The Elysium, for those who don’t know, was a commercial steam freighter in the Mayfield Star Lines fleet, launched in the summer of 1887. She ran aground the next year and I’ve been lucky enough to secure some of the salvage rights to have a poke around the old wreck! The shipping logs from just before the wreck of the Elysium have her down as carrying a lot of gold in ingots, as well as some machine parts – but it’s the ingots I’m interested in! In today’s money they’d be worth well in excess of ten million pounds.
So far I’ve only completed one successful dive – by which I mean I was able to locate the wreck and gain entry inside it. It took a few goes just to get close, let me tell you!
The Elysium was a working cargo ship, not a passenger liner, so would have been pretty basic even when it was new. However, although this isn’t on a par of finding the Titanic, what there is left seems to be in pretty good order. Some of the pictures I’ve taken are a bit hard to make out – it’s very silty round the wreck, but you can see the prow and some of the interior of the captain’s cabin if you look carefully.
There’s some debate among the diving community about whether the gold ingots really were on board, or if the whole thing was an insurance scam – and I love a good debate! In fact you could say I like to dive right into one! I firmly believe the gold is real and is still on board, but so far I’ve only been able to find a few artifacts – some pottery and what have you. These are currently on loan to a touring exhibition about the career and wreck of The Elysium, and it should be an interesting day out for all aficionados of the sea!
I am attempting a new dive in the next month, once I receive the new lighting and scanning equipment I am waiting for. I hope to have lots of news about my discoveries so be sure to check back soon!
