The ship Black Prince sank near the balaclava. Crimean War. The Mystery of the “Black Prince”

The shadow of the legendary “Black Prince” has appeared more than once from the pages of Russian literature. A.I. wrote about the “Black Prince”. Kuprin, S.N. Sergeev; Tsensky, M. Zoshchenko, E.V. Tarle, T. Bobritsky and many other writers.

...By the beginning of the Crimean War, the British government chartered more than two hundred merchant ships belonging to private companies to transport troops and ammunition to the Crimea. Among them was the screw-sail frigate Prince. On November 8, 1854, together with other English ships, he arrived at the outer Balaklava roadstead. Five days later, a southeastern hurricane of unprecedented force swept over the Crimean peninsula. Thirty-four ships perished on the coastal rocks of Balaklava Bay. This fate befell the Prince.

What was on board? The Illustrated London News wrote on December 16, 1854: “Among the cargo accepted by the Prince were: 36,700 pairs of woolen socks, 53,000 woolen shirts, 2,500 guard sheepskin coats, 16,000 sheets, 3,750 blankets. In addition, one can also name the number of sleeping bags - 150,000 pieces, woolen shirts - 100,000, flannel underpants - 90,000 pairs, about 40,000 blankets and 40,000 waterproof hats, 40,000 fur coats and 120,000 pairs of boots."

The war has not yet ended, and rumors have already spread throughout the world that the English steam frigate “Black Prince” with a cargo of gold intended to pay salaries to the troops was lost off the coast of Crimea. The ship in question was never called the Black Prince. The name of this vessel from the time she was launched on the River Thames at Blackwall in 1853 was "Prince". It is difficult to say why the ship began to be called the “Black Prince”. Perhaps the tireless hunters for his gold or the English soldiers who did not receive their next allowance are to blame for the romantic epithet “black”?

Almost immediately after the conclusion of peace, the search for the remains of the “Black Prince” began. The ship was searched for equally unsuccessfully by Italians, Americans, Norwegians, and Germans. The primitive diving technology of those times did not allow diving deep enough.

In 1875, when the diving suit had already been created, a large joint stock company with large capital was established in France. French divers searched the bottom of Balaklava Bay and all approaches to it. More than ten sunken ships were found, but the Black Prince was not among them. The work was carried out at a depth that was enormous for the end of the last century - almost 40 fathoms. But even the strongest and most resilient divers could only stay under water for a few minutes...

Gradually, legends began to spread about the “Black Prince”. The value of the gold sunk with the ship increased to sixty million francs.

Our Shipping wrote in 1897: The Prince Regent, a huge ship of the English fleet, was carrying from England a significant amount of silver coin and 200,000 pounds sterling in gold to pay the salaries of the English troops in the Crimea... The money sent on this ship was packed in barrels, which is why they should be preserved intact..."

In 1896, the Russian inventor Plastunov began searching. But he was also unlucky.
The Italians turned out to be the most patient. The inventor of the deep-sea suit, Giuseppe Rastucci, led the expedition in 1901. A few weeks after the start of work, he managed to find the iron hull of a large ship. Italian divers recovered from the bottom a metal box with lead bullets, a telescope, a rifle, an anchor, pieces of iron and wood. But... not a single coin. In the spring of 1903, the Italians left Balaklava, only to return to the search site two years later. This time, in a completely different place, they discovered another iron ship. No one still knows whether it was the Black Prince or some other ship. Again no gold was found.

However, the thought of a fabulous treasure haunted many inventors, divers, and engineers. The Russian Minister of Trade and Industry was inundated with letters with proposals to raise the Black Prince’s gold. And again Italian divers dived at the Balaklava roadstead, and again to no avail. In the end, the government of Tsarist Russia began to refuse both its own and foreign gold miners, formally citing the fact that work near the bay hampered the activities of the Black Sea squadron in the Sevastopol area. Soon the First World War ended the excitement around the “Black Prince”.
In 1922, an amateur diver from Balaklava retrieved several gold coins from the bottom of the sea at the entrance to the bay. So the world became interested in the “Black Prince” again. Offers, one more fantastic than the other, poured in. One inventor from Feodosia claimed that the “Black Prince” probably lies at the bottom in the bay itself. And if so, you just need to block the entrance to the bay with a dam, pump out the water and take the gold from the ship.

