Dutch shipwreck carrying 9,000 Moroccan gold coins finally identified, three decades after discovery

An international research team has identified a Dutch merchant ship that sank off the southwest coast of England in 1633 while carrying thousands of Moroccan gold coins, solving a three-decade-old mystery that began when divers pulled more than 400 coins from the seabed in 1995, according to Bournemouth University.

The vessel is the “Dom van Keulen,” a Dutch merchant ship that departed Morocco in the autumn of 1633 bound for the Netherlands. Caught in a severe storm in the English Channel, the ship suffered a major leak and sank near the English town of Salcombe, in Devon.

The wreck, approximately 30 metres long, still contains cannons, anchors, and everyday objects; recovered artefacts including gold jewellery, pewter utensils, and ceramics are now held in the British Museum’s collections.

The identification was made by a team from Bournemouth University, the British Museum, and the South West Maritime Archaeology Group, working with documents located in the British National Archives that allowed researchers to reconstruct the vessel’s final voyage.

The Dom van Keulen’s cargo was the telling detail. The ship was carrying gum arabic, saltpeter, goatskins, and approximately 9,000 Berber ducats, gold coins minted in Morocco and sought across European markets for their metal purity.

Although most of the cargo was recovered in the immediate aftermath of the wreck, more than 400 coins remained on the seabed for over three centuries. Their 1995 discovery is considered one of the most significant finds of Moroccan gold coins in British waters.

The coins are a material trace of the commercial position Morocco held in 17th-century Atlantic trade. Under the Sa’adian dynasty, which controlled the country until 1659, Morocco sat at the southern end of trans-Saharan gold routes that channelled West African gold north to Mediterranean and European markets.

Moroccan ports maintained active exchange relations with Dutch, English, and Flemish merchants; saltpeter, also recovered from the Dom van Keulen, was a strategic commodity used in gunpowder production.

The research sheds new light on the depth of commercial ties between Morocco and Europe at a period that predates most contemporary historical accounts of that relationship by more than a century.