Black prince ship balaclava. Crimean War. The Secret of the "Black Prince"

Crimea is a real treasure peninsula. Frequent migrations and numerous wars have led to the fact that everywhere - in the ground, in the mountains, in the sea, you can stumble upon a treasure. One of them rests at the bottom of the Balaklava Bay, where on November 14, 1854, the English propeller-sailing frigate Prince was wrecked. Since then, for more than a century and a half, British gold has made treasure hunters worry, argue and hope.

During the Crimean War, the British government chartered more than two hundred merchant ships owned by private European companies to transport people and ammunition. In the autumn of 1854, the frigate "Prince", among others, set off from Foggy Albion to the far southern coast of Crimea.

The ships carried winter clothes, weapons, provisions, medicines and other cargo that would allow the allies to continue military operations in winter conditions.

On November 8, ships dropped anchor in the roadstead in Balaklava Bay. The weather was not happy before, and on November 14 the sea was agitated in earnest. Black clouds crawled across the sky, the sun disappeared, the wind came up, and a storm began that no one had seen for a long time.

Ships were thrown from side to side like chips. A heavy downpour, accompanied by hail the size of an egg, turned into a heavy snowfall. Anchors were not kept. An eyewitness who observed this storm near Balaklava wrote:

The air was literally filled with blankets, caps, overcoats, frock coats and even tables and chairs. Mackintoshes, rubber dishes, bed linen, tent canvas, circling in the air, rushed along the valley towards Sevastopol. The roof of Raglan's house was torn off and flattened on the ground. Barns and commissariat sheds were completely destroyed and razed to the ground.

Five-pound bales of compressed hay swirled on the ground. Barrels of rum rolled around the camp, bouncing on the rocks. Large carts not far from us were overturned, and people and horses, knocked down, rolled helplessly on the ground.

A large herd of rams rushed along the road to Sevastopol and completely died under the blows of a tornado, which tore out of the ground and scattered whole rows of beautiful tall poplars that sheltered the Balaklava gorge that cherished them.

It seemed that nature itself took up arms against the allied troops, who were trying in an unequal struggle to break the resistance of the defense of Sevastopol. On the coastal cliffs of Balaklava, 34 ships found their death. The 100-gun French battleship Henry IV, the 90-gun Turkish Peiki-Messeret, and 3 steam corvettes perished near Evpatoria.

Prior to this, the countries participating in the anti-Russian coalition had never suffered such losses before. The damage caused by a hurricane could be equated with a defeat in a major naval battle. By the way, all Russian ships survived thanks to the favorable location of the Sevastopol Bay.

The shocked emperor of France, Napoleon III, ordered the leading astronomer W. Le Verrier to create an effective weather forecast service. Three months after the storm, the first forecast map appeared in Balaklava - a prototype of those that we see today in the news, and a year later thirteen weather stations were launched in France.

While the coalition troops were counting their losses, the newspapers wrote about the terrible tragedy in the Black Sea. On December 16, 1854, the Illustrated London News reported:

Among the goods accepted by the "Prince" were things: 36,700 pairs of woolen socks, 53,000 woolen shirts, 2,500 guard coats, 16,000 sheets, 3,750 blankets. In addition, you can still name the number of sleeping bags - 15,000 pieces, woolen shirts - 100,000, flannel pants - 90,000 pairs, about 40,000 blankets and 40,000 waterproof hats, 40,000 fur coats and 120,000 pairs of boots.

Human losses were also colossal - about 1,500 people. Only one "Prince" missed 500 soldiers. The losses were so huge that the British government preferred to hide their true scale from their subjects.

For the time being, the general public did not even know about the valuable cargo that was on the "Prince". But, as they say, the earth is full of rumors. The Crimean campaign had not yet ended, as reports began to appear in the press, as if some valuable cargo had gone to the bottom along with the “Prince”.

It turns out that, along with the prosaic soldier's underpants and socks, there was money on board the ship intended to pay salaries to British soldiers in the Crimea - dozens of kegs filled to the brim with gold coins.

True, information differed about the value of the precious cargo: 200 thousand pounds, a million pounds, 500 thousand francs. By the end of the 19th century, the figure of 60 million francs most often appeared in magazine and newspaper publications.

