The history of the search for the legendary Black Prince frigate once again shows how the mysterious "witchcraft" power of gold bewitches people.
In the fall of 1854, the sworn "friends" of Russia? England and France, alarmed by her successes in the war with Turkey, landed their troops in the Crimea. For the transportation of the expeditionary force, its supply with ammunition, weapons and food, only England chartered more than 200 ships of private companies, among which was the sail-screw frigate "Prince".
Mysterious spell
The ship was launched on the River Thames in 1854. "Prince", as he was probably called "black" by English soldiers who did not receive their salaries on time, or the romantic gold hunters of the frigate. In November 1854, together with other ships, the ship arrived at Balaklava. On November 14, during a hurricane of unprecedented strength, the Prince was smashed to pieces near the steep coastal cliffs.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, even the steam boat "Hero", which runs daily between Yalta and Alupka, did not enter Balaklava, a remote fishing town in the south of the Crimean peninsula. However, in the fall of 1901, a huge steamer "Genoa" came to the narrow-necked, winding and long Balaklava Bay. Soon all the inhabitants of the town knew that the Italians wanted to find the remains of the Black Prince frigate and its legendary cargo - barrels of gold sovereigns to pay salaries to British servicemen in Crimea.
The Balaklava residents believed that a mysterious spell was hanging over the frigate's cargo. Even their iron and proud fathers and grandfathers from the heroic battalion, who stood to death near Sevastopol, and the local legendary diver Spiro, who can stay under water for 15 minutes, could not lift it! The memory of him is preserved in the name of one of the types of scuba gear. Where are the Italians and the current small fry here? According to rumors, there was £ 200,000 worth of gold on board the frigate. Fabulous wealth haunted many inventors, divers and engineers. They flooded the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Russia with letters and projects with proposals to raise the Black Prince's gold.
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Treasure hunters
The search for the "Black Prince" began immediately after the end of the Crimean War. The Americans, Norwegians and Germans were looking for him. In 1875, French divers searched the bottom of Balaklava Bay and approaches to it, found more than 10 ships, but the "Black Prince" was not among them. The primitive diving technique of that time made it possible to work only at depths of up to 80 meters. The inventor of the deep-sea apparatus Giuseppe Restucci sailed on "Genoa". On the first descent of the Italian diver Salvador Tram, almost all the boats of the town gathered at the White Stones, menacingly sticking out of the water at the entrance to the bay. The fishermen watched attentively as the diver squeezed sideways into a heavy copper, standing upright and folding like the shutters of a snail's shell, "case" with three portholes. The sailors fussed over it for a long time to ensure the tightness of the connectionshanging all sorts of devices. A long steam winch crane lifted him off the deck and slowly lowered him into the water on a steel rope. The diver himself could not move. Looking around, he gave commands by phone, and for 20 minutes he was moved along the bottom. Then the "case" was lifted onto the deck, the sailors quickly unscrewed the nuts of the connections, and between its doors a sweaty Tram emerged, with a miserable semblance of a smile on his dark face, almost black from the rush of blood.face almost black with blood.face almost black with blood.
A few weeks later, the Italians still found the iron hull of a large ship. The anchor, the rifle, the box of bullets, pieces of iron were raised, but no trace of gold. In the spring they left Balaklava, and two years later they began searching again. We found another iron ship, but again without gold. All the seekers of the frigate ran up a lot of money in search of him and left with nothing. And in 1922, an amateur diver from Balaklava raised several gold coins from the bottom of the sea at the entrance to the bay, and the excitement around the "Black Prince" flared up again.
Formation of EPRON
In 1923, engineer V. S. Yazykov came to the OGPU and said that for many years he had studied the circumstances of the death of the English squadron, was ready to begin work on raising the Black Prince's gold, and presented a thick folder of documents. He believed that among the victims of the hurricane, the frigate was the only iron ship, and it would not be difficult to find it. In March EPRON - Special Purpose Underwater Expedition was organized. Engineer E. G. Danilenko created a deep-sea apparatus that allows you to inspect the bottom at depths of up to 160 meters, which has a "mechanical arm" and a searchlight. The crew consisted of three people.