In 1923, naval engineer V.S. Yazykov came to the OGPU and reported that since 1908 he had been studying in detail the circumstances of the death of the English squadron in a storm on November 14, 1854, and that he was ready to immediately begin work on raising the jewelry. He backed up his enthusiasm with a thick folder of documents on The Black Prince. In March of the same year, it was decided to organize an expedition. It was called EPRON - Special Purpose Underwater Expedition. A few weeks later, EPRON began preparatory work. Soviet engineer E.G. Danilenko created a deep-sea apparatus that made it possible to inspect the seabed at a depth of 80 fathoms. The device had a “mechanical arm” and was equipped with a spotlight, a telephone and an emergency lifting system in case of a cable break. The crew of the device consisted of three people, air was supplied through a rubber flexible hose.

While the deep-sea vehicle E.G. was being built. Danilenko, EPRON specialists found and carefully interviewed old-timers of Balaklava - eyewitnesses of the storm on November 14, 1854. But none of them could indicate the exact place of the death of the “Prince”. As usual, their testimony turned out to be extremely contradictory.

Finally, the minesweepers took depth measurements, and the entire supposed area of ​​the Prince’s death was divided into squares by milestones. In early September 1923, we began to examine the underwater rocks to the west of the entrance to the bay. Every day, a small bolinder-type boat lowered Danilenko’s apparatus to examine the next square. Many fragments of wooden ships were discovered: masts, yards, pieces of frames, beams and sides, heavily worn away by a sea worm, overgrown with shells. They thought that it would not be particularly difficult to find the “Prince” among these wreckages: in the study of engineer Yazykov it was indicated that the “Prince” was the only iron ship among the dead.

The spring, summer and autumn of 1924 passed. But "Prince" was never found.

On the morning of October 17, one of Pavlovsky’s students discovered an iron box of a strange shape sticking out of the ground on the seabed not far from the shore. He tried to put a sling under it, but to no avail. Interested in the find, Pavlovsky invited experienced divers. Soon they raised the box to the surface: it was an antediluvian steam boiler, all corroded by rust, of a cubic shape with cast-iron doors and necks. The unusual find forced the Epron team to carefully examine the area. Under the rubble of rocks that fell from the coastal cliffs, divers found the remains of a large iron ship, half covered with sand, scattered throughout the bottom.

Over two months of work, divers recovered from the bottom dozens of pieces of iron of various shapes and sizes, part of the side plating with three portholes, a hand grenade, a medical mortar made of white porcelain, several unexploded bombs, copper hoops from barrels, an iron washstand, parts of a steam engine, almost rotten a pack of hospital shoes, lead bullets. And again - not a hint of gold...

Before the New Year, severe storms began in the Balaklava area, and work had to be stopped.
By this time, the search for the “elusive ship” had cost EPRON almost 100 thousand rubles. What to do next: is it worth continuing work? Experts' opinions were divided. EPRON could not find reliable documents confirming the presence of gold on the Prince. They asked for the Soviet embassy in London. However, the British Admiralty, citing the remoteness of the event, as well as laws restricting the access of foreigners to archives, was unable to report anything concrete. EPRON recognized further work as inappropriate.

It was at this time that the Soviet government received an offer from the Japanese diving company Shinkai Kogyossio Limited to recover gold from the Prince. In those years, this company was considered one of the most famous and successful. The last thing on her “record” was one English ship that sank in the Mediterranean Sea. Then Japanese divers managed to retrieve treasures worth two million rubles from a depth of forty meters.

Shinkai Kogiossio Limited offered EPRON 110,000 rubles for preliminary work on the search and examination of the Prince, and also assumed all further expenses. Singed an agreement. The raised gold was to be divided between EPRON and the company in a ratio of 60 and 40 percent. In addition, the Japanese were supposed to familiarize Soviet divers with their deep-sea equipment and, after completing the work, hand over one copy of the technical equipment to EPRON.

In the summer of 1927, the Japanese (they expected to receive 800,000 rubles in gold without much difficulty!) began work. Every day, Japanese divers lifted at least twenty stone blocks weighing 500 pounds. Thousand-pound pieces of rock were pulled to the side using steam winches mounted on barges. Every day, 7 divers and 5 divers worked in shifts.

On September 5, diver Yamomato found a gold coin stuck to the stone - an English sovereign minted in 1821. After that, after two months of daily grueling work, divers discovered only four gold coins: English, French and two Turkish.

