The discoverer of a relic from the ill-fated Loch Ard shipwreck has been reunited with her find 44 years later.
Julie Wilkins visited Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village earlier this month to see a gold coin, a small gold cross and carriage clock parts she donated on display for the first time.
A keen diver, she came across the items in 1980 when she was exploring the wreck of the Loch Ard off the coast of Peterborough.
“Diving along, and all of a sudden… the coin and the cross… they were attached by a ring,” she said.
She then came across some pieces of metal she later identified as carriage clock parts.
“I thought “what’s that?” I knew in my mind’s eye there was something, so I picked it up and put it in my wetsuit,” she said.
“I didn’t take it off the ship. It floated past.
“Thousands have dived it. Why did it come to me?”
After having the items blessed by a vicar, she deposited them in a locked safe.
And there they remained until 2005 when she contacted Flagstaff Hill with the offer to hand them in.
“As the years went on and you start getting a bit older, you think, ‘what’s going to happen?'” she said.
“If something happened to me, no-one would know the provenance.
“So I rang up (Flagstaff Hill) and said ‘I found something from the Loch Ard and I’d like to hand it back in.'”
“I wanted it to come back home. And come back home it did.”
As the keeper of over 10,000 artefacts, the items didn’t immediately go on display. However, their value was recognised and they were securely stored in a locked safe.
As volunteers progressed with the meticulous work of cataloguing and digitising the collection, they were rediscovered, along with Julie’s phone number.
“About three or four months ago, the call came through,” said Julie.
As she didn’t recognise the number, Julie’s first thought was that it was a scammer, but the person on the other end of the line was in fact Kerry Peterson, a volunteer with the Flagstaff Hill collections team.
“I introduced myself, and when I said where I was from, the voice changed completely. She was really excited to hear from Flagstaff Hill,” said Kerry.
“To find someone so closely connected (to the Loch Ard)… it was very exciting.
“It was a firsthand story of a wonderful find.
“Occasionally things like that happen and it makes the job of someone who is researching and cataloguing exciting and it brings our collection alive to have that connection with people.”
The artefacts are now on display in the Flagstaff Hill museum alongside other treasures from the Loch Ard, which was wrecked in 1878.
In 1982 the Loch Ard site was gazetted as an historic shipwreck under the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act.
Flagstaff Hill is open daily from 10am-5pm.
