Genuine provenanced SHIPWRECK TREASURE COIN that was salvaged off the wreck of the Honourable East India Company Ship Admiral Gardener, which SANK in the perilous Goodwin Sands on the 25th January 1809

The coin appears to be an Honourable East India Company 1808 X or XX Cash Coin that WOULD have been UNCIRCULATED at the time of the wreck and shows VERY LITTLE (if ANY?) use-wear cleaned by the salvaged in 1985, and mounted into this card, the reverse unviewed but assumed to be in similar condition

Recovered legally in the Summer of 1985

Rediscovery

The wreck of Admiral Gardner was found in 1984 & some coins were salvaged in 1985 during a licensed dive

The wreck was designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act on 2 May 1985 & redesignated to extend the area covered on 5 Oct 2004

The wreck is now a Protected Wreck managed by Historic England

Admiral Gardner was launched in 1797 as an East Indiaman for the British East India Company

She made five voyages for the EIC, during the fourth of which she participated in an inconclusive single-ship action with a French privateer

Admiral Gardner was wrecked in January 1809

She was named after Admiral Alan Gardner.

On 24 January 1809, Captain Eastfield sailed from the Downs, bound for Madras & Bengal, at the start of Admiral Gardner's sixth voyage for the EIC

The next day Admiral Gardner was lost on the Goodwin Sands off South Foreland when a gale tore her from her moorings

Three (or five) crew drowned

Lost with Admiral Gardner was her cargo, a large number of EIC X & XX copper cash coins, belonging to Matthew Boulton

The EIC put the value of its cargo at £21,579.00

The same gale also wrecked Britannia, & the brig Apollo

Boatmen from Deal were able to rescue almost the entire crew from Admiral Gardner

Boatmen from Ramsgate & Broadstairs saved most of the crew of Britannia, but only one man from the brig

A few days later Lloyd's List reported that all three wrecked vessels had gone to pieces