Since by mid-November 1927 the wrecked ship had been completely “washed up” and examined, the company stopped work in Balaklava. The results of her underwater work on the Prince were as follows: two forks and a spoon of white metal, a piece of an engineer's shovel, a wheel hub, horseshoes, horse bones, an officer's saber, a cake spatula, a castle, a galosh with the date 1848, several leather soles, a huge number of lead bullets, etc.

Before leaving Balaklava, representatives of the company stated that the ship on which they carried out work, in their opinion, was the Prince. However, despite the most careful searches, they were unable to find the middle part of the ship. The remaining parts of the hull were severely destroyed, and the destruction was clearly artificial. This circumstance led them to the belief that the British, who remained in Balaclava for eight months after the shipwreck, had recovered the barrels of gold before the end of the Crimean War.

In conclusion, the failed treasure hunters repeated the version of V.S. Yazykov, according to which the Prince is the only iron ship of all the ships that fell victim to the hurricane of 1854.
But is it? Let's turn to the primary sources.

This is what the English historian Woods reports in his book “The Last Campaign” (London, 1860):
“The Prince,” a steam ship, arrived in Balaklava on the morning of November 8th. He gave away one anchor, which, together with the rope, went completely into the water. When the other anchor was released, this one also left; both anchors with ropes were lost at a depth of 35 fathoms in the water, it is obvious that none of the ropes was properly secured... After this, the “Prince” stood at sea at a considerable distance and, returning, was held behind the stern of the ship “Jason” on the mooring line, until another anchor and rope were prepared.”

What kind of ship is this "Jason"? In the English journal Practical Mackenix Journal for 1854 we find something that was unknown to neither Yazykov, nor the Epronites, nor the Japanese:
"...at Blackwall...three ships of the same type were built, respectively named 'Golden Fleece', 'Jason' and 'Prince'."

Below are the most detailed dimensions and characteristics of each ship.
From this we can draw the following conclusions. Firstly, before the storm, there were two steamships of the same type in the Balaklava roadstead - the Prince and the Jason. Secondly, if the Practical Mechanics Journal had caught the eye of Epron or the Japanese at the time of lifting parts of the hull, then from the exact specifications given by the magazine, it would have been easy to determine whether the vessel being examined was the Prince or not. Unfortunately, no one did this.

I.S.’s opinion on this matter is interesting. Isakov, admiral of the fleet of the Soviet Union: “Prince”, “Prince Regent”, “Black Prince”, 200 thousand, 500 thousand francs, 1 million pounds sterling, 60 million francs, millions of rubles in gold... Different names of the ship, different amounts, different places of his death..."

Yes, indeed, the sunken ship found by the Epron team could be the Prince, Jason, Hope, and Resolute. There is still no reliable information that the five gold coins raised by the Japanese were from those barrels that the “Prince” was carrying to pay the soldiers’ salaries.

Was there any gold at all on board the Prince when it arrived at the Balaklava raid?
Historians and would-be historians like V.S. Yazykova from among the EPRON employees and representatives of the Japanese company Shinkai Kogyossio, who tried to restore the true picture of the Prince disaster, forgot or did not consider one remarkable fact worthy of attention.

Not a single overcoat, padded jacket, pair of boots, not a single sovereign could get into Balaclava without the permission of the superintendent of the British expeditionary forces operating in the Crimea. The Superintendent was subordinate directly to the financial authorities of Westminster in London, and his office was in Constantinople during the Crimean War.

The uniforms, ammunition, food supplies and gold delivered by the “Prince” to the port of Istanbul were to be sent to Balaklava according to the payroll provided from the Crimea by the commander-in-chief. The lists of people who died in battles, from diseases and epidemics, with diabolical consistency, every day, diverged from the actual losses, and the “difference” remained in the hands of defeated clerks (of course, not without the knowledge of their direct superior - the superintendent).

It is obvious that the manipulation of gold and equipment brought profit to the subordinates of the British superintendent in Constantinople. That is why the most reliable version should be considered the one that claims that the barrels of gold were reloaded in the Istanbul port onto some other ship, and after that the “Prince” left for Balaklava.

Here is another piece of strong evidence that there was no gold on the Prince. In the epic of The Prince, many countries except England suffered severely. Thus, France spent half a million searching for the treasure, Italy - two hundred thousand, Japan - almost a quarter of a million rubles in gold, while England never even attempted to obtain a license to work to retrieve the lost ship of His Majesty's fleet.

