Lost & Never Found: The 7 Most Expensive Cargo Disasters in History
6. Flor De La Mar
A 400-ton, 118-foot-long ship getting sunk is bound to have some goodies on it. It was involved in taking over Malacca and had the very important task of transporting all the loot, only for the ship to mysteriously sink near Sumatra. There are a bunch of rumors about what actually happened, namely the locals stealing the treasure or the captain sinking his own ship to line his pockets with copious amounts of jewelry. We’ll never know, but we do know that whatever was on that ship would be worth about 3 billion dollars today.
7. Sarcophagus of Menkaure
If it’s not obvious at this point, the British don’t really have a good track record of safely transporting cargo overseas. After this sarcophagus was found, the British assumed it’d look nice in their very own museum instead of leaving it in Malta, where it was found. The ship carrying it caught some bad weather and capsized. The sarcophagus was never found again. If you want to know what the value of this item is, you’d be better off asking an Egyptian historian what value he’d put on a sarcophagus of the pharaoh of the 4th dynasty, who built the third great pyramid of Giza. It’s probably priceless.
