhens. But even the strongest and most enduring divers could only be under water for a few minutes ...

Gradually, legends began to spread about the "Black Prince". The value of the gold that sank with the ship rose to sixty million francs.

"Our Shipping" wrote in 1897: "Prince Regent", a huge ship of the English fleet, was carrying from England a significant amount of silver coin and 200,000 pounds sterling in gold to pay salaries to English troops in the Crimea ... The money sent on this ship was packed in barrels, which is why they must remain intact ... "

In 1896, the Russian inventor Plastunov took up the search. But he was not lucky either.
The Italians were the most patient. The inventor of the deep-sea suit, Giuseppe Rastucci, led an expedition in 1901. A few weeks after the start of work, he managed to find the iron hull of a large ship. Italian divers raised from the bottom a metal box with lead bullets, a spyglass, a rifle, an anchor, pieces of iron and wood. But… not a single coin. In the spring of 1903, the Italians left Balaklava, only to return to the search site two years later. This time, in a completely different place, they found another iron ship. No one still knows if it was the Black Prince or some other ship. Again no gold was found.

However, the idea of a fabulous treasure haunted many inventors, divers, and engineers. The Minister of Trade and Industry of Russia was inundated with letters with proposals to raise the gold of the Black Prince. And again the Italian divers dived in the Balaklava roadstead, and again to no avail. In the end, the government of tsarist Russia began to refuse both its own and foreign gold diggers, formally referring to the fact that work near the bay hampered the activities of the Black Sea squadron in the Sevastopol region. Soon First World War stopped the hype around the "Black Prince".
In 1922, an amateur diver from Balaklava took out several gold coins from the bottom of the sea at the entrance to the bay. So the world became interested in the "Black Prince" again. Showered proposals one another fantastic. One inventor from Feodosia claimed that the "Black Prince" must lie at the bottom in the bay itself. And if so, all you need to do is block the entrance to the bay with a dam, pump out the water and take the gold from the ship.

In 1923, naval engineer V.S. Yazykov came to the OGPU and said that since 1908 he had studied in detail the circumstances of the death of the English squadron in a storm on November 14, 1854, and that he was ready to immediately begin work on raising the jewels. He reinforced his enthusiasm with a thick folder of documents on the Black Prince. In March of the same year, it was decided to organize an expedition. It was named EPRON - Special Purpose Underwater Expedition. A few weeks later, EPRON began preparatory work. Soviet engineer E.G. Danilenko created a deep-sea apparatus, which made it possible to inspect the seabed at a depth of 80 sazhens. The device had a "mechanical arm" and was equipped with a searchlight, a telephone and an emergency lift system in the event of a cable break. The crew of the device consisted of three people, the air was supplied through a rubber flexible hose.

While the deep-sea vehicle E.G. Danilenko, EPRON specialists tracked down and carefully interviewed the old residents of Balaklava - eyewitnesses of the storm on November 14, 1854. But none of them could indicate the exact place of the death of the "Prince". As usual, their testimonies were extremely contradictory.

Finally, the minesweepers made measurements of the depths, and the entire alleged area of \u200b\u200bthe death of the "Prince" was divided into squares by milestones. In the first days of September 1923, they began to examine the underwater rocks west of the entrance to the bay. Every day, a small boat of the "bolinder" type lowered Danilenko's apparatus to examine the next square. Lots of debris found wooden ships: masts, yardarms, pieces of frames, beams and sides, heavily worn by a marine worm, overgrown with shells. It was thought that finding the "Prince" among these wreckage was not particularly difficult: in the study of the engineer Yazykov, it appeared that the "Prince" was the only iron ship among the dead.

The spring, summer and autumn of 1924 passed. But the "Prince" was never found.

On the morning of October 17, one of Pavlovsky's students discovered on seabed not far from the shore, an iron box of a strange shape sticking out of the ground. He tried to put a sling under it, but to no avail. Interested in the find, Pavlovsky invited experienced divers. Soon the box was raised to the surface: it was all rusted antediluvian cubic steam boiler with cast-iron doors and necks. The unusual find forced the Epronians to carefully examine the area. Under the rubble of rocks that collapsed from the coastal cliffs, divers found the remains of a large iron ship, half covered with sand, scattered all over the bottom.

During two months of work, divers recovered dozens of pieces of iron of various shapes and sizes from the bottom, part of the side plating with three portholes, a hand grenade, a medical mortar made of white porcelain, several unexploded bombs, copper hoops from barrels, an iron washstand, parts of a steam engine, almost rotten a pack of hospital shoes, lead bullets. And again - not a hint of gold ...

Before the New Year, severe storms began in the Balaklava area, and work had to be stopped.
By this time, the search for the "elusive ship" cost EPRON almost 100 thousand rubles. What to do next: is it worth continuing the work? The opinions of experts are divided. EPRON could not find reliable documents confirming the presence of gold on the Prince. They asked for the Soviet embassy in London. However, the British Admiralty, referring to the remoteness of the event, as well as laws restricting the admission of foreigners to the archives, could not provide anything specific. EPRON recognized further work as inexpedient.

It was at this time that the Soviet government received an offer from the Japanese diving firm Shinkai Kogiossio Limited to raise gold from the Prince. In those years, this company was considered one of the most famous and successful. The last in her "track record" was one English ship that sank in the Mediterranean Sea. Then Japanese divers managed to get treasures worth two million rubles from a depth of forty meters.