By the way, by the same time, a curious metamorphosis occurred with the name of the sunken ship. The ubiquitous journalists, as a matter of personal initiative, added the intriguing epithet “black” to the word “prince”. Since then, the famous ship began to bear a name that it never bore.

Rumors about countless treasures resting at the bottom of the Black Sea very soon attracted enterprising treasure hunters to Balaklava. Only in the second half of the 19th century, expeditions from the USA, Germany and Norway visited here.

In France, in 1875, a joint-stock company with a rather large fixed capital was formed specifically for the search for British gold. However, treasure hunters suffered one setback after another. No one could find not only gold, but even the sunken ship itself. However, the diving technique of that time left much to be desired.

Only at the beginning of the 20th century, the Italians made a breakthrough and created a special deep-sea suit - a thick-walled copper box with three portholes and holes for hands, lowered down on a strong steel cable.

With its help, Italian divers discovered the broken hull of an iron ship. After a thorough examination of the ship, the Italians enriched themselves with a spyglass, a rifle, a box of bullets and a lot of different small things.

Anchors and chains recovered from the wreck of English ships

The search for gold resumed in 1922, when one of the local divers found several gold coins at the bottom at the entrance to Balaklava Bay. And at the beginning of 1923, engineer V. Yazykov appeared in Moscow in the United Main Political Directorate (OGPU).

For fifteen years, he collected bit by bit information about the "Prince", beat many thresholds with a request to organize an expedition, but, oddly enough, he found support only from the Chekists. Soon, an order was signed at Lubyanka on the creation of an expedition for special-purpose underwater work (EPRON) under the Special Department of the OGPU of the USSR.

Chekists enthusiastically began to prepare for the search for treasures. Genrikh Yagoda personally supervised the construction of the deep-sea vehicle. The design for three people, equipped with a telephone, a searchlight and a mechanical manipulator for capturing cargo, was made in three months. It turned out to be much more difficult to collect information about the Black Prince and its cargo: the British and Italians stubbornly kept silent.

At its own peril and risk, in the fall of 1923, EPRON began work in Balaklava Bay. On September 2 and 9, a deep-sea vehicle was lowered to the bottom, where a lot of ship wreckage was found, but it was not possible to find at least something similar to an English frigate.

Before the dive, 1923

And yet the Chekists did not give up. Finally, in October 1924, luck smiled at them - they found a steam boiler. After that, they set to work with redoubled energy, but apart from a hand grenade, a washstand and other nonsense, they did not find anything.

In December 1924, work had to be curtailed. Funds - 100 thousand rubles did not pay off. But there is no evil without good. Soon, the Japanese diving company Shinkai Kogiossio Limited became interested in English gold. The Japanese promised EPRON 110 thousand rubles for searches on the sunken ship and 60 percent of the gold that was supposed to be recovered from the Black Prince.

In addition, they promised to teach Soviet divers the intricacies of their trade and to transfer samples of Japanese diving equipment to the Epronians. The Chekists found the conditions acceptable and signed the contract. In the summer of 1927, the Japanese arrived in Balaklava.

Every day, 12 divers and divers descended to the bottom. Finally, they freed the ship from the rubble, but then they were disappointed. If the remains of the bow and stern parts of the ship's hull loomed quite clearly, then the middle part (where there could be gold) fell through the ground.

The Japanese trophy turned out to be more than modest: a rusty lock, galoshes, two forks, a spoon, a wheel hub, and several horseshoes. Finally, their labors were rewarded - they brought to the surface an English sovereign coined in 1821. Then there were four more of the same coins and nothing more. Since then, resilient optimists have been combing the bottom of the Balaklava Bay, but no one is given gold in their hands.

Materials of the article by Lyubov Sharova, magazine "Steps", No. 1, 2015

No one knows where the treasures from the ship are and why they haven't been found yet. Photo: akwamir.uol.ua

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Our peninsula is rich in legends, and one of the most beautiful is about the treasures of the Black Prince. There are 2,500 ships sunk in the Black Sea on the state register in Ukraine, and until last year, the valuable cargo of this British ship was officially listed among other treasures and treasures in the register of underwater archeology. More than 150 years have passed since his death, but even today, from May to September, diving boats leave the Balaklava berths almost every day, divers are looking for the shine of yellow metal in the depths of the sea. And each of the local residents will swear on anything that the gold of the "Black Prince" is still there and waiting for its discoverer.

