The Great Girona Gold Hunt

This is Port na Spaniagh, that's Spanish Bay.

And that great cavern behind me is Spanish Cave,

and beyond it is the Spaniard's Rock.

Lurking among these Spanish names, there's still one that's Old Irish.

Lacada Point - the Long Stone.

A vicious fang of black basalt looking like some terrible trap

set to trigger disaster.

When that trap was sprung, two men separated by 400 years

were united by this bay.

One, Spanish nobleman Don Alonso Martinez de Leiva,

was brought here by fate and bad luck.

The other, Belgian adventurer Robert Stenuit,

came here lured by the prospect of Spanish gold.

So, what did happen here?

Why is this part of Ireland's North Antrim coast

so indelibly marked by the hand of Spain?

The Giant's Causeway.

A wild and stunning landscape

where visitors can face the full fury of these Atlantic rollers.

Their beguiling beauty hides a fearsome legacy.

This coast is littered with shipwrecks.

Within sight of the Causeway is one of Ireland's most significant wreck sites.

Port na Spaniagh.

So inaccessible, it's best seen from a boat.

So important, it's protected by an Act of Parliament.

Anchoring here could get you arrested.

Diving the treacherous reefs below these towering cliffs

could land you in prison.

It's 40 years since Robert Stenuit and Marc Jasinski first came here,

intrigued by the secrets that might lie below,

unaware that their lives would change utterly.

There are landscapes and places and events which mark you for ever, I guess.

And this is certainly one of them.

74-year-old Robert has been a trail-blazing professional diver for 50 years.

He made the world's first prolonged deep dive,

living and working for nearly three days

at a depth of more than 400 feet.

But this Argonaut of the deep had bigger dreams.

An historian by training, Robert was determined to excavate

a shipwreck loaded with gold and history, in equal measures.

What happened here was so important for me.

It's one major landmark in my life, really.

Really.

It was also a major landmark in European history.

A tragedy rooted in religious division and political ambition.

A seismic struggle far from Ireland's volcanic north coast.

The Spanish Armada.

Catholic Spain's doomed attempt to invade Protestant England.

In May 1588, 130 ships of the "most fortunate fleet",

as the Spanish called their Armada, set sail.

Spain's King Philip had ordered the destruction of England's Navy

and the removal of the Protestant heretic, Elizabeth, from the English throne.

At the Armada's heart was one of the most unusual warships then afloat.

The galleass Girona.

Part galley and part galleon,

she was meant to be Spain's decisive weapon in the war at sea.

Bristling with 50 guns and powered by oars as well as sail,

she had a press-ganged crew of convicts and other unfortunates.

Not the kind of men to be trusted with gold and jewels.

A very nice American, John Cotter, was writing a book about treasures

and it's in his book that I heard

about the Girona for the first time.

By the 16th century, Spain was the world's only superpower.

An elite few controlled the huge wealth of this vast empire.

One of them stood head and shoulders above all others.

Don Alonso Martinez de Leiva, Knight of Santiago

and Commander of Alcuescar.

He had behind him a remarkable career as a seaman and as a warrior.

He was the darling of everyone, including King Philip.

This is the only possible image of Don Alonso we have.

El Greco painted his portrait of A Man Of The House Of De Leiva before the Armada sailed.

An X-ray made in 1945 revealed his Cross of Santiago.

The Knights of Santiago are one of Spain's most prestigious military orders.

Why Don Alonso's cross has been over-painted is a mystery that only adds to his allure.

He was like a movie character, he had a reputation of being recklessly brave.

It was Don Alonso who King Philip charged with masterminding the invasion of England.

As soon as it was known that he was joining the Armada,

all the young noblemen rushed to join him,

eager to serve under him.

This young elite who rushed to Don Alonso were arrogant and confident.

They even sailed with their finest clothes and jewels,

ready for their victory march into London's Westminster Abbey.

But these bejewelled Spanish peacocks were outfought and outwitted by England's sea dogs.

The Spanish Armada was forced out of the English Channel

and into the North Sea.

With the wind and Elizabeth's navy driving them north,

there was only one course home to Spain.

The long haul round Scotland and Ireland.

A disastrous battle was about to be eclipsed by a desperate struggle to survive.