Shinkai Kogiossio Limited offered EPRON 110,000 rubles for preliminary work on the search and examination of the Prince, and also assumed all further expenses. Singed an agreement. The raised gold was to be divided between EPRON and the company in the ratio of 60 and 40 percent. In addition, the Japanese were supposed to familiarize Soviet divers with their deep-sea equipment and, after completion of work, transfer one piece of technical equipment to EPRON.

On September 5, the diver Yamomato found a gold coin stuck to the stone - an English sovereign minted in 1821. After that, for two months of daily exhausting work, divers found only four gold coins: English, French and two Turkish.

Since by mid-November 1927 the wrecked ship was completely "washed" and examined, the company stopped work in Balaklava. The results of her underwater work on the "Prince" were as follows: two forks and a spoon of white metal, a piece of a sapper shovel, a wheel hub, horseshoes, horse bones, an officer's saber, a pastry spatula, a lock, a galosh with the date 1848, several leather soles, a huge the number of lead bullets, etc.

Before leaving Balaklava, the company's representatives stated that the ship on which they were working, in their opinion, was the "Prince". However, despite the most thorough searches, they could not find the middle part of the ship. The remaining parts of the hull were badly damaged, and the destruction was clearly artificial. This circumstance led them to believe that the British, who remained in Balaklava for eight months after the shipwreck, had raised kegs of gold even before the end of the Crimean War.

In conclusion, the fiasco treasure hunters repeated the version of V.S. Yazykov, according to which the "Prince" is the only iron ship of all the ships that fell victim to the hurricane of 1854.
But is it? Let's go back to the original sources.

Here is what the English historian Woods reports in his book The Last Campaign (London, 1860):
“Prince”, a steam ship, arrived in Balaklava on the morning of November 8th. He gave up one anchor, which, together with the rope, all went into the water. When the other anchor was given up, this one also left; both anchors with ropes were lost at a depth of 35 fathoms in the water, it is obvious that none of the ropes was properly fixed ... After that, the Prince became at sea at a considerable distance and, returning, was held behind the stern of the Jason ship at the mooring line, until another anchor and rope were prepared.

What is this ship "Jason"? In the English magazine Practicle Makenix Journal for 1854, we find something that neither Yazykov, nor the Epronians, nor the Japanese knew:
"... in Blackwall ... three ships of the same type were built, respectively called the Golden Fleece, Jason and Prince."

The following are the most detailed dimensions and characteristics of each ship.
From this we can draw the following conclusions. Firstly, before the storm on the Balaklava roadstead, there were two steamships of the same type - the Prince and the Jason. Secondly, if the Practicle Makenix Journal had caught the eye of the Epronians or the Japanese at the moment of raising parts of the hull, then according to the exact specification given by the journal, it would have been possible to establish without much difficulty whether the vessel in question was the Prince or not. Unfortunately, no one did.

The opinion of I.S. Isakov, Admiral of the Fleet Soviet Union: "Prince", "Prince Regent", "Black Prince", 200 thousand, 500 thousand francs, 1 million pounds sterling, 60 million francs, millions of rubles in gold ... Different names of the ship, different amounts, different places of his death ... "

Yes, indeed, the sunken ship found by the Epronians could be the Prince, Jason, Hope, and Resolution. Until now, there is no reliable information that the five gold coins raised by the Japanese were from those barrels that the "Prince" was carrying to pay the soldiers' salaries.

Was there any gold on board the Prince when he came to the Balaklava raid?
Historians and unfortunate historians like V.S. Yazykova from among the employees of EPRON and representatives of the Japanese company Shinkai Kogiossio, who were trying to restore the true picture of the Prince's disaster, forgot or did not consider one remarkable fact worthy of attention.

Not a single overcoat, quilted jacket, pair of boots, not a single sovereign could get into Balaklava without the sanction of the Superintendent of the British Expeditionary Force operating in the Crimea. The superintendent was directly subordinated to the financial authorities of Westminster in London, and his office during the Crimean War was in Constantinople.

The uniforms, ammunition, food supplies and gold delivered by the "Prince" to the port of Istanbul were to be sent to Balaklava according to the payroll provided by the commanders-in-chief from the Crimea. The lists of people who died in battles, from diseases and epidemics, with a diabolical sequence, every day diverged from the actual losses, and the "difference" remained in the hands of broken clerks (of course, not without the knowledge of their direct boss - the superintendent).

That the manipulation of gold and equipment brought profit to the subordinates of the British superintendent in Constantinople is obvious. That is why the most reliable version must be considered the one that claims that the barrels of gold were reloaded in the port of Istanbul on some other ship, and after that the "Prince" went to Balaklava.

And here is another strong evidence that there was no gold on the Prince. In the epic of the "Prince" many countries were severely affected, except for England. So, France spent half a million in search of the treasure, Italy - two hundred thousand, Japan - almost a quarter of a million rubles in gold, while England never even made an attempt to obtain a license for the right to work to extract the dead ship of His Majesty's fleet.

Another important fact comes to mind. Almost all historical materials relating to the period of the Crimean War do not mention that there was gold on board the Prince by the time it arrived on the Balaklava raid. Barrels with gold coins are mentioned by sources of a later time, when a wide rumor made the "Prince" "Black".

No one knows where the treasures from the ship are and why they haven't been found yet. Photo: akwamir.uol.ua

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Our peninsula is rich in legends, and one of the most beautiful is about the treasures of the Black Prince. There are 2,500 ships sunk in the Black Sea on the state register in Ukraine, and until last year, the valuable cargo of this British ship was officially listed in the register of underwater archeology among other treasures and treasures. More than 150 years have passed since his death, but even today, from May to September, diving boats leave the Balaklava berths almost every day, divers are looking for the shine of yellow metal in the depths of the sea. And each of the local residents will swear on anything that the gold of the "Black Prince" is still there and waiting for its discoverer.