Legend of the Black Prince

Among the ships of the Anglo-French squadron that died in 1854 during the Balaklava storm was the English three-masted screw steamer "Prince", which became the most expensive loss of England in this storm. The ship for the middle of the XIX century was a very large ship with a displacement of 2710 tons. The main dimensions of the frigate - 300 feet long and 43 wide - is about three football fields. The ship was fast enough, sailing speed reached 13-14 knots. The crew - 150 people, the frigate could take 200 passengers. The ship had comfortable first and second class cabins with bedrooms and bathrooms!

In fact, the famous ship was simply called Prince ("Prince"), and the definition of "black", with which it went down in history, was later received through the efforts of journalists and writers.

On a cold November 1854, the loaded "Prince" entered the Black Sea. Ammunition, military equipment, a supply of warm clothes for the army, medicines for hospitals in Balaklava were carried in the holds of the ship. The ship was also loaded with an electric telegraph and a secret underwater weapon to undermine Russian ships. And most importantly, the ship carried money in gold - a salary for the British army. On the morning of November 8, the frigate arrived at the outer roadstead of Balaklava Bay. During an attempt to anchor (the depth of the anchorage is 55 meters), one after the other, both anchors went to the bottom along with the chains. "Prince" was tied to the stern of the ship Jason, which stood nearby. The next day, the frigate did put on one spare anchor.

terrible storm

November 14, 1854 at 07.30 in front of the southeast hurricane on the outer roads near the entrance to the Balaklava Bay were 24 ships. "Prince" stood in line for the approach to the pier. A strong wind began to blow the ship to a rocky shore. The ships slammed against each other so that some of them nearly sank from the damage. The attempt of the captain of the "Prince" to keep the ship at one anchor, working with the engine, failed. Having lost the anchor, the ship drifted with its bow into the open sea. During the drift, the frigate collided with another ship and received several damages. Seeing the inevitable death of the ship, the captain gave the order to the crew to escape. The ship's hull withstood the first collision with rocks, but after 5-6 blows the frigate crashed. According to eyewitnesses, the impacts on the rocks lasted 10-15 minutes, they say that the ship split in half. Six sailors and a junior officer escaped from the crew.

The cost of the steamer alone was estimated at many thousands of pounds sterling. The English army suffered enormous damage, having lost warm clothes. Sickness and death from cold after the storm on November 14 became commonplace in the British camp. English doctors were left without medicines, which went to the bottom of the Black Sea along with the "Prince".

The sinking of the ship was seen by many people. Eyewitnesses-artists even painted several canvases. Hundreds of sailors from the crews of ships who were more fortunate, soldiers of the garrison and just civilians fled to the hills in the area of ​​​​the Genoese fortress to somehow help the drowning. And ... not a single document where at least the approximate place of the death of the "Prince" would be recorded. Of course, the fragments of the hull could not sink immediately and be carried a long distance from the crash site. Thus the legend was born. The legend of inaccessible gold.

And the gold rush began

The war had not yet ended, and rumors spread around the world that an English frigate with a cargo of gold, intended to pay salaries to the troops, had died off the coast of the Crimea. Almost immediately after the conclusion of peace, the search for the remains of the "Prince" began. Italian, French, Japanese, Norwegian divers were looking for gold. But diving work at that time was at a low level. A special bell was invented, in which a diver-observer was lowered, but it was impossible to work normally in it. After the appearance of the first suit, the search intensified. In France, in 1875, a joint-stock company was established with significant capital to raise the treasures of the "Prince". The French found about 10 broken ships, but they did not find the gold of the sunken frigate.

In 1901, an Italian expedition led by engineer Giuseppe Restucci, the inventor of the underwater vehicle, arrived in Balaklava. It is known for sure that the Italians found a heavy sealed box, a spyglass, a broken rifle, and pieces of iron. In the box, which was opened with great trepidation and difficulty, there were lead bullets. The underwater vehicle was extremely inconvenient, it was impossible to move in it: the diver was moved along the bottom with the help of cables according to his signals. Moreover, all underwater work was carried out lying on his stomach. The ascent and descent of the "devilish projectile" lasted an hour and a half. A barely alive, emaciated man was raised to the surface. Not surprisingly, the treasure hunt again failed. After the departure of the Italians, a real gold rush began. The idea that barrels of gold lie somewhere nearby haunted adventurers and inventors.