Another important fact is striking. Almost all historical materials relating to the period of the Crimean War do not mention that there was gold on board the Prince by the time it arrived at the Balaklava roadstead. Barrels of gold coins are spoken of by sources from a later time, when widespread rumors made the “Prince” “Black.”

What is EPRON? Ask someone such a question now, and you are unlikely to get an intelligible answer. And in the 1930s, this sonorous abbreviation was on everyone’s lips: articles and books were written about EPRON - Special Purpose Underwater Expedition - they wrote articles and books, and made films. The appearance of this romantic organization (it finally received official status in December 1923) was associated with the Black Sea and ships that sank off the Crimean coast.

To be precise, at first it was not about all the ships, but about one single legendary ship - the British frigate “Black Prince”. During this time, he sank near Balaklava along with other ships of the united squadron, broken on the coastal rocks during an unprecedented hurricane. Since then, the “Black Prince” has haunted searchers of sea treasures: it was believed that, in addition to food and uniforms, it was carrying either 200 or even 500 thousand pounds sterling in gold. And he sank to the bottom along with this precious cargo. The gold coins were supposedly poured into barrels, which is why they should have rested safe and sound somewhere at the bottom of Balaklava Bay, waiting for the lucky one to find them. And many were looking, not only Russian citizens, but also the French, Norwegians, and Americans. The luckiest ones were the Italian divers who explored the bottom of the bay at the beginning of the 20th century. Engineer Giuseppe Restucci brought with him a special deep-sea suit of his own design - a thick-walled copper box with three windows and holes for the hands, lowered down on a strong steel cable. With his help, the Italians discovered the broken hull of the ship. The sunken ship was thoroughly examined. Among the trophies were a telescope, a rifle, and a box of bullets. But it was not possible to find gold. The Italians came to Balaklava several more times, but were never successful. The First World War and revolution suspended the hunt for the Black Prince's treasure for a long time. But in the early 20s they started talking about it again.

In 1923, engineer Vladimir Yazykov, an obsessive treasure hunter, arrived from Sevastopol to Moscow. In Moscow, with his idea, he first turned to the Revolutionary Military Council and the commander of the Naval Forces. But neither there nor there were interested in the proposal of the Sevastopol engineer. And then he went to the OGPU, to the head of the special department, Genrikh Yagoda. Yazykov’s story about gold coins at the bottom of Balaklava Bay seemed convincing to Yagoda - and the work began to boil.

An order was given to create EPRON and approve its first staff: Yazykov was appointed head of EPRON, and Lev Zakharov-Meyer became commissar (head of the OGPU). Also, the initial composition of EPRON included several engineers, a diving specialist, a doctor, a boat commander and an accountant. The main task of this small team was to organize “the best working conditions for the gold expedition.”

First of all, it was necessary to build an apparatus (or, as it was then called, a projectile) for descent to great depths. The projectile project was developed by engineer Danilenko, who was part of EPRON. The device he invented could dive quite deeply, was designed for three people, equipped with a telephone, a spotlight and a mechanical manipulator for grasping various loads. The shell of the projectile was made of steel and weighed more than 10 tons.

By the beginning of the summer of 1923, the shell was ready, until the end of the summer the EPRON team was searching for the exact location of the “Black Prince” in Balaklava Bay: military minesweepers were working, the bottom was examined with metal detectors, a seaplane and a balloon were photographing the soil.

Before descending on the Danilenko apparatus. 1923
In September, Danilenko’s shell, in which the designer and engineer himself were, sank to the bottom for the first time. Then two more descents took place - to 95 and 123 m. At that time these were world diving records! Regular offshore work began - meter by meter, day after day, month after month, Epronovites examined the bottom of Balaklava Bay. The search continued for more than a year, they managed to find parts of the ship scattered on the seabed, they were cleared of soil and silt, examined literally centimeter by centimeter - but not a single gold coin was found. The leadership of the OGPU realized that further searches for gold were useless, and in December 1924 it was decided to stop all work in this direction. During this time, members of EPRON discovered a cemetery of dead English ships, raised many ship wrecks and anchors, and subsequently continued to search for and raise sunken ships.

