One Man, One Wreck, 50 Years: The Gold No One Can Find

In 1859, the steam clipper Royal Charter sank off the coast of Anglesey, Wales, carrying gold rush miners home from Australia with a fortune in gold and claiming roughly 450 lives in one of the deadliest shipwreck disasters ever recorded on the Welsh coast. This treasure hunting documentary traces the full story of the Royal Charter shipwreck: the hurricane-force storm that broke an iron ship in two, the desperate rescue attempt by the villagers of Moelfre, and the estimated hundred million pounds in sunken gold that Victorian salvage divers only partially recovered. More than a century later, diver Peter Day founded the Royal Charter Salvage Expedition in 1971 and has spent over fifty years searching the wreck for what remains. Along the way, prospector Vincent Thurkettle uncovered Britain's largest-ever gold nugget just meters from the wreck site in 2012. This is a real underwater treasure hunter story about obsession, loss, and gold that has outlasted generations. If you enjoy deep sea exploration and shipwreck documentaries, subscribe for more real stories from the ocean floor. Let us know in the comments where you're watching from, and which forgotten wreck we should cover next.