Theres more sunken gold and silver in the waters of the Philippines
than anywhere else on earth
Centuries of trade have littered the sea-bed with treasure
And I can see at least forty boxes of gold
This is a story of tragedies of the past
and one mans journey in search of his fortune
Youve got to keep going and going you never quit
If youre a quitter dont apply for a job in this game
Steve Sargison a commercial diver from Sheffield has packed in his
business and put his house on the line
Hes leaving behind a 25 year career as a salvage expert
for a shot at the big time
Hes going to the Philippines to search for one of the greatest
treasure ships that ever sailed
Its a fair trek but it is a place where there is more opportunities
to find sunken vessels old sailing ships clippers
schooners Manila galleons - Its all there
Weve already found a couple of targets
Were going straight - All the way from England
- Straight onto a target then well be into the really enjoyable bit
which is locating all the things and recovering all the artefacts
Steves first destination
is the tiny Philippine atoll of the Panagatan Cays
In this remote spot hell join a team on the hunt for the Esperanza
a ship which sank in 1806 on her way to Mexico
Its believed she carried a cargo of almost unimaginable wealth
Ten years ago
the discovery of valuable porcelain by a seaweed fisherman
came to the attention of ex-US Navy officer Dempsey Pagan
His research suggested that
forty-four Manila galleons had been lost in Philippine waters during
the time of the Spanish Empire
and that the Esperanza had sunk near the island
Oh weve got some more pieces here of the porcelain that weve been
picking up for the last ten years off that reef
And its amazing theres still a lot of it left I tell you
It was a major discovery to tell you the truth
That told us now that definitely there was a big shipwreck here
somewhere and the age of the porcelain is of the same era
of the Esperanza
which meant that this could be cargo
from the Esperanza so I was excited Very excited
Inspired by the discovery Dempsey has now gathered together
an international team of adventurers determined to find the Esperanza
Not far from where the porcelain
lay a meticulous search is being led by oil man Daniel Jason
The Esperanza herself was carrying approximately we believe somewhere
in the order of 450 to US$500 million worth of cargo and some
of that was certainly spices and silks but the majority of it would
have been bullion being shipped out to Acapulco in Mexico
A ship like this would have carried exquisite gold jewellery;
huge amounts of fine Chinese porcelain;
silver coins and the finest silver tableware
It was the most lucrative trade in the world
The team have hired the Vasco an old KGB spy ship from Vietnam
Fitted to this relic of the Cold War
is some of the most advanced American scanning equipment
This caesium gas magnetometer recently declassified by the Pentagon
is only one of a handful in the world;
and it will detect any iron debris on the sea-bed
In a few weeks these waters will be
among the best mapped in the world
The magnetometer has found metal in a shallow site
Two of the team decide to investigate
5 metres down the sea-bed is strewn with dead coral
Fishermen have dynamited it in the search for food
Through the gloom the divers scour the debris for any sign of a wreck
After a few minutes the first sign of something manmade
A piece of metallic sheeting encrusted with coral
A short distance away the divers find a massive iron anchor
from a large ship
Could it have been dropped by the
Esperanza as she struggled on the reef 193 years ago
A promising wreck site and just in time
Now that Steve Sargisons finally arrived after a battering voyage
Itll be his first priority
This is the closest ship design and structure to the one were actually
Iooking for at the moment
The Esperanza started life as a Portuguese frigate before being
bought by Manila merchants in 1806
Steve is anxious that everyone knows what to look for
Just to give you an idea on the huge area of sail that well be
Iooking at even for a small vessel
like this so youve got the masts
there they would be huge I mean
they would be made of several trees clamped and bolted together
But Im just trying to work in comparative scale with the guys
in the bottom left-hand corner there
Just look at the huge sail area
All that is down there somewhere
And it just depends on whether
youre lucky that its all sunk in one piece
or whether shes been smashed and scattered
But somewhere on the sea-bed whether its within 50 metres 100 metres or
or miles its down there somewhere and it can be located
At the nearby port of San Jose
Steve is taking on a team of fifteen
Filipino divers
For the next few weeks theyll work with him
on an intensive archaeological excavation
Apart from the anchors the wreck is entirely buried beneath
sand and coral
But before they can start digging up the sea-bed every inch of the site
must be mapped
If it is the Esperanza it could take years to excavate completely
According to the archives it was a clear December night
in 1806 as the richly laden Esperanza began the yearly
run across the Pacific across to Mexico
Unusually she had orders to detour through the poorly charted Sulu Sea
At 3 oclock in the morning with a strong wind in her sails
the watch sighted water breaking on a reef directly ahead