Throughout the August and September of 1588, storms raged across the Atlantic.

Hurricane winds and mountainous seas scattered the Spanish warships and supply vessels,

forcing many onto the wild Irish coast.

On board one was an Irish sailor, James Machary.

Captured and interrogated by the English in Ireland,

his testimony still exists today.

James Machary was on board the supply ship Santa Ana.

Battered and bedraggled though her crew were after eight nightmarish weeks at sea,

they had managed to run for safety into this bay.

But as well as the prospect of shelter and fresh food and water,

the sailors saw something unexpected and utterly shocking -

one of the greatest warships of the Spanish Armada, beached and helpless on a sandbank just out there.

She was La Rata Santa Maria Encoronada,

Don Alonso's ship.

She had been abandoned.

For Don Alonso, this was no longer about war and invasion.

This was about his personal duty to look after his men.

Convinced he was alone and trapped in Ireland, Don Alonso got everyone ashore.

He torched La Rata Encoronada, leaving nothing for the English to get their hands on.

Here, at Doona Castle, the stranded Spaniards dug themselves in.

Then, just as they were preparing to make a stand against their enemies in Ireland,

the Santa Ana appears on the horizon and changes everything.

It's a glimmer of hope.

He realises that instead of fighting to the death here in Ireland,

there was a chance to get himself and his men all the way home to Spain.

Machary said, "They came aboard carrying all the goods of any value they had on their ship.

"Plate, apparel, money, weapons, armour and jewels."

Now overloaded with men and treasure, the Santa Ana slipped out of Blacksod Bay.

But she was blown north and, for the second time in a week, Don Alonso was driven ashore.

This time in Donegal.

He abandoned ship and as he again prepared to fight,

locals told him there was yet another Spanish warship just 20 miles away.

Their only option now was to tramp all the way across

the Donegal mountains to Killybegs

to meet that third Spanish warship waiting in the harbour.

But Don Alonso would have to be carried by his men every step of the way.

While abandoning the Santa Ana, Don Alonso's leg had been badly crushed.

It took them a day's march to get here.

But sure enough, when they arrived, there was a Spanish Armada ship in the harbour.

She had been badly mauled after her weeks at sea, but she was still afloat.

And this was no ordinary warship...

she was the galleass Girona.

A ship built for war in the Mediterranean and never designed for this wild Irish weather.

But for 1,300 desperate Spaniards from three Armada ships,

the Girona was the only way out.

Just before midnight on 26th October 1588,

Don Alonso and his 1,300 comrades set sail from Killybegs harbour aboard the Girona.

But he had taken a huge gamble.

They weren't heading south towards Spain.

Instead, he was going to try and make a quick dash towards the north and east,

hoping to find sanctuary in Catholic Scotland.

But to the English, Don Alonso was still capable of wreaking havoc.

1,300 of Spain's finest in a heavily armed warship off the Irish coast

was a dangerous and potent enemy.

King Philip of Spain was desperate for news of Don Alonso.

So, too, was the Protestant Queen Elizabeth of England.

As far as she was concerned, there was still a very real danger of a Spanish invasion from Ireland.

Both monarchs would have to wait several months to hear anything at all.

But people living on Antrim's Causeway Coast knew almost at once the fate of the Girona.

Dunluce Castle has dominated this coast for more than 800 years.

It was home to the McDonnells, Lords of Antrim and, despite English annoyance,

still masters of this corner of Ireland for much of the 16th century.

Nothing happened on this coast without James McDonnell knowing about it.

James McDonnell must have received a visit from a guy panting

from having run from above the cliff

and having seen this huge mass of wood, cannons and dead bodies.

McDonnell gave shelter to five Spaniards,

the only survivors he found amongst the wreckage of an Armada warship they called the Girona.

More than 1,250 people drowned.

Then he organised, shall we say, the recovery of the gold and jewellery.

Some time on the 27th October 1588, the Girona lost her rudder in heavy seas.

The galleass had been the last hope for 1,300 fearful Armada survivors.

By the next dawn, and almost within sight of Scotland, she would be their coffin.

The English were very eager to recover all the gold

because the Queen wanted it all for her, of course.