Legend of the Black Prince

Among the ships of the Anglo-French squadron that died in 1854 during the Balaklava storm was the English three-masted screw steamer "Prince", which became the most expensive loss of England in this storm. The ship for the middle of the XIX century was a very large ship with a displacement of 2710 tons. The main dimensions of the frigate - 300 feet long and 43 wide - is about three football fields. The ship was fast enough, sailing speed reached 13-14 knots. The crew - 150 people, the frigate could take 200 passengers. The ship had comfortable first and second class cabins with bedrooms and bathrooms!

In fact, the famous ship was simply called Prince ("Prince"), and the definition of "black", with which it went down in history, was later received through the efforts of journalists and writers.

On a cold November 1854, the loaded "Prince" entered the Black Sea. Ammunition, military equipment, a supply of warm clothes for the army, medicines for hospitals in Balaklava were carried in the holds of the ship. The ship was also loaded with an electric telegraph and a secret underwater weapon to undermine Russian ships. And most importantly, the ship carried money in gold - a salary for the British army. On the morning of November 8, the frigate arrived at the outer roadstead of Balaklava Bay. During an attempt to anchor (the depth of the anchorage is 55 meters), one after the other, both anchors went to the bottom along with the chains. "Prince" was tied to the stern of the ship Jason, which stood nearby. The next day, the frigate did put on one spare anchor.

terrible storm

November 14, 1854 at 07.30 in front of the southeast hurricane on the outer roads near the entrance to the Balaklava Bay were 24 ships. "Prince" stood in line for the approach to the pier. A strong wind began to blow the ship to a rocky shore. The ships slammed against each other so that some of them nearly sank from the damage. The attempt of the captain of the "Prince" to keep the ship at one anchor, working with the engine, failed. Having lost the anchor, the ship drifted with its bow into the open sea. During the drift, the frigate collided with another ship and received several damages. Seeing the inevitable death of the ship, the captain gave the order to the crew to escape. The ship's hull withstood the first collision with rocks, but after 5-6 blows the frigate crashed. According to eyewitnesses, the impacts on the rocks lasted 10-15 minutes, they say that the ship split in half. Six sailors and a junior officer escaped from the crew.

The cost of the steamer alone was estimated at many thousands of pounds sterling. The English army suffered enormous damage, having lost warm clothes. Sickness and death from cold after the storm on November 14 became commonplace in the British camp. English doctors were left without medicines, which went to the bottom of the Black Sea along with the "Prince".

The sinking of the ship was seen by many people. Eyewitnesses-artists even painted several canvases. Hundreds of sailors from the crews of ships who were more fortunate, soldiers of the garrison and just civilians fled to the hills in the area of the Genoese fortress to somehow help the drowning. And ... not a single document where at least the approximate place of the death of the "Prince" would be recorded. Of course, the fragments of the hull could not sink immediately and be carried a long distance from the crash site. Thus the legend was born. The legend of inaccessible gold.

And the gold rush began

The war had not yet ended, and rumors spread around the world that an English frigate with a cargo of gold, intended to pay salaries to the troops, had died off the coast of Crimea. Almost immediately after the conclusion of peace, the search for the remains of the "Prince" began. Italian, French, Japanese, Norwegian divers were looking for gold. But diving work at that time was at a low level. A special bell was invented, in which a diver-observer was lowered, but it was impossible to work normally in it. After the appearance of the first suit, the search intensified. In France, in 1875, a joint-stock company was established with significant capital to raise the treasures of the "Prince". The French found about 10 broken ships, but they did not find the gold of the sunken frigate.

In 1901, an Italian expedition led by engineer Giuseppe Restucci, the inventor of the underwater vehicle, arrived in Balaklava. It is known for sure that the Italians found a heavy sealed box, a spyglass, a broken rifle, and pieces of iron. In the box, which was opened with great trepidation and difficulty, there were lead bullets. The underwater vehicle was extremely inconvenient, it was impossible to move in it: the diver was moved along the bottom with the help of cables according to his signals. Moreover, all underwater work was carried out lying on his stomach. The ascent and descent of the "devilish projectile" lasted an hour and a half. A barely alive, emaciated man was raised to the surface. Not surprisingly, the treasure hunt again failed. After the departure of the Italians, a real gold rush began. The idea that barrels of gold lie somewhere nearby haunted adventurers and inventors.

Foreigner German Molvo received permission to raise treasures, he explored Balaklava Bay for three years, after his death, his son Friedrich continued the search. The Ministry of Trade and Industry of Russia received many more applications from Russian and foreign citizens and organizations asking for permission to raise the treasures of the "Prince". But the case dragged on, and the mystery of the sunken gold was never solved.

In the first years of Soviet power, the famous Special Purpose Underwater Expedition, EPRON, was formed on the initiative of Dzerzhinsky to search for and raise this treasure. Especially for this expedition, engineer Danilenko created a project for a deep-sea projectile that could be lowered to a depth of 160 meters. Air through the hose was supposed to be supplied to the bell, which could contain three divers, the other hose was used for ventilation. Inside the projectile, electric lighting and a telephone were provided. The device had retractable "hands" with two "fingers". While the apparatus was being built, the expedition carried out preparatory work in Balaklava. A great many remains of wooden and metal ships, a cast-iron steam boiler, a steamship chimney, two portholes, a hand grenade, a medical mortar, several bombs, a washstand from an officer's cabin, lead bullets, a pack of hospital slippers and many British-type anchors were found. As of December 1924, the total expenses of the Soviet expedition to search for the "Prince" amounted to 100,000 rubles, and work was suspended due to the lack of archival information that there really were valuables on board the frigate. Nevertheless, the expedition was of great importance for the country. At the bottom of the sea lay a lot of interesting things besides the treasures of the "Prince", and the expedition switched to raising these valuables from the bottom of the Balaklava and Sevastopol bays. EPRON has acquired rich experience in diving operations. The expedition was given a new task of raising large ships and submarines sunk in 1920. And, to the delight of scientists, they opened the first pages of underwater archaeological research of the Black Sea.