Foreigner Herman Molvo received permission to raise treasures, he explored Balaklava Bay for three years, after his death, his son Friedrich continued the search. The Ministry of Trade and Industry of Russia received many more applications from Russian and foreign citizens and organizations asking for permission to raise the treasures of the "Prince". But the case dragged on, and the mystery of the sunken gold was never solved.

In the first years of Soviet power, the famous Special Purpose Underwater Expedition, EPRON, was formed on the initiative of Dzerzhinsky to search for and raise this treasure. Especially for this expedition, engineer Danilenko created a project for a deep-sea projectile that could be lowered to a depth of 160 meters. Air through the hose was supposed to be supplied to the bell, which could contain three divers, the other hose was used for ventilation. Inside the projectile, electric lighting and a telephone were provided. The device had retractable "hands" with two "fingers". While the apparatus was being built, the expedition carried out preparatory work in Balaklava. A great many remains of wooden and metal ships, a cast-iron steam boiler, a steamship chimney, two portholes, a hand grenade, a medical mortar, several bombs, a washstand from an officer's cabin, lead bullets, a pack of hospital slippers and many anchors of the British type were found. As of December 1924, the total expenses of the Soviet expedition to search for the "Prince" amounted to 100,000 rubles, and work was suspended due to the lack of archival information that there really were valuables on board the frigate. Nevertheless, the expedition was of great importance for the country. At the bottom of the sea lay a lot of interesting things besides the treasures of the "Prince", and the expedition switched to raising these valuables from the bottom of the Balaklava and Sevastopol bays. EPRON has acquired rich experience in diving operations. The expedition was given a new task of raising large ships and submarines sunk in 1920. And, to the delight of scientists, they opened the first pages of underwater archaeological research of the Black Sea.

As for the search for the "Prince", it was decided to transfer this work to the famous Japanese company "Shinkai Kogiossio Limited". In 1927, this company gave a master class - held demonstration work in Sevastopol. Japanese divers amazed everyone with their skill. They worked at a depth of more than a hundred meters only in glass masks covering the diver's eyes and nose, without special suits and apparatus. Air was pumped through a hose, the diver inhaled through his nose and, without opening his lips, exhaled into the water through his mouth. The diver could be at great depths up to 10 minutes without harm to himself. The ascent and descent took place without any delay, and thanks to special breathing, decompression sickness did not occur. When the Japanese expedition began work, it was assumed that the burial place of the "Prince" had been found. The remains of the ship were littered with collapsed soil. It was necessary to clear the fragments of the ship from many tons of rocks. September 12, 1927 came. At about 4 pm the sea was calm. Two divers were lowered to the bottom, but less than ten minutes later they signaled to be brought to the surface. The divers explained that something unimaginable was happening at the bottom: the ground was shaking underfoot. This was the beginning of the famous Crimean earthquake, which occurred on the night of September 12-13. At one in the morning there was the first push. But it turns out that even 10 hours before that, divers at the bottom felt vibrations, curtailed work and returned to shore. The earthquake in Balaklava was minor, but the Japanese considered it a bad omen. They took it as a warning from above. The last measure taken by the Japanese firm was the installation of a dredger at the search site. He threw sand, and the divers lifted the stones and everything that came across in bags upstairs. But that didn't work either. The Japanese expedition curtailed work, giving the conclusion: "There is no gold at the bottom."

And for 83 years they did not look for the "Prince". Until 2010, there were three official versions explaining the unsuccessful search for the frigate and its valuable cargo:

1. They were looking in the wrong place. Error of search expeditions in determining the main landmarks of the identification of the "Prince". Archival photographs proved that, in addition to Prince, the steamships Jason, Houp, and Resolute had a metal hull. According to British archival funds, Jason sank eight years later in the waters of India. But there were also Houp and Resolute in the bay.

2. The absence of valuables on board the frigate at the time of its death. Archival research has proven that ammunition, food supplies and especially financial resources were delivered to the battlefields in the Crimea, not directly from Great Britain, but from Istanbul, where at that time the headquarters of the superintendent of the British Expeditionary Forces was located. It is likely that the valuable cargo was removed from the "Prince" in the port of Istanbul, so only ammunition was delivered to Balaklava. The absence of legendary values ​​on the sunken ship is confirmed by the fact that, along with a whole list of states that participated in the search for treasures, the UK did not record a single attempt to obtain a license to carry out underwater work on its own ship.

