The English vessel Merchant Royal, also called the Royal Merchant, had 100,000 pounds of gold and bars of Mexican silver in her hold when she went down, making the hoard worth as much as $2 billion today, according to historian John Schmidt, speaking in an interview with WBEZ Chicago. A trader which normally plied the seas between the West Indies and Europe, she was already carrying her own hoard of an estimated 500,000 Spanish Pieces of Eight (silver dollars) before her captain took on a cargo of gold in Cadiz, Spain that was meant as payment for the entire Spanish garrison of 30,000 soldiers in Antwerp. The Merchant Royal came upon heavy weather off Cornwall on September 23, 1641; she sank "ten leagues from Land's End," her captain John Limbrey stated, as History notes.
Despite all these details, recorded at the time by Limbrey, who survived the wreck, the ship known as "The El Dorado of the Seas" has still not been found, despite one recent incident when an American salvage company believed it had finally hit upon the Merchant Royal, History relates.
In official Royal documents issued September 30, 1641, King Charles I of England states the loss was "The greatest that was ever sustained in one ship, being worth £400,000 at least." If this is true, History states that experts say the total hoard, including jewels, may be equivalent to £1 billion now.
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