As for the search for the "Prince", it was decided to transfer this work to the famous Japanese company "Shinkai Kogiossio Limited". In 1927, this company gave a master class - held demonstration work in Sevastopol. Japanese divers amazed everyone with their skill. They worked at a depth of more than a hundred meters only in glass masks covering the diver's eyes and nose, without special suits and apparatus. Air was pumped through a hose, the diver inhaled through his nose and, without opening his lips, exhaled into the water through his mouth. The diver could be at great depths up to 10 minutes without harm to himself. The ascent and descent took place without any delay, and thanks to special breathing, decompression sickness did not occur. When the Japanese expedition began work, it was assumed that the burial place of the "Prince" had been found. The remains of the ship were littered with collapsed soil. It was necessary to clear the fragments of the ship from many tons of rocks. September 12, 1927 came. At about 4 pm the sea was calm. Two divers were lowered to the bottom, but less than ten minutes later they signaled to be brought to the surface. The divers explained that something unimaginable was happening at the bottom: the ground was shaking underfoot. This was the beginning of the famous Crimean earthquake, which occurred on the night of September 12-13. At one in the morning there was the first push. But it turns out that even 10 hours before that, divers at the bottom felt vibrations, curtailed work and returned to shore. The earthquake in Balaklava was minor, but the Japanese considered it a bad omen. They took it as a warning from above. The last measure taken by the Japanese firm was the installation of a dredger at the search site. He threw sand, and the divers lifted the stones and everything that came across in bags upstairs. But that didn't work either. The Japanese expedition curtailed work, giving the conclusion: "There is no gold at the bottom."

And for 83 years they did not look for the "Prince". Until 2010, there were three official versions explaining the unsuccessful search for the frigate and its valuable cargo:

1. They were looking in the wrong place. Error of search expeditions in determining the main landmarks of the identification of the "Prince". Archival photographs proved that, in addition to Prince, the steamships Jason, Houp, and Resolute had a metal hull. According to British archival funds, Jason sank eight years later in the waters of India. But there were also Houp and Resolute in the bay.

2. The absence of valuables on board the frigate at the time of its death. Archival research has proven that ammunition, food supplies and especially financial resources were delivered to the battlefields in the Crimea, not directly from Great Britain, but from Istanbul, where at that time the headquarters of the superintendent of the British Expeditionary Forces was located. It is likely that the valuable cargo was removed from the "Prince" in the port of Istanbul, so only ammunition was delivered to Balaklava. The absence of legendary values on the sunken ship is confirmed by the fact that, along with a whole list of states that participated in the search for treasures, the UK did not record a single attempt to obtain a license to carry out underwater work on its own ship.

3. Values were raised by the British back in the Crimean War. Specialists of the Japanese diving company Shinkai Kogiossio Limited, upon completion of the work, made an official statement that the vessel on which they carried out the work was the Prince frigate. However, during the search they failed to find the middle part of the vessel. On the stern and bow of the hull were severe damage inflicted after the death of the ship. Conclusion "Sinkai Kogiossio Limited": the British troops, who remained in Balaklava for another 8 months after the sinking of the ship, raised a valuable cargo even before the end of the Crimean campaign.

A large number of cannonballs, medical glass, shoes, several large-caliber guns, as well as a large number of plates were found at the alleged site of the death of the Prince. On two of them, during the winter laboratory processing, clearly readable marks were found, indicating the shipping company to which the "Prince" belonged. On that November night in 1854, two ships of that shipping company, the Prince and the Yazon, were on the outer roadstead of Balaklava. As you know, "Jason" managed to survive this storm. So these two plates could only belong to the "Prince". So, after 156 years, the real place of the death of the "Black Prince" was put on the map.

On March 23 last year, an official meeting of the leadership of the Department of Underwater Heritage with the military attache of the embassy took place at the Kiev Embassy of Great Britain. The department of our country was officially informed that there were no valuables on board the Prince at the time of his death. The main evidence was a receipt from the plenipotentiary representative of Great Britain in Turkey, assistant to the chief indent John William Smith, that the money was withdrawn from the ship in Constantinople. This receipt is kept in the Bank of England. For the first time in 156 years, Britain officially acknowledged the absence of any treasures on board the Prince. So, rather boringly, the epic of searching for the mysterious treasures of the Black Sea ended. The most interesting treasure that existed for a century and a half has been excluded from the register of the underwater heritage of Ukraine. But, I think, no discoveries can exclude these treasures from the hearts and dreams of romantics.

The shadow of the legendary "Black Prince" that sank off the coast of Balaklava Bay has risen more than once from the pages of Russian literature. A. I. Kuprin, S. N. Sergeev-Tsensky, M. Zoshchenko, E. V. Tarle, T. Bobritsky and many other writers wrote about the "Black Prince". Until now, articles or notes about the “mysterious disappearance” of kegs with gold coins often appear in foreign adventure literature.