The crew struggled to turn the ship away but it was too late
and the Esperanza ran aground
The survivors took refuge on the bleak volcanic island of Panagatan
But when morning broke the Esperanza has vanished
Using an air-lift a basic tool of maritime archaeology Steve
is now ready to start uncovering the wreck
When youre air-lifting youre always expecting that any second
now somethings gonna produce and it could be absolutely packed
with beautiful porcelain silverware gold jewellery
its just completely the unknown
This particular site we only got some basic indications as to what
it may be we dont know whether its English Spanish Portuguese
We dont know whats on it
As they excavate fragments of charred planking begin to emerge
from the site a suggestion of a violent end
Surprisingly even some of the rigging has survived
Back on the Vasco each artefact will be painstakingly recorded
So were logging everything in a digital photograph form
Oh this is actually we believe part of a sail
Yeah so what do you reckon it was all wine or
Larry Alba an archaeologist from the National Museum thinks there
may be a clue in the glassware similar dark green glass bottles
from an 18th Century
English shipwreck
So this is a heavy boom
So this is obviously the wooden stock here theres the barrel its like
Muskets Military hardware will almost certainly help identify
who was on this ship the underside and that may be the cleaner
Then another tantalising clue
Steve finds a piece of coral with an impression of a cannon-ball
But theres no sign of a cannon
Looks to be a rifle sight
And on the other hand yeah looks like yeah looks like a badge of buckle
buckle-piece
Yeah Could always be the signature of some description
The divers are now bringing up military badges
and a variety of musket parts
Evidence that this ship carried troops
The question is were they Spanish
Many of the artefacts have been bent by force again suggesting
a violent wreck
What tragedy befell these people
And who exactly were they
Right Were sending these pieces back now to the UK back to some experts
so presumably weve got some interesting pieces that may bring information
side-Iocks of the firearms weve got the trigger guards off the firearms
they might be able to give us some glean of information
But this is what Im most pleased about finding Were almost certain
theyre gonna find information out about the wreck from this
There must be somewhere information relating to the regiment
that this cap badge was designed for
On the other side of the world in London two leading authorities
on military artefacts attempt to identify the wreck
With so little to go on its quite a challenge for historians David
Harding and Doctor DeWitt Bailey
David owns a collection of muskets originally used
by the private armies of the British East India
Company during the last century
The pieces from the wreck match exactly
This musket is one made specifically for the East India Company
in London known as Bakers Pattern
because the gun-maker most involved in developing the design
was called Izikhil Baker
It was first manufactured for the East India Company in 1819
and last in 1839
So this wreck cant be before 1819
So the wreck cant be the Esperanza
The muskets were made at least 13 years after she sank
Its a disappointment for Steve and the team
While the experts try to work out
what the British were doing here the search for the Esperanza must
now move to the next target
But theres more bad news a typhoon is heading their way
At the moment the divers are just tidying up the site
The weathers on the turn
Weve got a typhoon warning coming in
This particular areas gonna get quite lively over the next few days
and also weve been shown another site around to the north
which looks extremely promising
Site two is on the other side of the reef near the main island
Its another intriguing target
and fits in with the Esperanzas likely route from Manila
The typhoon rumbles on
A costly hold-up for the project
Back in the milder climate of England one mystery has at last been solved
Well the good news is that weve had a positive identification on
these waist-belt buckles that there have been several examples recovered
from the wreck and it appears that they were worn by the Madras Native
Infantry regiments just at the period of this wreck
The British Empire in Asia depended
on mercenary soldiers like these fighting for British interests
And theres another clue on a tiny fragment of rifle butt the letters
GR -short for grenadier and the top half of the number 37
Its unmistakable
And this ties in perfectly with the 37th Madras Native Infantry
who were one of the regiments sent to China in 1840
The British Library archives reveal
that the 37th Grenadiers sailed from
Madras on the 20th August 1840
On board a ship called the Golcondah
500 men were on their way to attack
China to protect Britains highly profitable trade in opium
It was a war the Empire would win easily
But a shameful chapter in British history
Before the Golcondah reached China a fierce typhoon blew up
and the ship was never seen again
It now seems that she was blown off course and ended up on the remote
Panagatan Cays
Lost for 160 years the Golcondah has finally been found
Two weeks later the hunt for the
Esperanza moves north to site two
The new site is close to a much deeper target picked up by the survey
