SHIPWRECK TREASURE HMS Athenienne Sank 1806AD Silver 8 Reales (Dollar) Spain Charles IIII 1803AD

SHIPWRECK TREASURE HMS Athenienne Sank 1806AD Silver 8 Reales (Dollar) Spain Charles IIII 1803AD

39mm, 26.81g

HMS ATHENIENNE 64 cannons; Taken at the surrender of Valetta on 4 September 1800. Wrecked in 1806. With 470 officers, men and passengers on board she sailed from Gibraltar on 16 October with a fair wind and arrived off Sardinia on the 20th. She set course for Malta and, moments after the captain remarked ‘if the Esquerques shoals do exist we should now be upon them,’ she struck on Keith’s Reef, part of the volcanic shoal in the channel between Sardinia, Sicily and Africa which had been discovered and named by Capt. William DURBAN. It was about 9.30 in the evening and the ship was doing about 5 knots. In less than half an hour she had filled up to the lower deck ports and fell over on her beam-ends. The captain ordered the boats to be hoisted out but as soon as the two quarter-boats were lowered the men in them made off and were seen no more. Thirty men perished when the cutter and barge were stove in and swamped and several were killed by falling masts and booms. A number managed to escape in the launch and, the following morning, fell in with a Danish brig. When they returned to the wreck they found that the remaining 347, including Capt. RAYNSFORD, had perished during the night. Although the launch had neither sail, food or water, the survivors managed to reach Trapani in Sicily where they found a small vessel bound for Malta which they reached on the 25th.