Lost painting could hold key to Welsh shipwreck mystery

On 26/03/2010
In Wreck Diving
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From Wales Online

It was a sturdy 500-tonne three- masted rigger that had made it through a treacherous Atlantic crossing only to founder in calm and shallow waters off the Welsh coast.

Now a diving team is hoping a long-forgotten painting holds the key to the whereabouts of the vessel, the Diamond, shipwrecked 185 years ago.

Diver Ian Cundy and his colleagues want to find the painting depicting the loss of the vessel at Sarn Badrig Reef between Barmouth and Harlech.

Mr Cundy and his team have already completed one unsuccessful search for the vessel, which went down with the loss of eight lives, and have now turned their attention to locating the painting.

The 62-year-old from Malvern, in Worcestershire, believes the painting showing the stricken boat upright in shallow water may lead him to the wreck.

Little is known about the painting aside from the fact that it once hung in a rectory near Dyffryn Ardudwy, in Gwynedd.

Mr Cundy, who used to run a boat-building company, said: “We’re hopeful it’s there somewhere because paintings are the sort of things that people generally don’t destroy.

If they don’t like them they’ll take them down and store them somewhere, which is probably where it is.”

In 2000, divers discovered the wreck of a ship initially thought to be the Diamond. But later investigations indicated the wreck was from a later period.

The resting place of the Diamond remains unknown.