No question, "I'm the Queen, it's mine."

And the guns also.

And the McDonnells get nothing at all.

They'd scavenged the Queen's ransom from bodies littering the beach.

Riches that paid for a new Elizabethan manor house.

But the McDonnells knew there was more gold just out of reach on the sunken ship,

and they were determined that no-one else would find it.

They invented a totally wrong location for the wreck.

They said the wreck had occurred on the Rock of Bunboyce.

The Rock of Bunboyce is between Dunluce and the Giant's Causeway,

beside the village of Portballintrae.

In 1589, an English warship was dispatched to locate all the Armada wrecks in Ireland.

She failed to find any trace of the Girona.

An official report prepared for Queen Elizabeth

stated that Don Alonso had drowned when the Girona sank at the Rock of Bunboyce.

McDonnell's spin had worked.

From then on, Bunboyce was officially marked as the Girona wreck site.

The galleass, along with the Knight of Santiago and his treasure, disappeared.

# You're everywhere and nowhere, baby

# That's where you're at... #

1967...the summer of love.

# ..Hillside

# In your hippy hat... #

Heady days for two young Belgian divers in a little sports car,

searching for a sunken treasure ship lost somewhere close to the world-famous Giant's Causeway.

THEY SPEAK IN FRENCH

'I was working for an American company who was supplying

'diving services to the offshore oil industries.

'One day, I took a leave of absence, and my leave of absence is still going!'

HE CHUCKLES

IN FRENCH

Robert Stenuit invited his friend Marc Jasinski to join him.

Marc is a self-taught and pioneering underwater photographer and film-maker.

It's an adventure of a life.

In a place like this, in this ocean, with all the historical background, you go.

Marc had designed and built his own underwater camera system,

one of the first in the world capable of filming in colour.

The third member was Marc's wife Annette,

an experienced diver equally fascinated by sunken treasure.

'There was some treasure-hunting going on at the time.

'But then, Robert doesn't want only to recover marvellous things from the sea.

'People are important.

'Their history is important.'

Portballintrae!

'He wants to understand what happened.

'Don Alonso was the best among his peers.'

He was a warrior and a fabulously famous and respected man.

I was alone in my field.

His jewels would be worth a lot of money,

but finding them could bring Robert an even bigger prize.

Fame and respect in the new discipline of underwater archaeology.

Why is gold valuable to us today?

The gold from the sea? Because it was the most valuable thing to the people who died with the Girona.

It was already the most important thing.

People would cross the seas and risk death a thousand times, for what?

For gold. So if it was so important to them, it must be important to us.

Stenuit had been searching methodically for evidence of the Girona's legendary lost treasure.

Now, after 10 years, that hunt brought him to Portballintrae.

-It was an ideal starting point for us.

-We had everything we needed.

We had sheltered water, a parking place and nobody around except the villagers at the time.

Portballintrae was also the perfect place to keep a dive for Armada gold under wraps.

Robert was convinced that he had unravelled McDonnell's spin and had pinpointed the wreck site.

Amazingly, all he had done was look for clues on a map.

What happened was that in the 19th century, when the first version of this map was made,

the geographers came and asked everyone around.

How was this place named, and how was this place named, and why?

And people told them that Spanish Rock and Spanish Cave or Spanish Cove, why?

Because the Spaniards were lost there.

There was a very vivid memory of what had happened there.

But just as it had done for Don Alonso, Irish weather showed its hand.

For days, Stenuit had to hang around a local guest house.

Frustrated that he was unable to dive, Robert could only take the long walk out to Port na Spaniagh.

You spend hours and hours, months, sometimes years, imagining the site.

You imagine it from what you've seen in the records, in the old books, in what the witnesses told.

And then the shock comes when you see the real thing. You compare it

to the idea you had built in your mind, and here,

the real thing is a thousand times better than what I could imagine.

In a single night 400 years ago, nearly 1,300 Spaniards died here.

When you are confronted with a spot like this,

you stop for a few minutes to reflect on what happened here.

I was imagining 1,000 corpses lying down there, and it was a dreadful thought.

The landscape is a perfect setting for a famous shipwreck disaster.

It seems that it has been made in Hollywood

for a film on shipwreck.