While the apparatus was being built, old-timers - eyewitnesses of the storm were found and interviewed, but no one could indicate the exact place of the frigate's death. The search area was divided into squares and unsuccessfully searched for "Prince" in the spring and summer of 1924. In September, we began to inspect the underwater rocks west of the entrance to the bay. They found many fragments of wooden ships: masts, yards, pieces of boards and beams, worn out by worms and overgrown with shells. In October, the doctor EPRON K. A. Pavlovsky conducted training descents with young divers to the east of the entrance to the bay. On October 17, one of them discovered an iron box sticking out of the ground. The find was an old cube-shaped steam boiler. Having carefully surveyed the area, we found scattered and half-washed fragments of a steam engine and pieces of iron under the rubble of rocks that had fallen from the coastal cliffs,part of the side with portholes and a hand grenade, bullets and several bombs, copper hoops from barrels, etc.
Search costs were rising. Was it worth continuing to work without reliable information about the presence of gold on the ship? The Soviet embassy in London requested the British Admiralty to load the frigate. Referring to the prescription and the laws of the country, the British did not report anything specific, and, according to the official version, EPRON decided to stop working. At this time, the Soviet government received an offer from the Japanese diving firm Sitai Kogyoshio Limited.
Japanese embarrassment
A well-known and successful company offered 110,000 rubles for the work performed by EPRON to search for the remains of the ship and covered all further expenses. The Japanese thought that the "Black Prince" had been found and hoped to raise his gold without too much trouble. According to the concluded agreement, it was divided between EPRON and the company in the ratio of 60% and 40%, respectively. The Japanese also had to acquaint Soviet divers with their deep-sea equipment, and after the completion of the work, give them one copy of it.
Every day, seven divers and five divers lifted and pulled dozens of large boulders with the help of steam winches. The Japanese did not find the middle part of the ship, all other parts of the hull were carefully examined. The result of two months of their exhausting labor: five gold coins (two English, one French and two Turkish), bullets, an officer's saber, horseshoes, a lock, two forks and spoons each, an 1848 galoshes and leather soles. In November 1927 the firm ceased operations. The Japanese decided that the British, who were in Balaklava for eight months after the hurricane, were able to quietly lift the barrels of gold from the Black Prince without advertising it.
Was there gold?
Alexander Suvorov, apparently, had every reason to say that intendants who had worked in supplying the troops for several years could be shot without trial. They are the same in all countries. Historians ignore the fact that all cargo was delivered to Balaklava under the sanction of the superintendent of the British Expeditionary Force from Constantinople according to the request of the Commander-in-Chief of the Crimea Corps. The lists of soldiers who died in battles, from diseases and epidemics, always differed from the actual losses. A considerable difference in the maintenance of "dead souls" remained in the hands of the brave guys of the quartermaster service, which manipulated money, weapons and uniforms for the corps soldiers.
On the eve of the coming winter alone, the cargo of the "Black Prince" consisted of tens of thousands of sleeping bags, fur coats and woolen shirts, boots and other clothing. The profitability of fraud with such large volumes of supply is clear. Such an eloquent fact is also suggestive. In an effort to take possession of the underwater treasure, many countries have suffered losses. And England did not even try to get a license for the right to conduct work on the search for one of its best frigates and its cargo. Apparently, the most reliable version of the "mysterious disappearance" of barrels of gold coins on the "Black Prince" simply did not exist! And about where and how they “mysteriously” disappeared, those “who needed” knew perfectly well.
True, there is a version that EPRON employees found gold, raised it and inflated the Japanese, wanting to get the latest deep-sea diving equipment. But, if so, the secret of these works is hidden under the heading "Top secret". After all, the Japanese never found the middle part of the ship's hull, while others showed traces of artificial destruction, that is, someone had already searched before them. It should be added that the treasure hunters could not identify any of the lost ships they found and examined. And no one knows if the "Black Prince" was among them, or is he with his legendary cargo still lying somewhere on the seabed?
Source: "Secrets of the XX century". Valery Kukarenko