As for the gold of the Black Prince, this mystery has not yet been resolved. According to one of the existing versions, they could not find him for a very simple reason: back in 1854, the “Black Prince” was carrying everything to Balaklava, but not gold, and all the stories about his precious cargo are nothing more than fiction.. .

By the way

The famous ship was actually called simply Prince("Prince"). Journalists dubbed him the “Black Prince” - apparently because many went bankrupt in search of his mythical gold, and more than one person died. Under the name “Black Prince” the frigate went down in history.

Tatiana Shevchenko, "

In November 1854, Allied ships under the command of Admiral Lyons stood at the entrance to Balaklava Bay. Among them was the screw steamship Prince. On it, more than forty thousand sets of warm clothes, medicines, food, ammunition and equipment for blowing up sunken ships in the Sevastopol roadstead were brought from England. There was no place in the harbor, and he was left at anchor in the outer roadstead - extremely dangerous when the wind blows from the sea.

By that time, there were five warships, four military ships and many transport ships near Balaklava. About 30 ships were in the harbor.

On November 14, 1854, a severe storm began. The wind speed reached 37 meters per second. The English camp was literally blown away by the wind. Blankets, caps, greatcoats, frock coats, and even tables and chairs were swirling in the air. Mackintoshes, rubber dishes, bed linen, tent canvas flew along the valley towards Sevastopol.

Barrels of rum rushed through the camp, bouncing on the rocks. People and horses, knocked down, rolled helplessly on the ground. The roof of the house of the English commander-in-chief Raglan was torn off and spread out on the ground...

The commander of the allied fleet ordered all battleships to go to sea.

The captain of the "Prince" Gudel hoped in vain for the power of the steam engine. If the ship had gone out to the open sea, it would have had a chance to escape, but at the very shore it was doomed. The ship was torn from its anchor and carried onto the rocks. The captain ordered the masts to be cut down. The cut down mizzen mast fell overboard and the rigging was wrapped around the screws. The midshipman and six sailors rushed into the raging sea and miraculously managed to escape. The “Prince” crashed into the coastal rocks with its stern and began to sink.

In total, on this day the Allies lost 60 ships, 11 of them in the Balaklava area.

The cost of “Prince” was estimated at no less than 600-700 thousand pounds sterling, or about 13 million rubles in silver. Human rumor renamed the ship and gave it the name “Black Prince”.

After his death, rumors arose that there was gold pay from the English military on board. They also named “exact data” - thirty barrels of gold in English and Turkish currency worth two million rubles, then five million and even ten. A.I. Kuprin in “Listrigons” argued that the old people in Balaklava knew the figure absolutely precisely: “Sixty million rubles in ringing English gold!”

The glitter of gold haunted me. Old-timers of Balaklava assumed that it sank to the left of the entrance to the bay, about 50 meters from the white rocks, at a depth of about 100 meters.

The Italian company Restucci was the first to undertake the search for gold in 1905. But they did not find not only gold, but even a ship.

In the fall of 1923, underwater enthusiast V.S. Yazykov, since 1908. who was searching for gold came to F.E. Dzerzhinsky with an offer that was difficult to refuse. On December 17, 1923, by order of the OGPU No. 528, the Special Purpose Underwater Expedition (EPRON) was formed.

In the summer of 1925, a number of items from the legendary steamship were discovered. It became obvious that the ship was crushed by blocks of rocks collapsed by the sea. It was extremely difficult to get to him. By this time, additional study of the documents did not confirm the presence of gold on it.

The last to make an attempt to raise the ship was the Japanese company Shinkai Kogiseio Ltd. The Japanese pledged to reimburse the state for the funds previously spent on searching for the “Prince” (about 70,000 rubles in gold), to divide the mined gold in half, to leave EPRON with the equipment used in the work and a deep-sea diving mask, the most advanced at that time. However, their work was not successful. Having spent 300,000 rubles, the company stopped working. A total of “...seven gold coins” were found.

At this point, the search for the treasures of the “Black Prince” stopped. But the organization created by Dzerzhinsky remained - EPRON - at that time the largest maritime search and rescue service center in the country. In 1931, EPRON was renamed the Emergency Rescue Service. The main job of the divers was lifting ships.

