The five gold ingots, used as currency by Chinese traders, were among the treasures picked up by some discreet divers around 1975 from the ocean floor off the coast of France. The ship they had been on, the Prince de Conty, was a frigate that belonged to the French East India Company, and it was just ten miles from shore, about to return to port at Lorient, France, when it sank amid fog and rough seas and an apparent navigational error by its captain on December 3, 1746. On board was tea, lots of Qing Dynasty porcelain, and around 100 gold ingots embossed with Chinese characters — each worth about $25,000 in today's dollars. Nearly 200 men drowned, and only 45 onboard survived the wreck.
