Tongan wreck may be pirate treasure ship: official

Divers in Tonga have discovered a shipwreck believed to be a pirate vessel that folklore says sank in the 19th century with a hold full of treasure, AFP reports citing officials in the Pacific nation. The Port-au-Prince, a British privateer, was attacked by local warriors in 1806 after arriving in Tonga and most of its crew were massacred on the orders of King Finau 'Ulukalala II, Tonga's tourism ministry said. It said the Tongans salvaged iron and cannons from the ship, before the king ordered it to be scuttled with its treasure still on board. The vessel was thought to be lost until a local diver recently found a wreck off the island of Foa that has features similar to the historic privateer, tourism ministry spokeswoman Sandra Fifita said. If the wreck proved to be the Port-au-Prince, the treasure was likely to still be aboard, she added. "It is believed that a considerable amount of copper, silver and gold is resting with the wreck, along with a number of silver candlesticks, incense pans, crucifixes and chalices," she said in a statement. Fifita said the wreck had copper cladding on its hull, which Britain's National Maritime Museum in Greenwich said meant it dated from 1780 to 1850, when such cladding was used to protect against shipworm and marine weeds. The statement said local divers were mapping the wreck for further study. Fifita could not be reached for comment on the state of the remains or whether any treasure had already been found. The Port-au-Prince was originally built in France but was captured by the British and set sail from London in 1805 as a privateer, a ship with permission to attack and plunder the vessels and possessions of Britain's rivals Spain and France. After almost two years at sea, when it raided Madrid's settlements in Peru and plundered Spanish ships, it planned to hunt whales migrating through the Pacific and made its way to Tonga, where it met its end. A teenaged boy named William Mariner was part of the crew and survived the massacre, eventually becoming a favourite of the king and adopting the name Toki Ukamea, or Iron Axe. He stayed in Tonga for about four years before travelling back to Britain on a passing ship, recounting his adventures to amateur anthropologist John Martin in "An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands". The book remains one of the main sources for historians studying pre-Christian Tonga.