In the Black Sea, Epronovites raised nine submarines that were sunk in 1919 during the intervention. From 1925 to 1940, the destroyers Kaliakria, Smetlivy, Stremitelny, Lieutenant Shestakov, Gadzhibey were raised, as well as four towers of the battleship Empress Maria, which sank in 1916 in Sevastopol Bay (the weight of each of them 850 tons). During the war, divers retrieved the latest German sea mines with several degrees of protection from the bottom. In the post-war years, employees were engaged in rescue operations: in 1955 they rescued sailors from the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, the battleship Novorossiysk, which was blown up in the same place where the battleship Empress Maria sank in 1916; in August 1957, divers fought for three days for the lives of the crew of the M-351 submarine, which sank in the Balaklava roadstead, and emerged victorious.

On August 31, 1986, the passenger steamer Admiral Nakhimov collided and sank near Novorossiysk. Emergency services specialists spent several days saving the lives of its passengers...

Thus, we can safely say that Balaklava is the “cradle” of diving in the country of the Soviets.

Mysterious stories associated with your hometown are always interesting. Personally, I have always been fascinated by the stories of the indigenous Sevastopol residents. From an early age, adults told me: “He who does not know his history does not know his future.” And I still keep it in my head. Therefore, I have always been in awe of the historical past...

Balaklava Bay

My first trip to Balaklava was in 8th grade. Our class teacher told us when the city was founded, who lived here, how the battles took place in Balaklava Bay, in which house the poetess Lesya Ukrainka lived. As we stood listening to stories and looking at the landscape, a short old man approached us with a fishing rod in his hands and a small catch. He paused and also began to listen to our speaker with interest.

Oddly enough, when we began to climb the mountain, to the Genoese fortress of Cembalo, he went with us. As a decent person, he asked if he could come with us, the teacher agreed. The climb was not easy for the old man; he quietly, puffing, climbed up with us.

Genoese fortress - Cembalo

With great difficulty, the whole group climbed the mountain. It was a sunny day, the beginning of summer, a warm wind warmed, the sun was shining brightly, and the sea shimmered in its rays. While eavesdropping on a conversation between the teacher and the old man, I found out a very interesting fact.

It turns out that the old man lived his entire life in Balaklava. He is a fifth generation fisherman and the last time he was on the mountain where the Genoese fortress stood was 10 years ago. Hearing that the children were climbing up, I decided to walk, despite my age. Sitting down on a stone, closing his eyes, he breathed in the fresh sea air and smiled.

Having decided to sit down next to him, I, like a repeating monkey, repeated all his actions. Out of curiosity, I began to ask him why he had not been here for so long and why only now he decided to come up here. The story was so interesting that I decided to tell it to you.

In the 50s, when the old man was still a boy, his father always took him fishing with him, because he wanted him to continue his work, like many generations of his ancestors.

But it must be said that after the Great Patriotic War, in 1957, Balaklava became a closed city, because there were secret buildings there, later their complex was called “Object 825 GTS”. Six types of nuclear weapons were stored and presumably manufactured there. Until the end of the Cold War, thanks to this facility, it was not so easy to get into Balaklava. But still, of course, people lived there, worked, were born and died.

“Object 825 GTS” is a museum today.

Every morning, before the first roosters crowed, the boy and his father got into the boat and went out to sea. Not from the main bay, since it was closed to everyone (nuclear submarines were built there), but from Silver Beach, which is located east of Balaklava. To interest the child, the father told all sorts of stories from his native place: about the ancient Greeks, the Ottoman conquerors, the time of Tsarist Russia. On one of these trips to sea, my father told the story of the “Black Prince”.

From the old man’s face, it was immediately clear that he was happy to tell me this legend the way his father told him 60 years ago. He spoke simply - how this and that happened, went on, and passed. But still, I was impressed. Later I clarified my information about this legend. And this is what I managed to find out.

Crimean War(1853-56) began due to the fact that diplomats from Russia and France could not agree on the question of who should own the keys to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. France demanded that the keys, which were then in the possession of the Orthodox community, be handed over to the Catholic clergy. At the same time, the French referred to the treaty with the Ottoman Empire of 1740, according to which France was given the right to control Christian holy places in Palestine. Russia defended its right by citing two documents - the Sultan's firman of 1757, which restored the rights of the Orthodox Church in Palestine, and the Kuchuk-Kainardzhi Peace Treaty of 1774, which gave Russia the right to protect the interests of Christians in the Ottoman Empire.

