Due to strict laws on who owns any treasure discovered, ‘the days of people finding a big pile of gold and becoming rich overnight are well and truly gone.’
He says the lure for him lies in finding answers, with any precious cargo set to become heritage artifacts.
New technology could help solve the mystery, as the company has unmanned underwater vessels worth 3.5 million each capable of going 6,000 metres – deeper than the deepest part of the search area – as well as new sonar tech.
Nigel says that the search will be difficult, though, with the stretch of water where it sank notoriously dangerous.
‘There’s thousands of shipwrecks down there and the Merchant Royal is just one of them,’ he said. ‘So we’ve got to literally pick through a lot of wrecks as we’re doing them and then identify them.
‘It’s not straightforward. If it was straightforward, it would have been done.’
Based in Redruth and employing several other ex-fishermen, he believes his company is well placed to succeed where others failed due to their local knowledge of the waters as well as the advancements in tech.
The wreck went down on its way to Dartmouth on September 23, 1641, after stopping off in the Spanish port of Cadiz where it was repaired and took on more cargo on its way back from Mexico and the Caribbean.