In 1854, one of the most terrible disasters on the Black Sea happened. According to the preserved historical data, more than 70 ships from different countries were killed in this storm. The storm came as a surprise to a huge number of merchant and military ships that were at sea or anchored in bays. There are a huge number of legends and legends associated with this natural disaster. The most mysterious of these is the story of the Black Prince, which transported the treasury of the British Expeditionary Corps.
War: a disaster of all time
In 1854, the political confrontation between the Russian Empire and Turkey caused a new war to start. England and France, defending their trade interests, in the same year creating a coalition, invaded the Crimea. For 3 years, Russian troops retreated step by step in front of the power of the Anglo-French coalition. Despite the military successes, the allies experienced certain difficulties associated with the conduct of hostilities far from their shores. Therefore, it is not strange that the command of the Anglo-French troops decided to motivate the sailors and officers by paying them a salary much higher than during other military operations. It should be noted that in the British army all servicemen were paid exclusively in gold. Fodder and related cargoes were delivered to the place of hostilities exclusively by sea. The ships passed the Mediterranean and the Sea of Marmara and only then fell into the Black Sea.
It was this route that was launched in 1853 by the English ship "Black Prince".
At the time of hostilities, the "Black Prince" was one of the most advanced and technologically sophisticated types of British ships that were in service with the British troops. The propeller-driven sailing frigate was used to transport various cargo: winter clothing, engineering equipment, medicines or soldiers. On his last voyage, in addition to accompanying cargo, the ship also carried all the salaries of the British army who fought against the Russian Empire.
Horrible storm
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On November 27, 1854, a terrible storm, in its strength, suddenly began on the Black Sea. According to historical data, 17 British ships sank in Balaklava Bay alone that day.
The ships were torn off the anchors and thrown with great force on the coastal rocks. According to the recollections of one of the surviving sailors, the ships were thrown by waves to a height of 10 meters and then they crashed against stones. "Black Prince" after hitting the coastal rocks split into two parts and sank in less than 10 minutes. Only 6 crew members of 150 people managed to escape from this hell.
The consequences of this assault were dire for the military power of the allies in the Crimea. For a short time, all hostilities against the army of the Russian Empire completely stopped. The losses of the British and French navies were terrible.
The British Admiralty immediately began receiving dispatches about the terrible storm in the Black Sea and its consequences for the British fleet. The commandant of the Balaklava port urgently sends a report to the capital to Admiral Lyens. An interesting fact is that, despite the huge losses, he only reports that the Black Prince ship sank, and does not mention the rest of the losses. Such excitement around the ship, according to various researchers, is justified by the fact that the treasury of the British army was on board, which amounted to about five hundred thousand pounds sterling in gold.
Immediately after the end of the war, various searches for the sunken ship began. At least 15 large foreign expeditions were sent to the Black Sea to conduct prospecting work. Unfortunately, all searches were in vain.
Dzerzhinsky expedition
The Russian Empire ceased to exist in 1918. A new state, the Soviet Union, appeared on the world map. The first years of the young state were burdened not only with political problems, but also with economic turmoil. The 20s of the last century turned out to be very difficult for the USSR. There was a shortage of food throughout the territory of Soviet Russia, and famine began in some regions of the country.
In such a difficult situation, the country's leadership needs to concentrate all finances as much as possible on overcoming difficulties. In 1924, Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky meets with an English engineer who claims that he knows where His Majesty's ship sank. He offers Dzerzhinsky to conduct a search operation using a special deep-sea vehicle, which he himself designed for this. Dzerzhinsky made a decision in this situation immediately. He issued a special decree, according to which it follows that a special station should be created in Crimea to study the possibilities of creating deep-sea underwater vehicles that can not only explore the seabed, but also conduct offensive combat operations against surface targets of alleged enemies. Subsequently, the research group was reorganized into a secret unit of the Soviet troops, called EPRON.
Work in Crimea
The newly created unit was to be subordinate to a special department of the OGPU, the project was directly supervised by Genrikh Yagoda. As a matter of urgency, progressive engineers capable of developing non-standard underwater vehicles were deployed to the Crimea. All actions of the formed unit were classified. It is reliably known that on September 9, 1923, prospecting work began in Balaklava Bay. Initial searches were carried out with the help of a military minesweeper, the Ender barge and several small boats, which, with the help of metal detectors, explored the bottom of the bay. Also in the operation, hydroplanes and balloons were used, which carried out a detailed photograph of the bay water area from the sky.
Engineer Danilenko designed a unique deep-sea vehicle equipped with a searchlight on a manipulator, telephone communication and an emergency lifting system to the surface. The very first dive allowed the team of researchers to reach a depth of 95 m, further amendments and improvements made it possible for Soviet scientists to dive to a depth of 130 m. The members of the expedition believed that it would be easy to find the sunken ship, because at that time it was the only iron ship that died in a terrible hurricane. The search lasted over a year. However, no evidence or wreckage of the ship was found in the water area of the bay.
In 1927, a fragment of the ship's wooden equipment was discovered with the inscription "… ck Prince". The find made a real splash in the Soviet press. There is even information that a small table was made from the found wreck of the ship, which was presented to Menzhinsky himself, who served as head of the OGPU. However, most modern scientists believe that this find is just a skillful falsification. In fact, the sunken ship was called "Prince", and the epithet "black" was coined by newspapermen describing the tragedy and loss of the British military treasury.
The period from 1926 to 1928 can be safely called a failure in the history of the operation. Various items belonging to British ships were raised from the bottom of the sea. Among them were jewelry, but the gold from the "Black Prince" was not found. The expedition was threatened with complete collapse and as a result of persecution by the special services of the Soviet Union. However, in 1928 the government of the USSR invites specialists from the Japanese company Shinkai Kogioesio Limited.
Representatives of the OGPU sell the Japanese a license to prospect for gold for 70,000 rubles. In April of the same year, literally a few weeks after the start of the Japanese search operation, it was possible to find the metal frame of the vessel without identification data, and not far from it, an English coin of 1821 minted in gold. These were the coins that were on board the Black Prince. Further searches have yielded no results. In 1929, the Japanese ended their search. They left the USSR the exact coordinates of the unidentified ship skeleton found.
The operation was then hastily completed. EPRON employees are assigned to different sites.
An unexpected continuation
In 1936, an article was published on the sunken ship "Prince", the author of the article is the famous satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko. In his work, he does not use sarcasm, sketches or jokes, on the contrary, Zoshchenko behaves like a real, meticulous researcher. The most interesting thing is that this article details all the names of the employees who participated in the expedition, the dates and results of underwater research. While in the country there are massive cleansing of unreliable and repressions, some author calmly operates with such classified data. This leads to some suspicion and makes you want to understand this situation more specifically.
Most likely, Zoshchenko was instructed by the USSR special services to write an article. The question: why the special services needed this will remain unanswered until all the archives of the NKVD are declassified.
Parallel theory
There is also a theory according to which the British in 1856 were able to lift gold from a sunken ship. Indeed, after the catastrophe of 1854, the British expeditionary force was in Crimea for several more years. According to Zoshchenko's research, the Black Prince ship was de-anchored and carried by waves to the rocks that were not far from the coast. The ship was wrecked in shallow water, so the British leisurely prepared equipment for a shallow dive and evacuated all the treasures.
This theory is quite interesting, but the public can get an answer to it only after the secret archives of the British Admiralty for the 19th century are declassified.