And we were really...really awed.

But Robert and Marc weren't the first divers

to have a gut feeling about the place locals called Port na Spaniagh.

Others had already braved this churning cauldron of jagged rocks and foam.

I had a peculiar Hollywood misconception with the masts still in situ

and wisps of canvas blowing in the current up at the Causeway.

And the usual skeleton at the wheel.

Bushmills Whiskey blender John MacLennan was one of Ireland's earliest skin divers.

In 1962, five years before Robert Stenuit arrived,

John dived at Port na Spaniagh by himself and wearing home-made gear.

I was diving around the Spanish Rock,

which obviously had some connection with the Armada in my garbled thinking at the time.

I realised I was spontaneously travelling down the coast

and that I was in a four- or five-knot current which was taking me along.

I emerged over on the eastern side of Port na Spaniagh...

..and made a very painful walk back across the rocks in my bare feet!

And carrying my fins!

HE LAUGHS

Others had dived there with a lust for just one thing...

Gold!

Alan Wilson and three diving colleagues

were members of the newly formed Belfast branch of the British Sub Aqua Club.

Young and cocky, Alan was bullish about finding the Girona's fabled gold.

We had tried to dive the site a couple of years before Stenuit.

We drove the cars down along the causeway as far as we could,

and then we humped all the diving bottles

and weight belts down onto the site, down the cliff.

We got into the tide and the waves washed us away!

There was a real danger of others finding the Girona before Robert could.

Then, on the 27th June 1967, the Irish weather lifted and Stenuit finally had the chance to dive.

THEY TALK IN FRENCH

Today is not at all typical.

'We knew it would be rough.

'We knew the sea would be cold, the swell,

'and that proved to be true.'

Robert was going to dive alone.

Annette would support him from the surface and Marc would wait in the dinghy with his camera.

They would record Robert's account of what happened.

I dived first in the middle of Port na Spaniagh and didn't find anything, then I went offshore.

I found a very characteristic bottom made of huge boulders with deep crevices in between.

And all covered with very thick and very high seaweed,

which the swell kept moving back and forth so you could hardly see the bottom at all.

I was waiting in the Zodiac with my wife.

We were sure something would happen.

Suddenly I arrived at a kind of underwater cliff,

which is the east side of the point, and suddenly I saw a white object.

Robert was pretty sure of what he was doing.

We expected to find the wreck at that spot.

I recognised an elliptic shape.

Very thick in the middle and getting narrower at the ends.

They were raw material to make bullets for the muskets.

It took only a few minutes, it was unbelievable.

I looked at it and I could see five Jerusalem crosses,

which is a typical Spanish marking,

so I knew this was part of the wreck.

That's the very moment when this happened.

-You snapped that right when he returned?

-Yes.

Can you grin any more(?)

In a wetsuit.

It's the grin of a lifetime.

But Robert hadn't come this far just to find lead.

What he really needed was Don Alonso's gold.

Next to it, loose with the gravel and the little stones, were pieces of eight.

With the cross.

Pieces of eight?! That's Treasure Island stuff!

Silver pieces of eight from Mexico.

So I knew it could not have been another Spanish wreck

of that period on this part of the coast except the Girona.

Beautiful. It's quite something.

Robert, Marc and Annette spent more than a week diving around Port na Spaniagh.

They all made more exciting and important finds.

Robert located a bronze cannon lying where it had fallen on that dreadful night 400 years before.

Marc found an anchor.

And his wife Annette was delighted with a Spanish gold escudo.

Not many people at all find treasure. Sunken treasure.

No treasure.

This has never been a treasure hunt, never.

It was always researching history.

Finding gold and jewels underwater - that adds a certain frisson to the experience!

Of course! I wouldn't deny that.

I don't pretend to be a saint.

I fully expected what I found. Fully.

To go out into that... into that greyness

and in the first place you go into the water, you find the gold of the Girona?

Yes. But I was not surprised.

Perhaps I was of a more optimistic nature than I am now!

Despite the smiles, their optimism was tempered by very real concerns.

If news of what they had found leaked out, Port na Spaniagh would be invaded,

overrun by treasure-hunters only too eager to get their hands on some Girona gold.

