The Merchant Royal
This English merchant ship bartered between England and the Spanish colonies in the West Indies during the late 1630s. It was rumored to be carrying 100,000 pounds of gold and other valuables when it took its final trip. On its way back home, the rundown vessel began leaking. On top of this, the captain offered to carry additional cargo from a Spanish ship that had caught fire.
The craft’s added weight and poor condition, combined with the bad weather, led its pumps to break, and the whole thing sank near Cornwall County in England. In 2019, the anchor was found off the coast of the U.K., but the shipwreck, and its estimated $1.5 billion in gold, remains undiscovered.
