£150k haul of WWI shipwreck pirates
TWO divers have been jailed for plundering £150,000 worth of artefacts from a First World War shipwreck.
Nigel Ingram, 57, and John Blight, 58, looted items from HMS Hermes and sold them to scrap merchants, a court heard.
Ingram was arrested after officers raided his home and found items including the ship’s bells and torpedo hatch, together with £16,000 in cash.
The ship was a cruiser built in the late 19th century and was converted into the Navy’s first experimental seaplane carrier in 1913.
Forty-four British servicemen died when it was sunk by a German submarine in the Dover Strait in October 1914. The wreckage is protected under maritime law, and the divers were investigated by police after maritime surveillance officers spotted them submerging close to the wreckage in September 2014.
Officers found Ingram in the water in diving gear and became suspicious of lifting equipment on Blight’s boat, the De Bounty. A French criminal investigation was launched and later referred to Kent Police, who arrested Ingram and Blight in October 2015.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency discovered more than 100 items of wreckage in Ingram’s home – also including propellers, portholes and metal ingots.
Records showed Ingram sold more than six tonnes of metal in frequent visits to Sittingbourne between May 2012 and December 2015.
Both men were found guilty of two counts of fraud for failing to disclose their recovered items in order to make a financial gain following a trial at Canterbury Crown Court. Ingram, of Teynham, Kent, who was also convicted for money laundering, was jailed for four years, and Blight, of Winchelsea, East Sussex, was sentenced to three and a half years.
Kent Police said: ‘Nigel Ingram and John Blight have demonstrated a complete disregard for the law by helping themselves to artefacts that should have remained beneath the sea.
‘We take a robust approach to ensuring important historical items do not end up in the hands of people who are not entitled to them.’