The legend about the treasures hidden at the bottom of the Balaklava Bay was born in the 19th century. Until 1923, these were only vague stories of old-timers, until the engineer B.C. Languages did not find a number of significant evidence that he had been collecting since 1908 about the existence of a treasure that rests at the bottom of the Black Sea since the Crimean War.

Balaklava - a small Crimean town in Ukraine near Sevastopol, at one time was sung in his works by Homer, Euripides and Ovid. And local residents consider Balaklava Bay to be the eighth wonder of the world and the most beautiful bay on the planet. This is truly one of the most picturesque corners of the Earth. A miracle that many even those who grew up on the seashore meet in Balaklava for the first time is the constant calmness of the water in the bay, no matter how the elements rage on the high seas. This is due to the unique natural shape of the Balaklava Bay - in the form English letter S. At the same time, the bay is deep enough to accommodate large warships close to the shore. The only problem is that it is not easy to enter the bay during a storm. That is why, in the days of the sailing fleet, many of the ships that tried to hide here in bad weather were wrecked near the rocks closest to the entrance.

During the Crimean War, the main headquarters of the British was located in Balaklava. By the beginning of the war, the British government chartered more than 200 merchant ships owned by private companies to transport troops and ammunition to the Crimea. November 14, 1854 in this place, the fleet suffered the greatest losses in all the years of the Crimean War. A severe storm destroyed 34 English ships, which were going to deliver all kinds of provisions for the soldiers of Queen Victoria. Among these ships was the frigate "Prince" - a large modern sail-propeller iron ship with a steam engine, a metal hull, capacious holds, which was considered one of the best in the British fleet. "Prince" was at the bottom - along with a cargo of medicines, equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the first field electric telegraph and an underwater vehicle, designed to clear the entrance to the Balaklava Bay, as well as, which is documented: "4 diving devices, 4 galvanic batteries, 8 miles of electrical wire, a supply of underwater mines." The newspapers also wrote that the Prince's cargo mainly consisted of clothes - shirts, sheepskin coats, hats, underwear, as well as sheets, blankets, sleeping bags and the like.

Maybe this event, after years, would have remained unnoticed if some sources had not claimed that there was one important detail: in the hold of the frigate there were dozens of barrels filled to the brim with more than 500,000 gold coins, intended to pay a salary to the 30,000th English expeditionary hull. Historical sources give different names of the ship, different amounts, different places of its death. So, for example, it is called “Prince”, “Prince Regent”, “Black Prince”, and the amounts on it are designated as 200 thousand ... 500 thousand francs, 1 million pounds sterling, 60 million francs, millions of rubles in gold ... The further the date of the death of the "Prince" moved away, the brighter the legend about the gold stored in its holds flared up.

Together with the "Prince" the secret of the most famous and mysterious treasure, the search for which has ever been carried out on the territory of Ukraine, went under water.

Already in the first years after the conclusion of the peace treaty, the search for the remains of the "Prince" began. According to one of the published versions, the hurricane carried the remains of the wrecked ship to the open sea. Other ships that sank at the same time as the Prince were found. The City of London sailboat, for example, still rests at a depth of 8 meters. Modern guidebooks willingly recommend it to diving enthusiasts as an attraction. Rumors about countless treasures resting at the bottom of the Black Sea very soon attracted enterprising treasure hunters to Balaklava. During the second half of the 19th century, many expeditions visited this place. The ship was searched equally unsuccessfully by Italians, Americans, Norwegians, Germans. But the primitive diving technique of those times did not allow one to go deep enough.

So, after the November hurricane of 1854, the English expeditionary force was in Balaklava for another 8 months. During this time, searches for gold coins were undertaken. As already mentioned, these searches were unsuccessful, in any case, it is known that the servicemen met New Year without salary.

In France, in 1875, a joint-stock company with a rather large fixed capital was formed specifically for the search for British gold. But no one managed to find even the sunken ship itself. And no wonder: after all, the 60-meter depths of the Balaklava Bay were practically inaccessible.

In 1901, the expedition of the Italian engineer Giuseppe Restucci visited Balaklava. Restucci brought with him a special deep-sea suit of his own design. With its help, Italian divers soon discovered the broken hull of some iron ship. After examining the ship, a number of items were found: a spyglass, a rifle, a box of bullets and a lot of metal parts rusted beyond recognition. However, not the slightest trace of gold could be found.

Again, the Black Prince was remembered in 1922, when one of the local divers found several gold coins at the bottom at the entrance to Balaklava Bay.

In the early 1920s, already under Soviet rule, engineer V. Yazykov, based on reports, eyewitnesses, and press reports, roughly determined the proposed treasure search area. On March 13, 1923, an order was issued to create the Special Purpose Underwater Expedition (EPRON) under the Special Department of the OGPU of the USSR. The expedition went on to become a world-famous wreck salvage organization. Beginning in April 1923, preparations for an expedition for British gold were in full swing.

The searchers combined their efforts with the talent of the ship engineer E. Danilenko, who invented a special "diving bell" that allows you to explore depths of up to 80 fathoms - and this, despite the fact that it was assumed that the "Prince" lies at a depth of 30 fathoms!

The apparatus designed by engineer E. Danilenko was designed for three people, equipped with a telephone, a searchlight and a mechanical manipulator for capturing various cargoes. The 10-ton steel case of the device was manufactured at one of the Moscow factories in the shortest possible time - in three months. At the same time, steps were taken to collect as accurate information as possible about the place of death of the "Prince".

