Description:
Salvager certificate is also included. This is a genuine Spanish silver four reales coin recovered from the shipwreck of the Dutch “VOC” East Indiaman ship Rooswijk. At 145 feet in length and 850 tons, the Rooswijk was a heavily armed ship with 30 guns and a crew of 250 men. With a cargo that included 30 chests of silver treasure, the Rooswijk, under Captain Dan Ronzieres, set off from the Dutch port of Texel on her 2nd voyage to the East Indies. On December 19th, 1739, the Rooswijk sailed in a storm off the southeast coast of England. That day, with all hands on board, the Rooswijk sank without a trace along an area known as the Goodwin Sands.
The Goodwin Sands is a treacherous area, located just north of the Straits of Dover, where the tides make sand banks appear and disappear unpredictably. Over the centuries many ships have met their doom here, with all the evidence soon swallowed up by the sands. Occasionally, one of the shipwrecks remains will surface and be discovered. This happened by chance in December 2004, when the sands parted upon the buried wrecksite of the Rooswijk, allowing diver Ken Welling to salvage two complete chests and hundreds of silver bars. The salvage operation continued in 2005, under the direction of Rex Cowan and in agreement with the Dutch and British governments. Today, the Rooswijk is a protected heritage shipwreck site and no further salvaging on the wrecksite is allowed.
