It’s a little bit of a dream come true, don’t you think? Stumbling across a nugget of gold from a historic shipwreck on a Welsh beach…..Well, for one gold hunter, it was a dream that actually did come true!

Vincent Thurkettle, who comes from Norfolk, was the proud finder of Britain’s largest nugget of gold back in 2012. Mind you, he had spent seven years searching for remnants of a haul of gold that sank with a ship in 1859 off the coast of Moelfre on Anglesey – not far from us here a the Oakeley Arms.

Mr Thurkettle’s gold nugget weighed in at a whopping 97g, and is thought to be worth around £50,000. Although the finder doesn’t always get to be the keeper in this case – as the gold was found near a shipwreck, Mr Thurkettle handed the nugget over to the receivers of the wreck and it will eventually go on display in a museum.

The gold nugget came from the wreck of the Royal Charter ship, which was wrecked off the coast of Anglesey in 1859. The boat was a steam clipper that was sailing into Liverpool. The mighty ship, that had been designed and built to withstand the roughest seas had almost finished the long 60 day journey from Melbourne, Australia. However, a fierce storm swept across the country just as the Royal Charter reached the coast of Anglesey and sadly the Storm Force 10 winds proved just to much for the ship. She was pushed onto a sandbank before the wind drove her onto rocks just north of Moelfre. Battered by the winds against the rocks the ship quickly broke up.

Although a few people managed to swim ashore, the vast majority of those on the boat were tragically drowned. The exact number of lives lost isn’t known because the passenger list was destroyed in the storm, but it’s thought that around 450 people drowned.  Sadly, the Royal Charter wasn’t the only ship to be wrecked during the storm, on the 25th and 26th October 1859. Later named the Royal Charter Storm, it was the worst storm to hit the Irish Sea that century, with a total death toll of over 800 lives. A whopping 133 ships were wrecked and another 90 were badly damaged.

On board the Royal Charter ship were quite a few gold miners – who’d gone to Australia to seek their fortune and were coming back with pockets lined with gold. A cargo of gold was also on board the ship, so the total amount of gold thought to be on board was somewhere in the region of £150 million. After the shipwreck, huge amounts of gold were washed ashore, making many local people rich overnight. However, lots of gold from the Royal Charter has never been accounted for, and the legendary story of tragedy and riches has been fascinating treasure hunters like Mr Thurkettle for the past 150 years.

It was believed that only gold dust remained of the precious cargo, but this most recent find proves otherwise. The area has been extensively searched since Mr Thurkettle’s discovery, but this sensational story will still attract many more hunters who dream of a once in a lifetime find!