On September 2 and 9, two successful trial descents of a deep-water apparatus designed by Danilenko were undertaken, and from September 11, the Epronovites engaged in a systematic inspection of the seabed. A considerable number of all kinds of ship wreckage was found under water, but it was not possible to find anything remotely resembling the remains of the Prince among this various-sized rubbish. The unsuccessful search for the British frigate continued for more than a year.

In October 1924, during the training of young Epronians near the ruins of the Genoese tower, east of the entrance to the bay, this expedition found the broken hull of a large iron ship, almost completely buried under sand drifts and fragments of collapsed rocks. The expedition members were sure that they had the desired "Black Prince" in front of them, but the sunken ship found by the Epronians could be both the "Prince", and "Jason", and "Hope", and "Resolution". Again, like their predecessors they pulled out a number of interesting items, not a single coin was found. The mystery of the Balaklava Bay, for which the special purpose expedition was created, continued to remain unsolved.

The Japanese company Shinkai Kogyoyoshio Limited was the last to look for him. Its representatives petitioned the Soviet government for permission to search for the treasures of the "Prince" and offered not only to pay off the costs incurred by EPRON in the amount of 110 thousand rubles, but also to divide the expected profit (million rubles in gold) in half. In the summer of 1927, the Japanese set to work. Every day, Japanese divers lifted at least twenty stone blocks weighing 500 pounds. On September 5, the diver Yamomato found a gold coin stuck to the stone - an English sovereign minted in 1821. After that, for two months of daily exhausting work, divers found only four gold coins: English, French and two Turkish.

Until now, there is no reliable information that the five gold coins raised by the Japanese were from those barrels that the "Prince" was carrying to pay the soldiers' salaries.

But the most mysterious thing was that the middle part of the "Prince" - exactly the one where, in theory, there were gold coins - disappeared in an incomprehensible way. There was a possibility that someone had been to the bottom of the sea and managed to take out the barrels of coins.

Since by mid-November 1927 the wrecked ship was completely "washed" and examined, the company stopped work in Balaklava.

In this story, one characteristic moment attracts attention: the treasures of the "Prince" were searched for by all and sundry: Russians, French, Italians, Japanese, even, they say, Germans and Norwegians. Except... except those to whom, strictly speaking, this gold belongs by law: the English. This begs the next question: “Where did the gold of the Black Prince go anyway? And there are several versions of this. According to one of them, it was found before by the British themselves at the end of the Crimean War. On the other hand, the British, unlike all others, were well aware of the true nature of the cargo that went to the bottom of the Balaklava Bay along with the ill-fated "Prince". By the way, the list of goods that was on board the Prince is not at all secret: it was published on December 16, 1854 on the pages of the London newspaper The Illustrated London News, where there was no gold. And this meant that he had never been on the "Prince".

Another incredible version said that, in 1924, the valiant EPRON employees nevertheless raised gold from the Prince, and information about The successful completion of the treasure hunt epic was classified, and the extracted values were spent on the restoration of the national economy of the country. Well, the Soviet government simply led the gullible Japanese by the nose. And the latest version said that it was the team of divers who were on the fateful day of November 14, 1854 aboard the frigate "Prince" who subsequently raised the gold. There were four of them. It was they who owned the cargo mentioned above: "4 diving instruments, 4 galvanic batteries, 8 miles of electrical wire, a supply of underwater mines." Demolition divers were sent to Balaklava with a special task: to make a passage to the Sevastopol Bay, blocked by specially flooded Russian ships. However, the stock of mines they had, as it turned out, was useful not for Russian ships, but for the Prince himself. According to the version, one of these divers (and possibly the whole four!) returned to the site of the frigate's death shortly after the disaster. With the help of the mines on board, the sunken "Prince" was blown up (otherwise the contents of the hold could not be reached), and the coins were securely hidden in another place. It is difficult to say which of the above versions is more plausible.

I would like to believe that in the history of the "Black Prince" not all dots are put on the "I". Who knows, whether in time the Balaklava Bay will reveal one of its most romantic secrets... Apparently, for many decades the mystery will remain unsolved and will give rise to more and more new assumptions...

Will the treasure ever be found? Time will tell .

"Izvestia of the CEC" with report: AT continuation 1923 - 24 Epron (special purpose underwater expedition in the Black and Azov Seas), despite the large funds and energy expended, could not find the place of the death of the English steamer "Black Prince", which died among many other English and French ships during the assault on November 2 (14) 1854 near Balaklava. Epron, using a diving apparatus of a special design, examined an area of 3- 4 square kilometers with depths up to 100 meters. Many fragments of wooden ships were found, but the Black Prince's iron hull was not found. To the right of the exit from Balaclava, a teak mast was found in the sea, the belonging of which to the "Prince" was more or less accurately established.

The expansion of the Epron work program in 1925 did not allow sufficient attention to be paid to the further searches for this ship. However, by late autumn, it was possible to single out a small diving party, which was instructed to survey the coastal strip on both sides of the exit from the bay, where the depths make it possible to work in ordinary diving suits.

On October 17, 1925, quite unexpectedly, to the left of the exit from the bay, almost under the Don tower itself, which is clearly visible from steamers going to the south coast, at a depth of 17 meters, old steam boilers protruding from the ground and parts of an iron hull set were discovered . After a short excavation, the diving party was convinced that this place was the grave of the legendary steamship: there could be no doubt, since the "Black Prince" is the only steam ship with an iron hull from the entire dead squadron and no other similar ships at the entrance to Balaklava hasn't died since.

Examination of the place of death "Black Prince "indicated that the ship's hull, probably broken very thoroughly, was buried under sand and rock fragments, which often fell into the sea during fresh weather. The plan for further work on unloading and raising the ship consisted of significant excavation and the release of parts of the ship from under the boulders.This work required significant funds - several hundred thousand rubles.

