Real Life Treasure Hunt Stories

A group of divers find possibly the oldest shipwreck in the country on the south coast of Devon.

March 05

For a diving group to make one big historic discovery is good, to make two is outstanding.

That is what's happened to the South West Maritime Archaeological Group who've just made their second huge find off the coast of Devon.

Back in 1995 the group found the biggest collection of Islamic riches ever discovered off the coast of Britain.

That collection included 460 gold coins, gold ingots and nuggets as well as pewter, jewellery and pottery believed to have lain undisturbed since the 1630s.

This year, while expanding that site, they've come across a new wreck even more important to historians.


A gold bracelet known as a torc, the first piece of gold found in a Bronze Age wreck site.

"When we extended the first site we found Bronze Age artefacts, that’s dynamite," said Jim Tyson, an archaeological diver with the group.

"It was obvious from the first things we found it wasn’t contemporary to the 17th century site, we were stepping back 3000 years."

What they've found now is one of only two Bronze Age wrecks ever salvaged in the seas around Britain.

The treasures include a cauldron handle, axe-heads, thin rapier blades and bulkier sword blades believed to be some of the oldest discovered in Northern Europe.

Most interestingly of all for historians is that many of the objects are from northern France and are very rare in the UK.

This, together with the discovery of a gold torc (or bracelet), give credence to the theory that England had trade with Europe, specifically Holland, as early as 1300BC.


Collecting the treasure

The torc is believed by the South West group to be the first gold found at a Bronze Age site.

For historians such a find gives a whole new source of data to work with when recreating the past.

"We have an enormous quantity of data from land finds in every country in Europe," said Dr Stuart Needham of the British Museum.

"Maritime finds give us a whole different set of information, sometimes quite unexpected bits, that open a new window into this part of the past."



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