3. Values ​​were raised by the British back in the Crimean War. Specialists of the Japanese diving company Shinkai Kogiossio Limited, upon completion of the work, made an official statement that the vessel on which they carried out the work was the Prince frigate. However, during the search they failed to find the middle part of the vessel. On the stern and bow of the hull were severe damage inflicted after the death of the ship. Conclusion "Sinkai Kogiossio Limited": the British troops, who remained in Balaklava for another 8 months after the sinking of the ship, raised a valuable cargo even before the end of the Crimean campaign.

A large number of cannonballs, medical glass, shoes, several large-caliber guns, as well as a large number of plates were found at the alleged site of the death of the Prince. On two of them, during the winter laboratory processing, clearly readable marks were found, indicating the shipping company to which the "Prince" belonged. On that November night in 1854, two ships of that shipping company, the Prince and the Yazon, were on the outer roadstead of Balaklava. As you know, "Jason" managed to survive this storm. So these two plates could only belong to the "Prince". So, after 156 years, the real place of the death of the "Black Prince" was put on the map.

On March 23 last year, an official meeting of the leadership of the Department of Underwater Heritage with the military attache of the embassy took place at the Kiev Embassy of Great Britain. The department of our country was officially informed that there were no valuables on board the Prince at the time of his death. The main evidence was a receipt from the plenipotentiary representative of Great Britain in Turkey, assistant chief indent John William Smith, that the money had been withdrawn from the ship in Constantinople. This receipt is kept in the Bank of England. For the first time in 156 years, Britain officially acknowledged the absence of any treasures on board the Prince. So, rather boringly, the epic of searching for the mysterious treasures of the Black Sea ended. The most interesting treasure that existed for a century and a half has been excluded from the register of the underwater heritage of Ukraine. But, I think, no discoveries can exclude these treasures from the hearts and dreams of romantics.

"Izvestia of the CEC" With report: V continuation 1923 - 24 Epron (Special Purpose Underwater Expedition in the Black and Azov Seas), despite the large amount of money and energy expended, could not find the place of the death of the English steamer "Black Prince", which died among many other English and French ships during the assault on November 2 (14) 1854 near Balaklava. Epron, using a diving apparatus of a special design, examined an area of ​​3- 4 square kilometers with depths up to 100 meters. Many fragments of wooden ships were found, but the Black Prince's iron hull was not found. To the right of the exit from Balaclava, a teak mast was found in the sea, the belonging of which to the "Prince" was more or less accurately established.

The expansion of the Epron work program in 1925 did not allow sufficient attention to be paid to the further searches for this ship. However, by late autumn, it was possible to single out a small diving party, which was instructed to survey the coastal strip on both sides of the exit from the bay, where the depths make it possible to work in ordinary diving suits.

On October 17, 1925, quite unexpectedly, to the left of the exit from the bay, almost under the Don tower itself, which is clearly visible from the steamers going to the south coast, at a depth of 17 meters, old steam boilers protruding from the ground and parts of an iron hull set were discovered . After a short excavation, the diving party was convinced that this place was the grave of the legendary steamship: there could be no doubt, since the "Black Prince" is the only steam ship with an iron hull from the entire dead squadron and no other similar ships at the entrance to Balaklava hasn't died since.

Examination of the place of death "Black Prince "indicated that the hull of the steamer, probably broken very thoroughly, was buried under sand and fragments of rocks, which often fell into the sea during fresh weather. The plan for further work on unloading and raising the ship consisted of significant excavation and the release of parts of the ship from under the boulders.This work required significant funds - several hundred thousand rubles.

Although the work to raise the "Black Prince" from a technical point of view did not present any difficulties and was quite simple and easy for our divers, until recently the expedition did not consider it expedient to start them due to the lack of any documents or accurate information about the actual location on this ship a large amount of gold.

Epron did not have surplus funds for this risky operation, and Narkomfin, quite reasonably, did not express a desire to throw away several hundred thousand rubles without any firm certainty of getting gold..

June 20 G. Epron entered into an agreement with the Japanese diving company "Shinkai Kogyoshio Limited", giving her the right to carry out further work on lifting and unloading the ship. Black Prince". On June 28, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR allowed the Japanese company to proceed with the operations provided for by the concluded agreement.