Although the work to raise the "Black Prince" from a technical point of view did not present any difficulties and was quite simple and easy for our divers, until recently the expedition did not consider it expedient to start them due to the lack of any documents or accurate information about the actual location on this ship a large amount of gold.

Epron did not have surplus funds for this risky operation, and Narkomfin, quite reasonably, did not express a desire to throw away several hundred thousand rubles without any firm certainty of getting gold..

June 20 G. Epron entered into an agreement with the Japanese diving company "Shinkai Kogyoshio Limited", giving her the right to carry out further work on lifting and unloading the ship. Black Prince". On June 28, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR allowed the Japanese company to proceed with the operations provided for by the concluded agreement.

Before the conclusion of the contract, the Japanese company was given the opportunity to survey by its divers the place of the sinking of the steamer indicated by Epron, and therefore Epron does not take any responsibility for the success of the operation undertaken by the Japanese company.

Epron considers it especially valuable to get the opportunity to get acquainted in detail with the procedure and methods of underwater work that the Japanese practice. It should be noted that the technique of underwater work among the Japanese has significant achievements, completely unknown in the West. While in Western Europe the conquest of the sea depths goes along the line of creating rigid diving suits and improving them, the Japanese succeeded, by creating a system of special training for divers, to limit themselves to very simple, but extremely original devices that make it possible to work at great depths with incomparably greater success than we see in the West. Two years ago, Mr. Catbaka, the director of the aforementioned diving company, managed to perform a record-breaking job of salvaging valuables in the amount of up to 12 million rubles from an English steamer sunk by a German submarine during the imperialist war in the Mediterranean Sea, at a depth of about 85 meters.

Despite the short period that has elapsed since the entry into force of the treaty, lifting work, under the leadership of 15 Japanese specialists, began already in early August. The technical equipment ordered from abroad has arrived.

It can therefore be assumed that the next two or three months will bring us a complete solution "Black Prince".

The story below by Pavel Norov, written specifically for "World Pathfinder," answers that great interest that causes mystery "Black Prince". The story unfolds the theme of one of the many cases of "hunting" for these semi-legendary treasures ...

I. In Balaklava Bay

On a hot June afternoon, when the sun beats with sheer, dazzling rays, Balaklava Bay seems like a blue lake. Mountain terraces dotted with white houses rise around the lake in a sharply defined semicircle.

And from below it seems that these houses hang one above the other and are molded along the rocky spurs, like bizarre bird nests.

Silence in the town. Everyone hid from the hot southern sun. Only indefatigable Greek fishermen fuss around the boats. They recently returned from fishing and are now unloading fish from deep holds.

When the sun approaches sunset, Balaklava housewives will come to the embankment to buy fish. And then it will be noisy here: the fishermen will ask to the point of exhaustion, the housewives will bargain up to a sweat with screams, squeals and curses. Hot southern people! But now there is silence.

Balaklava Bay deeply cut into the mainland in the form of an elongated oval. It is securely closed on all sides, and only in its southern part is it more visible than the narrow exit to the outer roadstead, like the throat of a bottle.

Excellent bay! For small vessels, the port is better not to invent: quiet, deep-sea. But the passage is treacherous, as if lying in wait for ships with careless pilots. One wrong movement of the steering wheel - and a disaster in a fresh wind is inevitable.

In the language of the Black Sea sailors, "fresh wind" is a very special concept. When the north-east breaks and, coloring the dark green waves of the Black Sea white, makes the water around the ship boil like boiling water in a cauldron, then the friendly Balaklava Bay turns into a dangerous trap. And woe to the ships that try to seek salvation in its waters. The treacherous exit from the bay is bordered by high, hanging over the sea, rocky shores, as if purposely arranged for shipwrecks.

It is not for nothing that the Balaklava seashore has been a place of classical shipwrecks since ancient times. Hundreds of ships lie at the bottom of its rocky road. The Phoenicians, Greeks, Genoese, Romans, Turks and, later, the British, French, Italians - all these peoples left their ships here.

This is an ancient sea tomb, which among the world's sea cemeteries is second only to the famous Sargasso Sea and the shores of Novaya Zemlya, where the skeletons of dead ships are carried by the undercurrent...

... By the beginning of the Crimean War, the British government chartered more than two hundred merchant ships owned by private companies to transport troops and ammunition to the Crimea. Among them was the sail-propeller frigate "Prince". On November 8, 1854, together with other English ships, he arrived at the outer Balaklava raid. Five days later, a southeast hurricane of unprecedented strength swept over the Crimean peninsula. Thirty-four ships perished on the coastal cliffs of Balaklava Bay. This fate befell the "Prince".

What was on board? The Illustrated London News wrote on December 16, 1854: “Among the goods accepted by the Prince were things: 36,700 pairs of woolen socks, 53,000 woolen shirts, 2,500 sentinel sheepskin coats, 16,000 sheets, 3,750 blankets. In addition, you can still name the number of sleeping bags - 150,000 pieces, woolen shirts - 100,000, flannel pants - 90,000 pairs, about 40,000 blankets and 40,000 waterproof hats, 40,000 fur coats and 120,000 pairs of boots.

Gradually, legends began to spread about the "Black Prince". The value of the gold that sank with the ship rose to sixty million francs.

"Our Shipping" wrote in 1897: "Prince Regent", a huge ship of the English fleet, was carrying from England a significant amount of silver coin and 200,000 pounds sterling in gold to pay salaries to English troops in the Crimea ... The money sent on this ship was packed in barrels, which is why they must remain intact ... "

In 1896, the Russian inventor Plastunov took up the search. But he was not lucky either.

