Wreckage found of famed ship

LONDON - U.S. salvagers announced yesterday that they had located the wreckage of HMS Victory, one of the most important ships in British naval history, which sank in 1744 carrying four tons of gold coins.

"Finding this shipwreck has solved one of the greatest shipwreck mysteries in history," said Greg Stemm, chief executive of Odyssey Marine Exploration, the Florida-based firm that announced the discovery in London.

The ship, the most modern in the British fleet at the time, was lost with a crew of more than 1,000, more than 100 brass cannons, and 100,000 gold coins it was transporting from Portugal.

Generations of researchers have puzzled over the loss of the ship, a predecessor of the HMS Victory that was the flagship of Adm. Horatio Nelson, hero of the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar.

Most historians have said the wreckage had to lie close to the Channel Islands, south of England and near the French coast, where the ship's captain, Adm. John Balchin, was believed to have fatally steered it onto rocky shoals.

But Odyssey's crews located the wreckage last May at least 60 miles away, in an area that company officials said had been badly damaged over the years by natural erosion and fishing by trawlers dragging heavy nets across the sea bottom.

Odyssey officials also said the discovery exonerates Balchin of losing the ship on the rocks. They said the ship sank in 330 feet of water, apparently in a storm.

Stemm said his company's salvagers identified the wreck as the Victory after raising two unique brass cannons from the seafloor.

Odyssey is in negotiations with the British government, which claims sovereignty over the ship and its contents. Stemm, at the London news conference, said the company was cooperating with British authorities and expected to be rewarded for its discovery.