The E-Sylum:  Volume 8, Number 53, December 18, 2005, Article 6

GOVERNMENT RECOVERS LOST DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY INGOTS

Arthur Shippee writes: "The Dutch government has recovered
a pile of Dutch East India Company bullion from a shipwreck:

"The Dutch Government has started taking possession of
tens of thousands of dollars worth of silver bullion that
it last saw 266 years ago.

The silver had been on a Dutch East India Co. ship that
vanished in a storm in the English Channel in 1739.

Although wreckage was found at the time on Britain's
south coast, nobody knew precisely where it had sunk.
The disaster meant that the Dutch East India Co. lost
around 250 crew and soldiers, and a large silver treasure,
which was on the way to the East Indies to be converted
into local coinage.

Despite the disappearance of the ship, the Rooswijk,
the lost vessel and its treasure remained the property
of the Dutch East India Co. When the company was taken
over by the Dutch government in 1798, the Netherlands
became the legal owners of the vanished bullion.

Last year a British sports diver - Cambridgeshire
carpenter Ken Welling - found the wreckage. The Dutch
Government was contacted, and the discovery was kept
secret until this week, when Holland's Finance Minister,
Joop Wijn, took possession of original wooden chests
full of bullion."

To read the full article in The Age: Full Story

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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