Before the conclusion of the contract, the Japanese company was given the opportunity to survey by its divers the place of the sinking of the steamer indicated by Epron, and therefore Epron does not take any responsibility for the success of the operation undertaken by the Japanese company.

Epron considers it especially valuable to get the opportunity to get acquainted in detail with the procedure and methods of underwater work that the Japanese practice. It should be noted that the technique of underwater work among the Japanese has significant achievements, completely unknown in the West. While in Western Europe the conquest of the sea depths goes along the line of creating rigid diving suits and improving them, the Japanese succeeded, by creating a system of special training for divers, to limit themselves to very simple, but extremely original devices that make it possible to work at great depths with incomparably greater success than we see in the West. Two years ago, Mr. Katbaka, the director of the aforementioned diving company, managed to perform a record-breaking job of salvaging valuables in the amount of up to 12 million rubles from an English steamer sunk by a German submarine during the imperialist war in the Mediterranean Sea, at a depth of about 85 meters.

Despite the short period that has elapsed since the entry into force of the treaty, lifting work, under the leadership of 15 Japanese specialists, began already in early August. The technical equipment ordered from abroad has arrived.

It can therefore be assumed that the next two or three months will bring us a complete solution "Black Prince".

The story below by Pavel Norov, written specifically for "Pathfinder of the World" responds to the great interest that the mystery "Black Prince". The story unfolds the theme of one of the many cases of "hunting" for these semi-legendary treasures ...

I. In Balaklava Bay

On a hot June afternoon, when the sun beats with sheer, dazzling rays, Balaklava Bay seems like a blue lake. Mountain terraces dotted with white houses rise around the lake in a sharply defined semicircle.

And from below it seems that these houses hang one above the other and are molded along the rocky spurs, like bizarre bird nests.

Silence in the town. Everyone hid from the hot southern sun. Only indefatigable Greek fishermen fuss around the boats. They recently returned from fishing and are now unloading fish from deep holds.

When the sun approaches sunset, Balaklava housewives will come to the embankment to buy fish. And then it will be noisy here: the fishermen will ask to the point of exhaustion, the housewives will bargain up to a sweat with screams, squeals and curses. Hot southern people! But now there is silence.

Balaklava Bay deeply cut into the mainland in the form of an elongated oval. It is securely closed on all sides, and only in its southern part is the narrow exit to the outer roadstead more visible, like the throat of a bottle.

Excellent bay! For small vessels, the port is better not to invent: quiet, deep-sea. But the passage is treacherous, as if lying in wait for ships with careless pilots. One wrong movement of the steering wheel - and a disaster in a fresh wind is inevitable.

In the language of the Black Sea sailors, "fresh wind" is a very special concept. When the north-east breaks and, coloring the dark green waves of the Black Sea white, makes the water around the ship boil like boiling water in a cauldron, then the friendly Balaklava Bay turns into a dangerous trap. And woe to the ships that try to seek salvation in its waters. The treacherous exit from the bay is bordered by high rocky shores hanging over the sea, as if purposely arranged for shipwrecks.

It is not for nothing that the Balaklava seashore has been a place of classical shipwrecks since ancient times. Hundreds of ships lie at the bottom of its rocky road. The Phoenicians, Greeks, Genoese, Romans, Turks and, later, the British, French, Italians - all these peoples left their ships here.

This is an ancient sea tomb, which among the world's sea cemeteries is second only to the famous Sargasso Sea and the shores of Novaya Zemlya, where the skeletons of dead ships are carried by the undercurrent ...

The search for treasures that sank along with the legendary frigate in Balaklava Bay began in the 19th century and continues to this day.

This story over a century and a half has acquired many legends and conjectures. And it all started prosaically. It was 1854 - the height of the Crimean War. The British prepared for this war with all the thoroughness characteristic of them. On September 14, the transport frigate HMS Prince (Her Majesty's ship, also known as the Black Prince) left London for the Crimea. He was carrying warm clothes for soldiers and officers. The caring English government stuffed the holds of a sail-propeller vessel with woolen socks and shirts, sheepskin coats and sleeping bags, underpants and fur boots.

But the main thing is that the "Prince" was supposed to deliver monetary allowances for the English soldiers to the shores of Balaklava. The ship arrived at its destination two months after sailing - by mid-November. Suddenly, a powerful hurricane came up, sinking three dozen ships near the coastal cliffs. Not escaped this fate and "Prince".

