Lutine was a frigate which served in both the French Navy and the Royal Navy. She was launched by the French in 1779. The ship passed to British control in 1793 and was taken into service as HMS Lutine. She sank among the West Frisian Islands during a storm in 1799.
She was built as a French with 32 guns, and was launched at Toulon in 1779. During the French Revolution, Lutine came under French Royalist control. On 18 December 1793, she was one of sixteen ships handed over to a British fleet at the end of the Siege of Toulon, to prevent her being captured by the French Republicans. In 1795, she was rebuilt by the British as a fifth-rate frigate with 38 guns. She served thereafter in the North Sea, where she was part of the blockade of Amsterdam.
Lutine sank during a storm at Vlieland in the West Frisian Islands on 9 October 1799, whilst carrying a large shipment of gold. Shifting sandbanks disrupted salvage attempts, and the majority of the cargo has never been recovered. Lloyd's of London has preserved her salvaged bell – the Lutine Bell – which is now used for ceremonial purposes at their headquarters in London.
French career In 1780, Lutine was under Cambray, and called the ports of Foilleri, Smyrna and Malta, before returning to Toulon, escorting a convoy. Later that year, she was under Garnier de Saint-Antonin, conducting missions in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In 1781, she was under Flotte, also escorting convoys in the Eastern Mediterranean and calling Marseille, Malta, Smyrna and Foilleri. At Athens, Flotte was gifted an antique relief, that he reported to Navy Minister Castries. From 13 July 1782 to 16 July 1783, she continued the same missions under Gineste.
With the outbreak of the War of the First Coalition, Lutine was recommissioned as a bomb ship in 1792.
British career
On 27 September 1793, the royalists in Toulon surrendered the city, naval dockyards, arsenal, and French Mediterranean fleet to a British fleet commanded by Vice Admiral Lord Hood. The French vessels included:
Lutine was one of the ships from the Old Basin. During the siege of Toulon, the British converted Lutine to a bomb vessel that fired mortars at the besieging French artillery batteries, which were under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte. When they abandoned Toulon on 19 December, the British took Lutine with them.
The ship was sent to Portsmouth in December 1793 for a refit and commissioned as HMS Lutine.
The loss of the Lutine occurred during the Second Coalition of the French Revolutionary Wars, in which an Anglo-Russian army landed in the Batavian Republic (now the Netherlands), which had been occupied by the French since 1795. (The French had captured the Dutch fleet the previous year in a cavalry charge over the frozen polders.) Admiral Duncan had heavily defeated the Dutch fleet in 1797 at the Battle of Camperdown and the remainder of the Dutch fleet was captured on 30 August 1799 by the Duke of York.
During this period Lutine served as an escort, guiding transports in and out of the shoal waters around North Holland.
In October 1799 under command of Captain Lancelot Skynner she was employed in carrying about £ in bullion and coin (equivalent in value to £ in ), from Yarmouth to Cuxhaven in order to provide Hamburg's banks with funds in order to prevent a stock market crash and, possibly, for paying troops in North Holland. In the evening of 9 October 1799, during a heavy northwesterly gale, the ship under Captain Lancelot Skynner, having made unexpected leeway, was drawn by the tidal stream flowing into the Waddenzee, onto a sandbank in Vlie off the island of Terschelling, in the West Frisian Islands. There, she became a total loss. All but one of her approximately 240 passengers and crew perished in the breaking seas.
Captain Portlock, commander of the British squadron at Vlieland, reported the loss, writing to the Admiralty in London on 10 October:
Three officers, including Captain Skynner, were apparently buried in the Vlieland churchyard, and around two hundred others were buried in a mass grave near the Brandaris lighthouse in Terschelling. No memorials mark these graves.
Captain Lancelot Skynner came from Easton on the Hill, near Stamford, England, where his father was rector for many years. Plaques on the former rectory (known for a time as Lutine House) and in the church commemorate this and Captain Skynner.
The failure of the gold to arrive precipitated the very crisis that it had been designed to prevent.
Legacy Site of the wreck The site of the wreck, the Vlie, was notorious for its strong currents and the danger of storms forcing ships onto the shore. The area is composed of sandbanks and shoals, which the currents continuously shift, with channels through them: in 1666, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, Admiral Holmes had managed to penetrate these shoals and start Holmes's Bonfire, surprising the Dutch who had considered the shoals impassable. The depth of water also constantly changes, and this has caused much of the difficulty in salvage attempts.
Lutine was wrecked in a shallow channel called the IJzergat, which has now completely disappeared, between the islands of Vlieland and Terschelling. Immediately after Lutine sank, the wreck began silting up, forcing an end to salvage attempts by 1804. By chance, it was discovered in 1857 that the wreck was again uncovered, but covered again in 1859. The wreck was probably partially uncovered between 1915 and 1916, although no salvage was attempted because of World War I.
The gold Lloyd's archives were destroyed by the fire at Lloyd's headquarters in 1838, and the amount of cargo lost is based on the estimate made by Lloyd's in 1858: £1.2 million, consisting of both silver and gold 60 years after the disaster. Only the general assessment of the cargo and the amount of insurance are known for sure.[HMS Lutine. Interlloyd Averij (2010). Retrieved 31 August 2013] The gold was insured by Lloyd's of London, which paid the claim in full. The underwriters therefore owned the gold under rights of abandonment and later authorised attempts to salvage it. However, because of the state of war, the Dutch also laid claim to it as a prize of war.