They could both be part of the same wreck
The position of the anchors fits with the theory that the Esperanza
first hit the reef then drifted out and sank in deep water
Dempsey is checking the data again
There appears to be a trail of debris leading out from the site
to a large object 120 metres down
In the wake of the typhoon the sea is still rough and work is slow adding
to the projects mounting costs
Every single man dive at the moment is costing US $700 per man per dive
So at the moment every time you guys
put a bottle on your back thats 700 bucks down the blue
We have to get that figure down
It should be more like US 200/250 per dive Yeah
And at the end of the day if we don't become more efficient
then obviously as you already heard the whole thing will be off
So its in your own interests weve got to make the effort
Desperate for new evidence the team decide to investigate a report
that the locals have already found artefacts from the site
Its not very much at all actually
Whats the first letter - C
G G G
A A
I think this is a Z for zebra
Zebra
Its cast in one single piece with definitely some gear wheel relief here
Okay Weve got something called
Galbraith and something that looks like Dundee So its not Portuguese
These look suspiciously like maybe boiler doors
In which case maybe weve got an iron-clad vessel or
certainly after the Esperanza Interesting
And another mystery
Its a mystery
When they return from the island the divers have some interesting news
Alright anything new
Surprisingly we found a plank of wood near where the encrusted with
Evidence of a wooden ship could mean there are wrecks
from two different periods on the same site
How wide did you get to work so far
We did somehow about roughly 75 centimetres
Oh fantastic
Cos Im gonna get my outfit and Im gonna go diving
Okay Good
Have I still got my dive gear there
Oh they dont have my dive gear
Anyway you guys go ahead
The Philippines leading maritime archaeologist Doctor Eusabio Dezon
has now joined the project and is keen to see the new find
He is here to safeguard the interests of the Philippine government
and to check that the work is done correctly
That planking is about 3 to 4 metres long
and about 2 metresabout 1 metres wide
It could be a part of a keelson
Sure enough there is a sizeable section of planking
It seems possible that this could be part of the Esperanzas keel
the area which would have been struck first as she smashed onto the reef
Theres a large wooden structure about that wide
and about 3 metres long something like that
That is the keelson
I think you might be right
She broke her back do you remember
Yeah
She broke her back
That could beand that one curves
in so that could be like a bow part that comes in
I am 95% now its Esperanza
No longer 90% now its 95%
Its a promising sight with the woods and now some metals
Yeah We were disappointed when we saw the rivets
in a steal plate but then
That could be from another boat I think
Yeah Yes
It may not be a part of these wooden parts
No No
They must now follow the debris trail
into the deep But in order to excavate
at a depth of 120 metres theyll need a sophisticated Remote Operated Vehicle
at a cost of $15000 a day
We are now first week of August the projects been running
since the last week of March effectively
so a long long haul into the project
Weve expended to date
about US $800000 out of a total budget of 185 million for this phase
At the moment we have two vessels here both of which are operating
at an efficiency of less than 50% and some fairly serious decisions
have got to be made
Were going to probably end up downsizing the diving operations
As I say the money to bring in the ROV to do the deep water excavation
The financial situation doesnt improve
In September the entire operation is suspended
Steve and all of the divers are released
Daniel and Dempsey will go back to their day jobs
and try to raise the $800000 needed to investigate the deep targets
But what of Steve Sargison
Far from home he must now try to find a lucrative wreck of his own
We actually packed our entire business in as a commercial diving company
and everything to come here
We have no other income
We have to be successful of what we do
because moneys draining arterially from my account
and we need to find something to keep my bank managers sense of humour
Steve has information about a wrecked Manila galleon
on the other side of the Philippines
But the search permit wont be available for four months
He urgently needs to find something now
Locals tell of an unusual wreck from World War II
In the early 1940s as war engulfed the Philippines the Japanese
were transporting huge amounts of stolen allied gold to the islands
One of these ships-the Cudamaru was bombed by American planes
and sank in deep water off the island of Cebu
There were no survivors
A few years ago three local divers were killed as they tried
to recover the gold from the wreck
Steve needs more information so
Henry Kamara a friend of the dead divers is taking him
to visit a man who saw the ship sink
As a little boy Damshu Kolonya stood
petrified on this beach while the fierce battle raged overhead
So Henry your friend was actually here and saw everything happen
Yeah
So if you can just ask him just to explain
in his own words the story of what he saw
and how the ship came down and everything