"On the open sea, dropping golden chests..."

The members of the British military expedition, who were looking forward to warm uniforms, took the news of the death of the "Prince" with horror: real cold came, soldiers and officers suffered from frostbite.

But the hype in the press rose not even because of warm blankets and underpants: journalists trumpeted with might and main that kegs with gold and silver coins sank off the Crimean coast. At first, the amount of 200,000 pounds sterling was called. Then they began to talk about a million, then the amount of treasures lying at the bottom increased to 60 million - apparently, the fantasy of journalists and ordinary people worked.

The ship soon began to be called the "Black Prince" - it sounded more romantic and hinted at the unenviable fate of one and a half hundred drowned sailors. Newspaper reports constantly repeated information about barrels with countless treasures lying at the bottom of the Black Sea.

After the end of the Crimean War, treasure hunters rushed to Balaklava Bay. They came from Germany, Italy, Norway and even America: everyone wanted to find the treasure, because if the ship crashed on the coastal rocks, then the treasures should, logically, be not too far from the coast, at a relatively shallow depth. However, the equipment in the 1860s and 1870s was too primitive: it was impossible to reach the bottom with it.

Even the most advanced suits at that time - French - gave divers the opportunity to stay under water for no more than a few minutes. All that was found was the remains of wooden ships, and the Prince had a metal hull.

Russian search engines connected later than everyone else - in 1896, but they failed to find anything either. After some time, the Russian government forbade the continuation of search work in Balaklava Bay, citing the ban as divers interfering with sea maneuvers.

After the Civil War, in the 20s of the twentieth century, the search continued.

Photo pxhere.com

It was 1923. Soviet Russia suffered severely from hunger. To save people - and at that time entire villages were dying of starvation, children were the worst of all - food and money were needed, a lot of money. It was then that hope arose again for the treasures that sank off the coast of Balaklava.

A ship engineer, from Sevastopol, came to the GPU Vladimir Yazykov. He claimed to have invented a way to raise the gold and save the country. An expedition of special underwater works (EPRON) was immediately organized.

Its participants were instructed to search not only for the Black Prince's gold - in 1918, Russian ships were flooded off the coast of Novorossiysk, the sailors took this measure in order not to give them into the hands of the enemy. They designed an ingenious deep-sea apparatus, through which they hoped to explore the bottom.

The search seemed to be on the right track - a metal fragment of the hull was found. They decided that this was part of the Prince, because, as the Epronians were sure, the Prince was the only metal ship among the many wooden ones. But the expedition was disappointed - it turned out that the hulls of other ships were also made of metal, so the found fragment could belong to any ship.

However, they say that the gepeshniks nevertheless became the owners of the treasures, only the course of the operation was strictly classified, all the papers regarding EPRON were destroyed, and the participants in the search operations were separated into different projects so that they would never again intersect with each other.

Or maybe the British?

In order for citizens to get rid of dreams of getting hold of sunken treasures from their heads, the Soviet Union began to persistently spread the version that the gold and silver of the "Prince" had long settled in the pockets of the English commissary service: they say that corrupt officials divided the precious cargo among themselves, and it simply did not reached Balaklava Bay. Such a development of events was presented as the only true one, they wrote about it in popular science magazines and talked about it in radio programs.

In the late 1990s, another expedition was undertaken to search for the Black Prince's gold reserves. As the captain of the 1st rank who led it said Viktor Korzhov, no gold was found. But it turned out that the middle of the ship was literally cut out. This became an indirect confirmation of the version put forward earlier by the Japanese (they undertook a global expedition in 1927): the Epronians found kegs of gold - and in order to bring them to the surface, they cut out part of the ship. The money was spent on the needs of the Land of the Soviets. But exact evidence that the gold was in the hands of the Chekists was never found.

The mystery of the barrels of gold has not yet been solved. Perhaps there are no treasures at the bottom of the Balaklava Bay for a long time, or maybe there never was, according to the version with the roguish English quartermasters. However, some lovers still do not give up trying to get the treasure from the bottom of the sea.