Of course, this was just an excuse. The reason was dominance in the Black and Mediterranean Seas, as always. But in the end, in the heat of the Crimean Bloody War, a huge number of people died - both among the defenders of the Russian Empire and among the enemy troops (British, French and Ottoman Empire). One moment of the Crimean War is very important for our story about the “Black Prince”.

On November 8, 1854, an English squadron of ten ships arrived at the outer Balaklava roadstead. The task was to gain a foothold in the bay. Together with the squadron, having lowered its two anchors, a British frigate called the Prince arrived.

Five days later, a southeastern hurricane of unprecedented force swept over the Crimean peninsula. Thirty-four ships perished on the coastal rocks of Balaklava Bay. This consideration also befell the “Prince”.

The legend about him was repeatedly described by historians and writers, among them were the classic Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin and the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko.

As for specific data, at the beginning of the war the British government chartered more than two hundred merchant ships to transport troops and ammunition to the Crimea. All of them belonged not to the state, but to private entrepreneurs. On board the Prince, as reported in the Illustrated London News on December 16, 1854, “there were 36,700 pairs of woolen socks, 53,000 woolen shirts, 2,500 guard sheepskin coats, 16,000 sheets, 3,750 blankets. In addition, one can also name the number of sleeping bags - 150,000 pieces, woolen shirts - 100,000, flannel underpants - 90,000 pairs, about 40,000 blankets and 40,000 waterproof hats, 40,000 fur coats and 120,000 pairs of boots."

Yes, the ship in question was called “Prince”, and there was no trace of the “Black” prefix then. Why is he “Black” today? The fact is that the frigate was painted black.

In general, the war had not yet ended when rumors spread instantly. Everyone was gossiping that the English frigate “Black Prince” with a huge cargo of gold had sunk off the coast of Crimea.

A flurry of rumors led to the fact that the ship "Black Prince" and its disappearance became overgrown with legends. Thus, the value of the gold sunk with the ship increased to sixty million francs. In 1897, newspapers already wrote that the Prince, a huge ship of the English fleet, was carrying from England a significant amount of silver coins and 200,000 pounds sterling in gold to pay the salaries of British troops in the Crimea.

The ship was searched for equally unsuccessfully by Italians, Americans, Norwegians, and Germans. The primitive diving technology of those times did not allow diving deep enough. In 1875, when the diving suit had already been created, a large joint-stock company with large capital was established in France to search for the loss. French divers searched the bottom of Balaklava Bay and all approaches to it, found more than ten sunken ships, but the Black Prince was not among them. The work was carried out at a depth that was enormous for the end of the last century.

Inventor Giuseppe Rastucci led the expedition in 1901. A few weeks after the start of work, he managed to find the iron hull of a large ship. Italian divers recovered from the bottom a metal box with lead bullets, a telescope, a rifle, an anchor, pieces of iron and wood. But... not a single coin. In the spring of 1903, the Italians left Balaklava, only to return to the search site two years later. This time, in a completely different place, they discovered another iron ship. No one still knows whether it was the Black Prince or some other ship. Again no gold was found.

Balaclava, early 20th century.

In 1922, an amateur diver from Balaklava retrieved several gold coins from the bottom of the sea at the entrance to the bay. So the world became interested in “The Black Prince” again. Offers, one more fantastic than the other, poured in. One inventor from Feodosia claimed that the “Black Prince” probably lies at the bottom in the bay itself.

If you read how much money was spent by states on the search for the ship, it roughly turns out that France spent half a million on the search for the treasure, Italy - two hundred thousand, Japan - almost a quarter of a million rubles in gold, while England never even made an attempt obtain a license to work to recover a lost ship of Her Majesty's fleet. Another important fact is striking. Almost all historical materials relating to the period of the Crimean War do not mention that there was gold on board the Prince by the time it arrived at the Balaklava roadstead.

Once, when I was talking with the guys at the Crimean excavations, they told me another story. During the 90s, a couple of amateur divers were diving in the bay. How and what exactly they did is not known. But they got rich instantly. We opened a diving school and developed this hobby, as we were big fans of this hobby. While having a fun “potion” with friends, they said that they allegedly found a chest with gold coins (or bars, it’s not entirely clear). What kind of treasure it was, whose it was, whether it was Soviet bullion or gold coins of the famous “Black Prince”, is still unknown, as is the very location of these guys.