The Italians were the most patient. The inventor of the deep-sea suit, Giuseppe Rastucci, led an expedition in 1901. A few weeks after the start of work, he managed to find the iron hull of a large ship. Italian divers raised from the bottom a metal box with lead bullets, a spyglass, a rifle, an anchor, pieces of iron and wood. But… not a single coin. In the spring of 1903, the Italians left Balaklava, only to return to the search site two years later. This time, in a completely different place, they found another iron ship. No one still knows if it was the Black Prince or some other ship. Again no gold was found.

In 1922, an amateur diver from Balaklava took out several gold coins from the bottom of the sea at the entrance to the bay. So the world became interested in the "Black Prince" again. Showered proposals one another fantastic. One inventor from Feodosia claimed that the "Black Prince" must lie at the bottom in the bay itself. And if so, all you need to do is block the entrance to the bay with a dam, pump out the water and take the gold from the ship.

Finally, the minesweepers made measurements of the depths, and the entire alleged area of \u200b\u200bthe death of the "Prince" was divided into squares by milestones. In the first days of September 1923, they began to examine the underwater rocks west of the entrance to the bay. Every day, a small boat of the "bolinder" type lowered Danilenko's apparatus to examine the next square. Many fragments of wooden ships were found: masts, yardarms, pieces of frames, beams and sides, heavily worn by a sea worm, overgrown with shells. It was thought that finding the "Prince" among these wreckage was not particularly difficult: in the study of the engineer Yazykov, it appeared that the "Prince" was the only iron ship among the dead.

The spring, summer and autumn of 1924 passed. But the "Prince" was never found.

On the morning of October 17, one of Pavlovsky's students discovered an odd-shaped iron box protruding from the ground on the seabed not far from the shore. He tried to put a sling under it, but to no avail. Interested in the find, Pavlovsky invited experienced divers. Soon the box was raised to the surface: it was all rusted antediluvian cubic steam boiler with cast-iron doors and necks. The unusual find forced the Epronians to carefully examine the area. Under the rubble of rocks that collapsed from the coastal cliffs, divers found the remains of a large iron ship, half covered with sand, scattered all over the bottom.

Before the New Year, severe storms began in the Balaklava area, and work had to be stopped.

By this time, the search for the "elusive ship" cost EPRON almost 100 thousand rubles. What to do next: is it worth continuing the work? The opinions of experts are divided. EPRON could not find reliable documents confirming the presence of gold on the Prince. They asked for the Soviet embassy in London. However, the British Admiralty, referring to the remoteness of the event, as well as laws restricting the admission of foreigners to the archives, could not provide anything specific. EPRON recognized further work as inexpedient.

In the summer of 1927, the Japanese (they expected to receive 800,000 gold rubles without much difficulty!) Set to work. Every day, Japanese divers lifted at least twenty stone blocks weighing 500 pounds. Thousand-pound pieces of rock were dragged aside with the help of steam winches mounted on barges. Every day, 7 divers and 5 divers worked in shifts.

On September 5, the diver Yamomato found a gold coin stuck to the stone - an English sovereign minted in 1821. After that, for two months of daily exhausting work, divers found only four gold coins: English, French and two Turkish.

In conclusion, the fiasco treasure hunters repeated the version of V.S. Yazykov, according to which the "Prince" is the only iron ship of all the ships that fell victim to the hurricane of 1854.

But is it? Let's go back to the original sources.

Here is what the English historian Woods reports in his book The Last Campaign (London, 1860):

“Prince”, a steam ship, arrived in Balaklava on the morning of November 8th. He gave up one anchor, which, together with the rope, all went into the water. When the other anchor was given up, this one also left; both anchors with ropes were lost at a depth of 35 fathoms in the water, it is obvious that none of the ropes was properly fixed ... After that, the Prince became at sea at a considerable distance and, returning, was held behind the stern of the Jason ship at the mooring line, until another anchor and rope were prepared.

What is this ship "Jason"? In the English magazine Practicle Makenix Journal for 1854, we find something that neither Yazykov, nor the Epronians, nor the Japanese knew:

"... in Blackwall ... three ships of the same type were built, respectively called the Golden Fleece, Jason and Prince."

From this we can draw the following conclusions. Firstly, before the storm on the Balaklava roadstead, there were two steamships of the same type - the Prince and the Jason. Secondly, if the Practicle Makenix Journal had caught the eye of the Epronians or the Japanese at the moment of raising parts of the hull, then according to the exact specification given by the journal, it would have been possible to establish without much difficulty whether the vessel in question was the Prince or not. Unfortunately, no one did.

The opinion of I.S. Isakov, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union: “Prince”, “Prince Regent”, “Black Prince”, 200 thousand, 500 thousand francs, 1 million pounds sterling, 60 million francs, millions of rubles in gold ... Different names of the ship, different amounts, different places of his death ... "

Yes, indeed, the sunken ship found by the Epronians could be the Prince, Jason, Hope, and Resolution. Until now, there is no reliable information that the five gold coins raised by the Japanese were from those barrels that the "Prince" was carrying to pay the soldiers' salaries.

Was there any gold on board the Prince when he came to the Balaklava raid?

Historians and unfortunate historians like V.S. Yazykova from among the employees of EPRON and representatives of the Japanese company Shinkai Kogiossio, who were trying to restore the true picture of the Prince's disaster, forgot or did not consider one remarkable fact worthy of attention.

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