The mystery of Grosvenor shipwreck: how British who plundered India lost their treasures near African coast

New Delhi: On August 4, 1782, a ship Grosvenor hit a reef on the Pondoland coast of South Africa, north of the mouth of the Umzimvubu River. The shipwreck was close to the place where the Portuguese ship, São João, had gone down more than two centuries earlier on June 8, 1552. The Grosvenor was a three-masted ship of 729 tons on her return voyage to England when she was wrecked, carrying a crew of 132 and 18 passengers (12 adults and 6 children).The ship was carrying 2,600,000 gold Pagoda coins (weight unknown), 1,400 gold ingots (weight unknown), nineteen chests of diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires and an extremely valuable jewel encrusted gold peacock throne from India.Of the 123 survivors, only 18 reached Cape Town and were repatriated, the remainder died of privations or were killed by Bantu tribals. Four survivors, Robert Price, Thomas Lewis, John Warmington, and Barney Larey, eventually got back to England.Many have tried to find the treasure, and the ship is claimed to have been found on a very inhospitable part of the coast, but the treasure is still to be located.To find this treasure, one might have to go a long way out of India. The Grosvenor left Chennai for England via Trincomalee, Sri Lanka in March 1782 with precious cargo aboard under the command of Captain Coxon, falling in with Admiral Hughes' fleet. On 13 June 1782, she set sail for England from Trincomalee. The disaster was, it is suspected, ascribable to a grave miscalculation by the captain, possibly due to misty weather and treacherous currents, and to the carelessness of the look-outs.A search party sent by order of Governor Van Plettenberg from Swellendam rescued 3 Whites and 9 Indians. Only 18 of those shipwrecked eventually reached Cape Town, from which they were repatriated. The rest either died from their privations or were murdered by the Bantu or forced to live among them. A half-caste group later found in the vicinity of the scene of the wreck would seem to indicate that the White wives whose husbands had been murdered possibly lived with the Bantu.The legend of the Grosvenor treasure originated in 1880, when a few gold and silver coins were washed up on the beach near the scene of the wreck. The Natal Mercantile Advertiser of 23 February 1880, referred to this with the remark “it shows there must have been large quantities of bullion on board”. According to some documents these were – in addition to personal treasure to the value of 36 million rands – 162 378 gold coins, 19 chests of precious stones, 720 gold bars and 1 450 silver bars, a treasure according to present valuations worth 34 million rands. A number of attempts have already been made to salvage this legendary treasure, but up to now without success.As recently as 1963 a Belgian-South African company with a share capital of R400 000 was formed with the intention of sinking a vertical shaft on land and from the bottom of this shaft digging a horizontal shaft to the bay where the wreck rests. The sand can then be pumped out and divers can salvage the treasure from the wreck. Percival R. Kirby, who produced the most authoritative work on the Grosvenor , is very sceptical about the existence of the suspected treasure.In his book: ” The true story of the Grosvenor East Indianian ” (1960) he states: ‘Undoubtedly the Grosvenor was a richly laden vessel…. but the visions of bullion (if by that is meant hundreds of bars of gold and silver), and of scores of chests of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and the like … are but idle dreams'.

The mystery of Grosvenor shipwreck: how British who plundered India lost their treasures near African coast

New Delhi: On August 4, 1782, a ship Grosvenor hit a reef on the Pondoland coast of South Africa, north of the mouth of the Umzimvubu River. The shipwreck was close to the place where

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