We can be quiet when needed, and we definitely believed that was a time to be quiet.

In no situation to talk too much about this discovery because we had no legal powers

on the wreck at that time. So we had to be very careful.

Robert had already decided that the safest place for the treasure they had uncovered so far

was where it had lain for the last four centuries - on the seabed.

So, apart from a few choice pieces of gold that they needed to prove to other people what they had found,

they stashed everything in an underwater cave.

Robert couldn't afford to stay here in Ireland any longer.

So, despite the very real risk that some treasure-hunting rival

would find his Girona site before he could come back, he went to London.

The end of 1967 and the start of 1968 were cold and anxious months for Robert.

Finding the Girona had been the easy part.

Recovering its treasure would be far more difficult.

That would take money, something Robert didn't have.

He invited Henri Delauze, president of the French diving company COMEX,

to London's newly opened Playboy Club.

Dazzled by some Girona gold brought from Port na Spaniagh,

Delauze promised support for Stenuit's ambitious plan to recover the treasure.

Robert raised finance with publishing deals for a book and magazine articles.

Then the BBC contracted Marc Jasinski to film their expedition.

This collaboration would produce the world's first colour documentary

of an underwater archaeological excavation.

'We came back in late April of 1968.

'Francis Dumont, a young student in architecture,

'was to draw up the maps, the charts, sketches of the objects.

'Then I had two French professional divers...

'Louis Gros, who had been trained by the French Navy in explosive disposal,

'and Maurice Vidal, who was a combat diver from the French Navy.

'A lot was at stake. There was a big team, there were several professional divers paid by COMEX.

'A lot of expensive equipment we were using,

'which was loaned by Henri Delauze, the president of COMEX.

'So we had better get results.'

But Robert was confident about what his team was going to find.

'We're not talking of a wreck like in the movies or a wreck very well preserved.'

He was more concerned about the treasure trove he had stashed the summer before.

Was it still there?

Or had the site already been raided?

Reassured that everything was as he had left it, Robert set his team to work.

One must understand that the site has been subjected to tremendous gales for nearly four centuries

and all parts of the ship and its cargo have been scattered

from the main site of the wreck in all directions, like dead leaves in a storm.

The first thing we made was a map of the physical features of the bottom.

Before we salvaged any objects, we very carefully plotted them.

We started from both sides of Lacada Point

and then dug every square foot to the bedrock.

The gold and the silver, as most metal objects, had finally found their way to the deepest crevices.

We must dig under the boulders and see what's underneath.

It meant a lot of work, a lot of hardship, a lot of discomfort, but these people were used to that.

These were tough guys.

But they were soon driven by the same enthusiasm as Robert was and as I was.

When lifting rocks, we used large inflatable balloons made of nylon line and rubber.

When you start lifting a six-tonne boulder, the moment it gets lighter,

it starts jumping back and forth with every swell.

It's really a frightening sight.

In the beginning, we thought, "There is the bedrock", then we had another look,

there was a little cranny, a little crack in the bedrock, so we broke the bedrock

and there were more coins underneath what we thought was the bedrock.

The team were uncovering dozens of Spanish gold and silver coins,

money that must have fallen from noblemen's pockets 400 years before.

But there was still no sign of the Cross of Don Alonso de Leiva.

I could see a bit of gold between two big stones,

and I knew that if I put my crowbar there, I would have crushed it.

I worked all around so that the boulders would fall by themselves,

but by doing that, I had to destroy the pillars of the cave.

Robert hadn't found the cross, but what he had uncovered was no less exciting.

A little lizard, fashioned from solid gold and still studded with rich, red rubies.

I took it in my hand and it glanced at me sideways

for a long, long time, and then it smiled at me and showed me all the little teeth it has in its mouth.

It was a salamander, a mythical creature that legend said could put out flames.

Salamanders were carried as good luck charms to guard against the thing that sailors feared most -

fire on board ship.

When I finally got it, yes, I think I kissed it, I really kissed it.

We had not brought enough to combat the cold.

So after a few hours of wearing those suits in the water,

you get completely exhausted.

At home, I always had plenty of hot water to shower after diving.

Here, there was just enough for one guy and it was always the chief.