What is EPRON? Ask someone such a question now, and you are unlikely to get an intelligible answer. And in the 1930s, this sonorous abbreviation was on everyone’s lips: articles and books were written about EPRON - Special Purpose Underwater Expedition - they wrote articles and books, and made films. The appearance of this romantic organization (it finally received official status in December 1923) was associated with the Black Sea and ships that sank off the Crimean coast.

To be precise, at first it was not about all the ships, but about one single legendary ship - the British frigate “Black Prince”. During the Crimean War, she sank near Balaklava along with other ships of the united squadron, smashed against the coastal rocks during a hurricane of unprecedented strength. Since then, the “Black Prince” has haunted searchers of sea treasures: it was believed that, in addition to food and uniforms, it was carrying either 200 or even 500 thousand pounds sterling in gold. And he sank to the bottom along with this precious cargo. The gold coins were supposedly poured into barrels, which is why they should have rested safe and sound somewhere at the bottom of Balaklava Bay, waiting for the lucky one to find them. And many were looking, not only Russian citizens, but also the French, Norwegians, and Americans. The luckiest ones were the Italian divers who explored the bottom of the bay at the beginning of the 20th century. Engineer Giuseppe Restucci brought with him a special deep-sea suit of his own design - a thick-walled copper box with three windows and holes for the hands, lowered down on a strong steel cable. With his help, the Italians discovered the broken hull of the ship. The sunken ship was thoroughly examined. Among the trophies were a telescope, a rifle, and a box of bullets. But it was not possible to find gold. The Italians came to Balaklava several more times, but were never successful. The First World War and revolution suspended the hunt for the Black Prince's treasure for a long time. But in the early 20s they started talking about it again.

In 1923, engineer Vladimir Yazykov, an obsessive treasure hunter, arrived from Sevastopol to Moscow. In Moscow, with his idea, he first turned to the Revolutionary Military Council and the commander of the Naval Forces. But neither there nor there were interested in the proposal of the Sevastopol engineer. And then he went to the OGPU, to the head of the special department, Genrikh Yagoda. Yazykov’s story about gold coins at the bottom of Balaklava Bay seemed convincing to Yagoda - and the work began to boil.

An order was given to create EPRON and approve its first staff: Yazykov was appointed head of EPRON, and Lev Zakharov-Meyer became commissar (head of the OGPU). Also, the initial composition of EPRON included several engineers, a diving specialist, a doctor, a boat commander and an accountant. The main task of this small team was to organize “the best working conditions for the gold expedition.”

First of all, it was necessary to build an apparatus (or, as it was then called, a projectile) for descent to great depths. The projectile project was developed by engineer Danilenko, who was part of EPRON. The device he invented could dive quite deeply, was designed for three people, equipped with a telephone, a spotlight and a mechanical manipulator for grasping various loads. The shell of the projectile was made of steel and weighed more than 10 tons.

By the beginning of the summer of 1923, the shell was ready, until the end of the summer the EPRON team was searching for the exact location of the “Black Prince” in Balaklava Bay: military minesweepers were working, the bottom was examined with metal detectors, a seaplane and a balloon were photographing the soil.

Before descending on the Danilenko apparatus. 1923
In September, Danilenko’s shell, in which the designer and engineer himself were, sank to the bottom for the first time. Then two more descents took place - to 95 and 123 m. At that time these were world diving records! Regular offshore work began - meter by meter, day after day, month after month, Epronovites examined the bottom of Balaklava Bay. The search continued for more than a year, they managed to find parts of the ship scattered on the seabed, they were cleared of soil and silt, examined literally centimeter by centimeter - but not a single gold coin was found. The leadership of the OGPU realized that further searches for gold were useless, and in December 1924 it was decided to stop all work in this direction. During this time, members of EPRON discovered a cemetery of dead English ships, raised many ship wrecks and anchors, and subsequently continued to search for and raise sunken ships.

As for the gold of the Black Prince, this mystery has not yet been resolved. According to one of the existing versions, they could not find him for a very simple reason: back in 1854, the “Black Prince” was carrying everything to Balaklava, but not gold, and all the stories about his precious cargo are nothing more than fiction.. .

By the way

The famous ship was actually called simply Prince("Prince"). Journalists dubbed him the “Black Prince” - apparently because many went bankrupt in search of his mythical gold, and more than one person died. Under the name “Black Prince” the frigate went down in history.

Tatiana Shevchenko, "