Captain Portlock was instructed by the Admiralty on 29 October 1799 to try to recover the cargo "for the benefit of the persons to whom it belongs"; Lloyd's also sent agents to look over the wreck. The Committee for the Public Properties of Holland instructed the local Receivers of Wrecks to report on the wreck, and F.P. Robbé, the Receiver on Terschelling, was authorised in December 1799 to begin salvage operations. All three parties had drawn attention to the difficulty of salvage due to the unfavourable position of the wreck and lateness of the year. At this point, the wreck was lying in approximately of water.
In 1821, Robbé's successor as Receiver at Terschelling, Pierre Eschauzier successfully petitioned King William I and by royal decree received the sole right: In return, the state would receive half of all recoveries. Eschauzier and his heirs therefore became the owners of the wreck by royal decree and thus are known as the 'Decretal Salvors'.
Eschauzier's attempts spurred Lloyd's to approach the British government to defend their rights to the wreck. In 1823, King William revised by subsequent decree the original decree: everything which "had been reserved to the state from the cargo of the above-mentioned frigate" was ceded to the King of Great Britain as a token "of our friendly sentiments towards the Kingdom of Great Britain, and by no means out of a conviction of England's right to any part of the aforementioned cargo." This share was subsequently ceded back to Lloyd's.
The gold was apparently stored in flimsy casks bound with weak iron hoops and the silver in casks with wooden hoops. Within a year of the wreck, these casks had largely disintegrated, and the sea had started to scatter and cover the wreck.
Lloyd's records were destroyed by fire in 1838, and the actual amount of the gold lost is now unknown. In 1858 Lloyd's estimated the total value at £, made up of both silver and gold. Despite extended operations, over 80% remains to be salvaged. An uncorroborated newspaper report in 1869 referred to the Dutch crown jewels being on board.
Initial salvage attempts 1799–1938 1799–1801: An 1876 account reports that fishermen-with the sanction of the Dutch government in return for two-thirds of the recovered salvage-for a year and a half prior to 1801 recovered £80,000 of Bullion consisting of 58 bars of gold; 35 bars of silver; 42,000 Spanish silver pistoles; 212 half-pistoles, 179 Spanish gold pistoles; with smaller quantities of quarter; eighth and sixteenth pistoles. A 1911 account reports that, besides the gold, silver and pistoles listed above, there was also recovered 41,697 (not 42,000) Spanish Silver pistoles; 81 double Louis d'or; 138 single Louis d'or and 4 English guineas with an estimated value of £83,000 pounds sterling. The Dutch government's two-thirds share was re-minted into £56,000 worth of Dutch guilders. Sent to England was a packet of silver spoons initialled "W.S" and recognized as belonging to Lutines captain; likewise, a salvaged sword was identified as belonging to Lt. Charles Gustine Aufrere.
In August 1800 Robbé recovered a cask of seven gold bars, weighing and a small chest containing 4,606 Spanish piastres. Over 4–5 September, two small casks were recovered, one with its bottom stoved in, yielding twelve gold bars. There were also other, more minor, recoveries, making this year the most successful of all the salvage attempts; however, the expenses of the salvage were still greater than the recoveries by 3,241 guilders.
In 1801, although recoveries were made, conditions were unfavourable and the wreck was already silted up. By 1804 Robbé reported: that the part of the wreck in which one is accustomed to find the precious metals has now been covered by a large piece of the side of the ship (which had previously been found hanging more or less at an angle), thus impeding the salvage work, which was otherwise possible. Salvage attempts appear to have been given up at this point.
In 1814, Pierre Eschauzier was allocated 300 guilders for salvage by the Dutch King and recovered "8 Louis d'or and 7 Spanish piastres fished out of the wreck of the Lutine".
In 1821, Eschauzier put together a syndicate with the intention of using a diving bell manned by amphibicque Englishmen. However, Mr. Rennie, the engineer died that year; in 1822, the diving bell arrived at the end of June, but operations were frustrated by bad weather and silting-up of the wreck; at this stage the wreck was reckoned to be under the sand. Although salvage attempts continued until 1829, little was gained and the diving bell was sold on to the Dutch navy. In 1835, the sandbank covering Lutine shrank and moved southwards, with the depth of water being and desultory attempts at salvage were made. Further attempts to raise capital were largely unsuccessful.
In 1857, it was discovered by chance that "a channel had formed straight across the Goudplaat sandbank, leading over the wreck, so that the latter was not merely clear of sand but had also sunk further below the surface with the channel [...] the bows and stern, together with the decks and sides, had come completely away, leaving only the keel with the keelson above it and some ribs attached to this". Recovery work immediately recommenced, now using helmeted divers (helmduikers) and bell divers (klokduikers), the latter using a bell called the Hollandsche Duiker ('Dutch diver'). However, a large number of unauthorised salvors also displayed an interest, which led the Dutch government to station a gunboat in the area. Over the course of the season approximately 20,000 guilders-worth of specie was recovered.