So he got the hot water and we got the shower with the tepid or quite cold water.

I've heard that story before!

It gets better every time!

The simple facilities of Portballintrae guest house suited Robert.

It was quiet and anonymous and no-one asked about why they were there.

I was the waitress in the morning and I would do their breakfast.

And they got a choice of orange juice, cornflakes or porridge.

And they would have porridge.

But they didn't know what to put in the porridge

so they put marmalade in it

and then they put raspberry jam in it

and then they stirred the raspberry jam in it

and I used to think this was just unbelievable.

In 1968, the Manor House was owned and run by the McConaghy family.

Robert and Marc haven't seen the McConaghy girls in nearly 40 years.

Nice to meet you again.

-Yes, it's very moving to meet you.

-It's so good to meet you.

-Hello, Robert. How are you?

-Very well.

It's nice to meet you again.

-I'm Helen.

-After so many years.

'They were different and they were interesting.

'You were a curious child, you wanted to know what they were doing.

'Where they were diving and what they were doing there.

'But I don't think at that time, when we first met them,

'we ever expected them to come back and to come back again.'

"There's no place like home except the Manor House Guest House."

Life for everyone ran to the rhythms of the sea.

When the weather allowed, the team was at Port na Spaniagh diving.

They would spend the whole day there to get six hours under water.

Robert ran the expedition like a top-secret military operation.

People talked and gossiped and they thought maybe they are doing a survey or something at the harbour.

We didn't know, but then whenever they dived in the one spot

and they kept going to the same spot

and they went off in the morning at the same time,

and went to the same area to dive and then they came back.

Yes, then people started to get more inquisitive.

Then there was rumours that they were diving for Spanish treasure.

We told people here that we were filming the underwater ecosystem around the Giant's Causeway.

They were always, always looking for jam pots. Anything with lids on it.

And this is what intrigued us.

We didn't know why they were always looking for some sort of containers.

Jam jars made great containers for all sorts of little treasures.

More importantly, they were easily hidden in bags and wetsuits when the team came ashore.

Everyone knew that there was a maverick somewhere.

We were coming from far away just to be looking at this?

We've never been good liars!

But Robert HAD registered his interest in Port na Spaniagh with the Receiver of Wrecks,

the civil servant who policed Britain's laws of salvage in Northern Ireland.

The law was the same as if I had been recovering

a cargo of coal or of iron bars, etc.

If there were no owners, everything I found belonged to the Crown.

But the Crown had this very good habit of returning everything to the finder.

Except...little...

7% for the cost of the Receiver of Wrecks.

Confident that he had legal protection as salvor in possession,

Robert decided to recover the cannon he had found the summer before.

But an Armada cannon couldn't be hidden in jam jars.

It was actually the first guaranteed, genuine, authentic Armada cannon

coming out of the water and known to anyone.

So, historically, it was important, and for us it was important.

The cannon was left suspended and out of sight beneath the lifting bags.

The team gingerly towed their prize into Portballintrae.

I think this is one of my best pictures,

because it so brilliantly depicts

the mood of the expedition at that time, and especially on that day.

All these guys widely grinning.

Smiling to their ears.

It was a fantastic day.

But their secret was out.

When we lifted that cannon, things changed.

One of the local fishermen arrived when I was sitting having my tea

and told me, "John, they've found the Spanish wreck at the causeway!"

So I went roaring down to the harbour and Robert and his merry men were carrying in this little cannon.

Everyone could see what we were doing, there was pandemonium, there were big posters in the streets.

The evening newspapers printed "GOLD", like this,

across the front page and everyone was there during the weekend.

We were overwhelmed by tourists.

But mention gold and everyone wants a piece of the action.

One day we came to the harbour and there was a group of about 12 sports divers.

They were kitting up and getting ready to dive,

so I went to them and asked if by any chance they were intending to go to the site of the Girona.

Not one of them answered anything.

The divers were all members of the recently formed Belfast branch of the British Sub Aqua Club.

The story was, he was doing a geological survey

on the Girona Port na Spaniagh site.

It didn't take an awful lot to think, "He's diving on the Girona!"

I went to the skipper of an open boat, which obviously was there to take them somewhere diving,

and asked him the same question and he said, "Oh, no!