What is EPRON? Ask someone such a question now - and you are unlikely to get an intelligible answer. And in the 1930s, this sonorous abbreviation was on everyone's lips: about EPRON - the Expedition of Underwater Works for Special Purposes - articles and books were written, films were made. The appearance of this romantic organization (it received its final official status in December 1923) was associated with the Black Sea and ships that sank off the Crimean coast.

To be precise, at first it was not about all the ships, but about a single legendary ship - the British frigate Black Prince. During the Crimean War, he sank near Balaklava, along with other ships of the united squadron, broken on the coastal rocks during an unprecedented hurricane. Since then, the “Black Prince” has haunted sea treasure seekers: it was believed that, in addition to food and uniforms, he was carrying either 200 or even 500 thousand pounds sterling in gold. And he went to the bottom with this precious cargo. The gold coins were supposedly poured into barrels, which is why they should have been safe and sound somewhere at the bottom of Balaklava Bay, waiting for the lucky one who finds them. And many were looking for, not only Russian subjects, but also the French, Norwegians, Americans. Most fortunate were Italian divers who explored the bottom of the bay at the beginning of the 20th century. Engineer Giuseppe Restucci brought with him a special deep-sea suit of his own design - a thick-walled copper box with three portholes and holes for hands, lowered down on a strong steel cable. With its help, the Italians discovered the broken hull of the ship. The wreck was carefully examined. Among the trophies were a telescope, a rifle, a box of bullets. But the gold could not be found. The Italians came to Balaklava several more times, but they did not achieve success. The First World War and the revolution put the Black Prince's treasure hunt on hold for a long time. But in the early 1920s, they started talking about it again.

In 1923, the engineer Vladimir Yazykov, an obsessed treasure hunt enthusiast, arrived in Moscow from Sevastopol, who since 1908 had been unsuccessfully trying to get permission to organize work to raise the Black Prince. In Moscow, with his idea, he first turned to the Revolutionary Military Council and to the commander of the Naval Forces. But neither there nor there was interested in the proposal of the Sevastopol engineer. And then he went to the OGPU, to the head of the special department, Genrikh Yagoda. Yagoda's story about the gold coins at the bottom of the Balaklava Bay seemed convincing to Yagoda, and the work began to boil.

An order was given to create EPRON and approve its first staff: Yazykov was appointed head of EPRON, and Lev Zakharov-Meyer became commissar (leader from the OGPU). Also, the initial composition of EPRON included several engineers, a diving specialist, a doctor, a boat commander and an accountant. The main task of this small team was to organize "the best working conditions for the expedition for gold."

First of all, it was necessary to build an apparatus (or, as it was then called, a projectile) for descending to great depths. The projectile was developed by engineer Danilenko, who was part of EPRON. The device he invented could dive quite deep, was designed for three people, equipped with a telephone, a searchlight and a mechanical manipulator for capturing various cargoes. The body of the projectile was made of steel and weighed over 10 tons.

By the beginning of the summer of 1923, the projectile was ready, until the end of the summer the EPRON team was looking for the exact location of the Black Prince in Balaklava Bay: military minesweepers were working, the bottom was examined with metal detectors, a hydroplane and a balloon were photographing the soil.

Before the descent on the projectile Danilenko. 1923
In September, Danilenko's projectile, which contained the designer and engineer himself, sank to the bottom for the first time. Then two more descents took place - at 95 and 123 m. At that time, these were world dive records! Regular marine work began - meter by meter, day by day, month by month, the Epron crews examined the bottom of the Balaklava Bay. The search continued for more than a year, it was possible to find parts of the ship scattered on the seabed, they were cleared of soil and silt, examined literally by a centimeter - but not a single gold coin was found. The leadership of the OGPU realized that further searches for gold were useless, and in December 1924 it was decided to stop all work in this direction. During this time, EPRON members discovered the cemetery of the dead English ships, raised a lot of shipwrecks, anchors, and later continued to search for and raise sunken ships.

As for the Black Prince's gold, this mystery has not yet been resolved. According to one of the existing versions, they could not find him for a very simple reason: back in 1854, the Black Prince was carrying anything but gold to Balaklava, and all the stories about his precious cargo are nothing more than fiction .. .

By the way

The famous ship was actually called simply Prince("Prince"). Journalists dubbed him the "Black Prince" - apparently because many people went bankrupt in search of his mythical gold, more than one person died. Under the name "Black Prince" the frigate went down in history.

Tatiana Shevchenko,