Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that the wreck of the HMS Victory has been discovered. This is not the famous flagship of Lord Nelson at Trafalgar. (That HMS Victory is still commissioned and sitting at Portsmouth - where by the way it needs your help.) This HMS Victory is the one that sank in 1744. The one commanded by Admiral John Balchin.

The HMS Victory was found about 60 miles west of where she was thought to have sunk according to the Odyssey Marine Exploration company. According to the piece:

Generations of researchers have puzzled over the loss of the Victory, which sank in 1744 carrying a crew of more than 1,000, more than 100 brass cannons, and four tons of gold it was transporting from Portugal.

Most historians have said the wreckage of the ship had to lie close to the Channel Islands, near the French coast, where Adm. John Balchin was believed to have fatally steered it onto rocky shoals.

But the wreckage was found much farther out in the English Channel, said Greg Stemm, chief executive of Odyssey Marine Exploration, the Florida-based firm that announced the discovery at a London news conference.

Stemm, who said finding the Victory “has solved one of the greatest shipwreck mysteries in history,” said the famous ship’s remains had been damaged over the years by natural erosion and by fishing trawlers dragging heavy nets across the sea bottom.

“Rather than staying frozen in time beneath the waves, this unique shipwreck is fading fast,” marine archaeologist Sean Kingsley, director of Wreck Watch International, said in a statement released by Odyssey.

Very interesting news. One hopes that the treasure hunters will get to salvage and keep artifacts that they can save from the wreck.

Carry on.