"We're going the other way around. We are going to the west."

And then the divers went in the boat and the boat went out of the harbour

and went straight east towards the Girona.

Stenuit quickly gathered his team together and gave chase.

So we overtook them on the way to Lacada Point

and we got in the water before them.

They had made it pretty plain that it was theirs.

They had a buoy on the wreck site saying "no diving".

They were not coming in in an inquisitive mind, but in an acquisitive mind.

They had big goody bags, burglars' bags and prying bars.

The burglar's outfit.

That was standard equipment.

You have a hammer and crowbars on your weight belts,

because every time we dived, we dived on a wreck.

We thought there was a big boat there!

I told them that not only were we running an archaeological excavation

but we were the salvors in possession, which, by law,

empowered us to keep anyone who has a mind on that salvage away.

The boys that were down,

they objected to them not being able to lift anything.

We followed them very carefully.

And suddenly I see one of them picking up a piece of lead from the wreck.

And one of the boys lifted a bit of lead, I think it was. Put it in his bag.

So, I swim to him, and I said...like this...

So he took it off him!

It became a scandal.

I had attacked him, suddenly.

Once again, Robert's Girona excavation made front-page news.

It made me angry, yes. We were trying to reconstitute a puzzle.

And if you miss pieces of the puzzle, you cannot reconstruct it.

Robert quickly moved to protect his position as salvor in possession.

The club members agonised over their next move.

The club committee then decided not to interfere with him any more.

I suppose we were pirates, as well.

But things didn't end there.

At Westminster, Henry Clark, the MP for North Antrim,

asked why foreign divers were being allowed to loot the Girona site.

I was scandalised about the whole thing.

It was so far from the truth.

I mean, there was no point to answer it.

All the local people, they didn't want this.

And I sat down, and I actually wrote to Henry Clark.

"Dear sir, Monsieur Stenuit and his associates,

"would not engage in looting and destruction, as has been reported.

"There is a great sense of outrage in Portballintrae."

They knew how hard they worked.

They knew they were diving every day. So why, when they'd done all this,

should any other team from anywhere come and try to dive? It was unfair.

"Occasionally, the Ulsterman displays a propensity for making himself appear ridiculous.

"In Heaven's name, let this not happen.

"Yours faithfully, John MacLennan."

While MPs were getting hot and bothered, and the press were having a feeding frenzy,

other, more serious minds had been attracted by the Girona publicity.

When the stories began to appear in the press, a very nice gentleman with a beard came and rang the bell.

He said, "I am the keeper of archaeology, history and archaeology, in the Ulster Museum.

"It is my duty, I am afraid,

"to inform myself of what is happening.

"Would you kindly tell me what is happening?"

The visitor was Laurence Flanagan.

He had little expertise in underwater archaeology,

but the museum curator recognised the Girona's true importance.

I said, "Please come in", and I showed him everything.

Laurence was keen to know what Robert intended to do with these beautiful and utterly unique finds.

Originally, I thought it should have gone to a Spanish museum.

But there was very little interest in Spain before we had found it.

Putting it to auction meant that it would be split all over the world.

The curator was deeply worried.

Even if he was able to stop the collection being broken up,

many of the artefacts were in real danger of being destroyed

by the team's efforts to recover them.

So he decided to make Stenuit an offer he couldn't refuse.

He put at our disposal the conservation laboratory that was run by the museum and by the university.

And they took off my back the most difficult, most costly

and most important part of the whole expedition - it was conservation.

Stenuit's team was finally free to finish what they had come here to do - recover the Girona's gold.

He brought up a load of stuff.

He said, "John, tap that with that little hammer that you have there."

So, I tapped.

Suddenly, gold coins started dropping out.

The McConaghy girls were honoured with a trip to the site.

But seasickness and cold soon drove them back ashore.

A visit to the treasure store at the top of their house was only marginally more interesting.

I thought at first it was just old bits of stones and bits of this.

It wasn't. He said to me it was really important.

That's when I thought I might put a coin in my pocket, but he wouldn't let me!

-Dame Fortune smiled that

-I

-didn't find it.

I would have simply said, "I have discovered bits of a Spanish wreck."

It would have been looted quietly.

