"Balchin's" HMS Victory

HMS Victory vanished with 1,100 men and gold worth £700million.
Her disappearance caused more of a shocked sensation in her day than that of the Titanic.
When she was launched in 1737, armed with more than 100 shiny bronze cannons, the warship was considered to be the most technically advanced ship in the British Navy.
The great warship, the immediate predecessor to Nelson's Victory, had been 11 years in the building. She weighed a mammoth 1,921 tons and measured 174 feet from prow to stern, so large that 'on board it was like being in a floating village', according to one military historian.
And then, one autumn night in 1744, during a terrible gale in the English Channel, she simply vanished.
The screaming winds, the stinging rain and the towering storm-waves were remorseless: every one of the 1,100 officers and men on board drowned. The cold, grey waters closed over their bodies and over the wreckage of the ship, as if they had never even been there.
With no survivors to tell the story of the shipwreck, the sinking of HMS Victory has for hundreds of years been one of the great unsolved maritime mysteries. Where had they gone?
Speculation in the 18th century was especially fevered, and not just because of the enormous loss of life. For this was a tale in which treasure was involved. Filthy gold lucre - and masses of it. HMS Victory's hold was said to be stashed with gold when she went down.
Contemporary reports suggested she was carrying as much as £400,000 of gold coins, en route from Lisbon to merchants in Holland, which could be worth as much as £700million today.
The ship was the predecessor to Admiral Lord Nelson's own Victory
And now, 265 years after she was claimed by the sea, the wreckage of the great warship has been discovered by the world's most successful marine treasure hunters, Odyssey Marine
Exploration, sparking huge controversy from marine archaeologists, who are concerned that Odyssey may put their commercial interests ahead of a thorough and responsible salvage operation.
The American company happened upon the ship last spring and have since spent some months investigating the underwater remains - understandably, in conditions of utmost secrecy.
HMS Victory was the fifth and penultimate warship to bear this illustrious name, and she was returning home from a successful trip to Portugal when she disappeared.
In March 1744 she had been sent to liberate a convoy carrying supplies required by the Mediterranean fleet fighting the War of the Austrian Succession and which had been blockaded by the French down the River Tagus in Lisbon.
HMS Victory saw off the French, escorted the convoy as far as Gibraltar and then set sail for England.
She was under the command of Admiral Sir John Balchin, a highly respected figure who was brought out of retirement to make this, his last and fateful voyage. At 74, he had notched up 58 years of service, been twice captured by the French and appointed to Admiral of the White, the second highest naval ranking.
But what happened to the Victory meant that some believed he was partly to blame for her loss.
Parts of wreckage - fragments, furnishings and so on, said to be ' unmistakably' from the ship - were subsequently washed ashore on the Channel Islands, which meant people assumed she was holed on the Casquets, a lethal group of rocks north-west of Alderney, which in sailing circles are known as 'the graveyard of the English Channel'.
HMS Victory should not have been in these waters, so this theory called into question the competence of her navigator and the Admiral - as well as local lighthouse crews.
Significantly, Alderney's lighthouse keeper was court-martialled for supposedly failing to keep the lights on during those first days in October. Ever since she sank, the search for her remains have concentrated on this area of sea off Alderney.
But now Odyssey says the Victory is actually lying on the seabed some 60 miles away from the rocks - exactly where they will not say, for fear that looters will move in.
The discovery is not only exciting treasure seekers, but also military historians eager to see what secrets HMS Victory will give up.
It was during an exploration of the Channel last April that the company first identified the site when their magnetometer - an instrument that locates deposits of iron and thus shipwrecks - gave an interesting reading.
More investigations using a remotely operated robot found that the seabed was strewn with wreckage that included wooden planks, iron ballast, two anchors, a copper cooking kettle, rigging, two gunners' wheels, bones, part of a skeleton including a skull, and 41 bronze cannons.
It was these cannons, with dolphin-like handles and emblazoned with the royal coat of arms, that gave the strongest suggestion that the lost wreck of the Victory had been discovered. In October, two of these, a 12-pounder and a huge 42-pounder, described as 'the nuclear deterrent of its day', were recovered.
Because the Victory was the last British warship to go down with a full complement of guns, the cannon are a significant discovery. But a more detailed exploration promises to reveal even more about life on board the flagship.
'The most important find of the 20th and 21st centuries'
Sean Kingsley, a marine archaeologist and director of Wreck Watch International, says: 'For English maritime history, Odyssey's discovery of the tragic wreck of HMS Victory is the most important of the 20th and 21st century.
No other first-rate Royal Navy warship of 100 guns and three decks has ever been scientifically studied. She is the naval equivalent of the Titanic.
With her loss, the Royal Navy ushered in a broad suite of nautical revolutions from swifter coppered hulls to 100 per cent more efficient chain pumps, and even lightning conductors on masts.
It is one of history's great ironies that if Balchin's Victory hadn't been wrecked in 1744, we wouldn't have had Nelson's Victory, military supremacy at the Battle of Trafalgar, or perhaps even a Britain that was great.'
Adds one of Odyssey's archaeologists: 'There are millions and millions of artefacts, buttons, tools, navigational instruments. It will be a time capsule, a slice of life in the Georgian navy.' Perhaps a careful examination of the wreckage will also reveal the reason why the ship sank.
We already know that compared to Nelson's HMS Victory, which was similar but not identical in build, this Victory was not only highly ornate but also very top heavy.
She protruded farther out of the water, giving her a higher centre of gravity and making her unstable. Might she, then, have keeled over after being battered by a heavy storm?
It has also been suggested that the wood from which she was built in Portsmouth was not properly seasoned - some of her deck supports had to be replaced at a later date - and that rotting wood may have been partly to blame for the tragedy.
As for the presence of any gold and what will happen to it; that remains to be seen.
Odyssey say they have been negotiating with the Ministry of Defence over whether they can continue to examine the site and, if so, whether they will be able to reach a deal like the one made for HMS Sussex in 2002, when it was agreed that Odyssey would finance the costs of excavating in return for a share in the profits. The cannons alone are thought to be worth around £30,000 each.
Investors certainly think there could be a lucrative deal in the offing - shares in the Florida-based company shot up by 32 per cent this week after they revealed news of the find.
To many historians, who believe that such finds should be left undisturbed, all this is sacrilege - but either way, the site should throw light on one of the greatest tragedies in our naval history.
Treasure Quest: Victory Special begins on Sunday on the Discovery Channel at 9pm. Not to be missed.