18 Sep 2008:
Divers, Treasures and the ship of "Britney Spears".
Two British divers Ed Cumming and Todd Stevens claim to have found the Nancy, which was smashed on rocks off Cornwall in a storm in 1784. The shipwreck might contain more than ВЈ200,000 of jewels.
The whereabouts of The Nancy, which sank off the western shores of the Isles of Scilly in 1784, has long remained a mystery.
The loss of the ship was all the more tragic because on board was Ann Cargill, a famous 18th century "Britney Spears" as renowned for her scandalous love-life as her talents. She was sailing back from Bombay with her illegitimate child. Ann Cargill was deported from India on the orders of William Pitt the Younger who told parliament "an actress should not be defiling the pure shores of India". So she boarded the Nancy to return in disgrace.
For decades, local divers have searched the seabed for the wreck.
Mr Cumming, 62, said a record of the event had confused the ship with its lifeboat: "It had been written that they "were driven" onto Rosevear Island by the stormy sea and most people took it that meant The Nancy.
We realised that after the ship had hit the rocks, the passengers had got into a smaller boat and that was the one that was "driven" onto Rosevear.
So people were looking in the wrong place for The Nancy, they should have been looking further out."
Divers are hoping that there is some jewellery left down there. That would prove that it is definitely the Nancy. They said that If they find anything they will donate it to the local museum.
Mr Stevens, from St Marys, Isles of Scilly, said it took them a year of work to track down the wreck and they believe they have enough evidence to prove it is the Nancy.
He said: "Everything points to it being the Nancy, the location, the size.
"It is the right period, we have sent pieces of pottery away for tests and they came from India at that time.
Tragic accounts of Cargill"s death and her "floating in her shift" with an infant at her bosom were published in English newspapers, and local legend has it that her lonely spirit still haunts the island spot where she died, singing a ghostly lullaby to her lost child.
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