HE LAUGHS

But the team were putting in more and more effort, with fewer and fewer rewards.

Then, just as Robert was thinking of calling a halt to the expedition,

Port na Spaniagh gave them one last delight.

We found one little gold ring, deep in a crevice,

in about a yard-and-a-half stones and gravel and dead crabs.

And when the ring was brought to the surface, we looked at it,

and it was the most moving object we ever found. It bears on top

a little hand holding out a heart, and the undone buckle of a girdle.

And there is a caption in the gold which reads,

"No tengo mas que dar te",

which means, "I have nothing more to give to you."

I always fantasised, that the young nobleman who was wearing this,

had received it on the last day before the Armada sailed.

You know, he had spent the night with his betrothed,

she came and said, "I have a little present for you."

This is the kind of thing which, for me, makes all of it worth it, really.

Do you think there was a message there?

The wreck had given me everything it could give? Is that what you mean?

Do you think there was a...?

Possibly. Suitably, it happened very late in the game. So you may be right there.

But the most important piece of the Girona story was still missing.

I always have a secret hope that one day we will find

something which we can link to de Leiva himself, to the man.

Perhaps his jewel of the Knight of Santiago.

Robert failed to find anything that could be linked to Don Alonso Martinez de Leiva,

Knight of Santiago.

In September 1969, the team finally gave in.

After two long diving seasons and 6,000 hours on the seabed, their gear was worn out.

What memories of the original dig does it bring back, when you go back down there again?

Only good memories, there are no others.

Memories of two beautiful years of my life, really.

He left Port na Spaniagh with his place in the story of underwater archaeology secure.

The ownership of the treasures he had recovered was anything but.

Spain was claiming that they were hers.

Others argued that they should stay together in Northern Ireland.

It would take a court case to settle that argument.

Robert could only wait for judgment.

The court ruled that no single owner of the Girona treasures could be found. They would be sold.

And Stenuit would finally turn those long hours of cold and difficult diving into financial profit.

I do not like the word profit in this context,

because it is not what we had in mind.

I mean, our time was compensated, and handsomely.

In two ways, because we had the best years of our life,

or some of the best years of our life,

and a little money to put butter in the spinach, as we say in French.

The Girona's treasure was valued at £132,000.

And Robert agreed to let the collection stay together in Northern Ireland.

The Government only gave a little over half of the sum,

so a public appeal was launched by the keeper of history at the Ulster Museum, Laurence Flanagan,

to raise the rest. It only took six months.

The Girona Exhibition opened at the Ulster Museum in 1972.

Robert Stenuit was the guest of honour.

It was the first time it had ever been done in the UK.

Or in Europe, or everywhere.

So it is all thanks to Laurence Flanagan.

I think if Lawrence had not convinced Stenuit

to give the stuff to the museum,

the stuff would have been scattered to the four winds.

After Stenuit left, Port na Spaniagh was regularly dived.

At least two further semi-professional expeditions were undertaken by private teams.

If anything was found, none of it was declared.

Other divers were more honest.

We just went down, and basically shifted stones and boulders.

Sometimes with the help of a pneumatic drill.

We found a piece at Lacada Point, very close to where Stenuit found some of the other stuff.

Alan did not know what he had found.

But Laurence Flanagan recognised it instantly.

It was the elusive Cross of Santiago.

Don Alonso Martinez de Leiva's cross.

It dated and put de Leiva on the site,

which is one of the few artefacts that did that.

A gold cross like this one, of the Order of Santiago,

was recovered out there on Robert's Girona.

It is only a trinket, really.

But when you learn that it was once worn around the neck

of Don Alonso Martinez de Leiva, and that he came here

in the aftermath of Spain's disastrous attempt to invade England in 1588,

it takes on an immeasurable value.

But you have to know the story.

It is the story that is the treasure.

For 400 years, the Girona story has always focused on the search for lost Spanish gold.

What was really lost was the story of the 1,300 men

who drowned with Don Alonso on a wild Irish night in 1588.

It was this that brought me there, so I owe him a debt of gratitude.

And I tried to repay that by trying to bring them back from the world of the dead.

I think I built a memorial to them. And I think it was fitting that it was a diver that did that.