The Japanese ship was disguised as an island with trees on its deck
But the American plane saw it and dropped a bomb
There was a huge explosion
Then two other American planes started machine-gunning
The ship began to sink as it made for the shore
Japanese soldiers tried to escape
but the Americans shot them all down
The sea turned red with blood
In less than twenty minutes the ship had sunk
But this is the Philippines
And Steve cant dive on any wreck that he wants to
He must now travel to Manila to begin the long process of obtaining permits
Its January 2000
After months of waiting Discovery is at last under way
Steve and a new band of hopefuls now have the go ahead to dive
on what they believe to be the Cudamaru
But if there is gold on the wreck
why did the locals share the secret with Steve
Well although the locals are quite good divers
and quite tenacious this one is just a little bit too deep
for them to get at and the story is that a Chinese man financed
an operation here and they got fifty bars of gold off
And the day before one of the local guys died
on this wreck he turned round to all of them
and he said were all millionaires Ive just opened the door
and its full of boxes
And he smashed a box open and inside
out of one box came ten 65 kilo bars
Its US $650000 a box
And they can see at least forty boxes of gold
One bar would just do nicely now
And the rest like a millionaire friend of mine said
The first couple of millions are okay the rest is just for show
Henry will help Steve to manoeuvre
Discovery directly over the wreck
Steve has all the government paperwork he needs
But before he starts bringing up gold bars he must ensure
that the local police are on his side
Otherwise he could lose the lot
Armed with his permit he must convince them everything is legitimate
Perhaps a little grudgingly the paperwork is accepted
Later at a local bar Steve takes the opportunity
to grill the policeman for more information about the Cudamaru
then he draw the name of the boat
Cudamaru
This boat was loaded with hundred boxes of gold
It would be a fantastic haul if its true
But theres another reason why the locals are frightened of the wreck divers
or superstition about the ghosts of the Japanese soldiers
Yes yes yes
The Japanese soldiers told us that
because there are many people there are many ghosts watching them
that is why they are making request
because there are many ghosts of the Japanese
because that boat there were many all Japanese crew was
The locals are terrified of the ghosts of the Cudamaru
Either way with the wreck lying over 70 metres below them diving
will be dangerous
So first Steve must send down a Remote Operated Vehicle or ROV
Its camera should send back
the first pictures of the Cudamaru for 58 years
So lets see whats down the rope shall we chaps
Oh see the wreck down below
See it Okay slack on the umbilical
The final resting place of the
Cudamaru is a forbidding one
The ships mangled remains graphically retell a violent end
Oooh big explosion
Slack away All stop
The bomb from the American aircraft
has left a gaping hole behind the bridge blown off the ships funnel
and burnt out the entire rear end of the wreck leaving just a frame
But most sinister were the ropes
and rubber tubes festooning the wreck it seems they belonged
to the Filipino divers that died here a few years ago
So one pipe goes to the bow and the other pipe goes to the stern
The divers who died were never recovered so it is quite possible
that at the end of this you might find the remains of the divers
Steve is using the ROV to search for a box or a bag left here
by the divers
If the story is true it could contain ten gold bars
With great precision Steve attempts to get the ROV inside a doorway
One wrong move could leave it trapped in the wreck
The silt here is like talcum powder even the gentlest touch
Once the silt is cleared plates
and bottles suggest hes found the ships galley
But there are no boxes
Steve is now forced to explore deeper into the sunken hulk
In the dark of the hold the ROV drops below 80 metres
Ah its looking very boxy to me boys
What say you
Looks like a box
Now I can go on here only once
Would you believe that
Its been lashed on and tied on ready to be sent up
so its a box that the other people who recovered the fifty bars
have obviously deemed worthy enough to lash up to send up
An exciting discovery
But at a depth of 84 metres they now face a real challenge
to bring the mystery box to the surface
Tomorrow Steve himself will attempt to retrieve the box
But tonight he must be vigilant
In the part of the world were in
there is a considerable problem with pirates and all the people along
this area know that this ship
that were sat on has got gold on it
So they have no idea whether weve
recovered anything or not at the moment but just the thoughts of the
fact that we possibly have got a bar of gold or a dozen bars of gold
or a thousand bars of gold is enough to cause us a problem
So we have to take these preventative measures to defend ourselves
After a trouble-free night the team prepare to dive down to the wreck
The plan is that Steve will attempt to reach the bottom of the hold
roll the box into a sack and send
it to the surface using an inflatable lift-bag
The other divers will work from above the hold
They will try to do the whole job breathing just air
Even for an experienced commercial diver this is very risky
I quite like deep diving because of the challenge but you know
sometimes when you get narcosis bad
it dont matter who you are how experienced you are how many
thousands of youve done once you get
gripped by a narcosis thats it its game over and up you come
Air consists mainly of oxygen and nitrogen
Below 40 metres nitrogen
becomes a narcotic and can send the mind into a trance
Below 66 metres oxygen becomes poisonous and can disable the body
To most divers the idea of going to 84 metres on air is madness
But for Steve its a calculated risk
Back on Discovery the stand-by diver
uses the ROV camera to watch for any sign of Steve
Limited by the amount of air they can
carry the divers will have only 12 minutes on the bottom
So they must work fast
While Steve approaches the hold
the other divers must prepare the lift-bag above the wreck
But somethings gone wrong
Visibility has deteriorated badly
and the lift-bag has been abandoned
It looks like the mission has been aborted
After two long hours waiting for
the divers to decompress they will soon find out what went wrong
If the divers were to come up too quickly they could get the bends
Classic nightmare dive Too dangerous really
My torch jacked which is just what you want when youve got blackness
and zero visibility I put me torch on and nothing
The bad visibility has led to one of Steves worst nightmares coming true
Ive now started having problems cos I was speeding around everywhere
breathing really heavily the narcosis effect started to
come on and which is especially like
prone to zero visibility and then I started having trouble with me hands
I couldnt actually press me inflation and I tried to get off the bottom
and I couldnt get off the bottom cos I was over-heavy and I couldnt
grip the rope to haul myself back up
So in the end I had to sort of just use both hands to press
the inflation-button to get myself off the bottom
Steves narcosis is a chilling
reminder to the team of the men who died 5 years before
He decides to call for a group of Filipino technical divers who worked
with him on the wreck of the Golcondah
Theyll be using helium to reduce the risks of deep water diving
Steve runs over the plan Because they cant rely
on the old rope thats already round the box theyll have to push it
into a sack and attach that to a lift-bag
Heather Steves wife has now joined the boat
If they find the gold today their
house in Devon will at last be secure
Mixing the helium with oxygen and
nitrogen should give the divers up to 25 minutes on the wreck
Despite the helium the dive is extremely dangerous
They hope the prize will be worth the risk
In the light of the ROV two divers
prepare to venture deep into the hold of the Cudamaru
Theyre following the string right down so thats good
From above the wreck all the can be seen through the haunting blackness
is the faint glow of the divers torches
Theyre now slowly ascending out of the hold so it looks like theyve
done it Thats the rope that
theyve got for the actual box in their hands see
Thats the one
If this turns out to be a machinery part
thisll be the most expensive machinery part ever lifted
Its now time to inflate the lift-bag
Thats the first sniff of air going in there
Has it gone
Oh its going Somethings happening
Thats a bluel cant see
Im going up very fa Oh stop oh stop on everything
The ROV is climbing rapidly Steve has lost control
Now why am I still going up I think Im stuck to the lift-bag
The lift-bag has shot straight to
the surface but has it brought the box with it
Come on Come on Double double
double quick on everything we do Knife Come on double quick
Everything
Steve needs to secure the box
but the stand-by divers already in the water and out of contact
Where the fhas Daryl got to
The box that were after is there Suspended
Its not in the bag And the support divers in the water
and I cant tell him what the hells happening
The operation has gone badly wrong
Steves fortune now hangs on the end of an old piece of rope
that could break at any moment
The only diver available to bring in
the box had taken the day off sick But now duty calls
Together the divers bundle the box into the sack
Remarkably the old rope has held
This is the bit where nobody dares
Iook in in case its a large bar of Cadburys Dairy Milk
What we need is that sack
Im gonna pick it up with this but whilst its on the fast craft okay
With all the divers safely back on board its time to open the box
Choose your weapon sir
What we need to do is to try and separate maybe down there
If you see there look see the steel and then wood on the outside
Its a reinforced banding all the way round it so we presume that it
was you know something thats well protected
and a public valuable because the box is quite unusual
being metal and timber
No gold
Well it certainly looks like its a lighting unit of some description
But thats the only penetration into the top of the lid
So maybe it was some sort of paraffin lamp
There you go
That may be one copper lamp each for the collection
For now the ghosts of the Cudamaru
will hang on to their riches
As for Steve Sargison after five
months of waiting he was at last
awarded a permit to dive on a Manila
galleon twice the size of the Esperanza
Hes also planning a second more intensive search of the Cudamaru
Perhaps the genie of the Japanese
lamps will finally grant him his wish