Octogenarian couple accused of selling shipwreck’s stolen gold

Friday, July 4th, 2025

Leisure Marine

gold found on Le Prince de Conty shipwreck

Gold from the shipwreck bought by British Museum (Image courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum)

A retired couple from Florida is facing the prospect of being tried in France – for selling gold stolen from an 18th-century shipwreck.

The gold bars in question come from Le Prince de Conty, a French ship which sank off the coast of Brittany in 1746. It was re-discovered in 1974. Gold ingots were said to be found onboard – and subsequently looted.

But, Gregory Levy, attorney to novelist Eleonor ‘Gay’ Courter and her husband, Philip, says his clients who are accused of selling the stolen gold: “firmly deny any criminal wrongdoing.”

The sales of the gold took place on eBay, Levy told the Independent: “which shows how much the Courters wanted to hide. What’s more, the British Museum bought the bullion, which could not have been unaware of its provenance, and deserves to be investigated by the French justice system, rather than two American octogenarians who knew nothing about French law.”

Gold from the shipwreck bought by British Museum (Image courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum) — Waisted ingot from the wreck. Image courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum

The tale has been decades in the making, with the first gold ingots being stolen from the wreck in mid 1970s (there was also a court case in the 1980s concerned with plundering of the wreck, not related to this case).

But it was when Michel L’Hour, head of France’s underwater archaeology agency (details of the wreck are on its website) spotted a suspicious sale of gold from a US auction house in 2018 that the latest investigation got underway. L’Hour contacted authorities in the US who seized five ingots and two other artefacts (which were subsequently repatriated to France in 2022).

The 2018 seller was named as Eleonor Courter. She says she was given the gold by her French friends Annette May Pesty and Gerard Pesty (since deceased).

Annette Pesty (who appeared on Antiques Roadshow in 1999) claimed the gold bars came from a diving trip near to the African island of Cape Verde. But the investigators ignored that and instead focused on her brother-in-law, Yves Gladu, who worked as an underwater photographer.

Eventually, in 2022 Gladu confessed to stealing 16 gold bars from Le Prince de Conty between 1976 and 1999, over the course of 40 dives. He denied giving any to the Courters even though he had known them for decades and been on multiple overseas trips together between 2010-2015 (Greece, the Caribbean and French Polynesia).

Investigators believe the Courters received at least 23 gold bars and sold 18 (netting more than $192,000).

AFP reports that the Courters say they had arranged for the money to go to Gladu.

Pictured left is a gold ingot (10 ounce) from Le Prince de Conty currently owned by the British Museum – but not on display. It’s listed as being purchased from P Courter (in 1988), with its previous owner being G Pesty (who’s museum biography says he sold Chinese gold ingots to the museum in 1986).

The Courters were arrested in the UK three years ago but have since returned to the US.

Levy says the couple had no idea what they were getting into. “The Courters accepted [to sell the gold] because they are profoundly nice people. They didn’t see the harm as in the United States regulations for gold are completely different from those in France.” He says the couple have not profited from the sales.

A French prosecutor has requested that the Courters, Gladu and Pesty are tried in connection with the theft and sale of the gold ingots. The trial, if ordered by an investigating magistrate, could take place next year.

gold ingot next to tap measure — Gold ingot (10 ounce) from *Le Prince de Conty* owned by British Museum – but not on display. Image courtesy of the Trustees of The British Museum

Le Prince de Conty‘s lies in 10 to 15 metres (32-49ft) of water near the island of Belle-Île-en-Mer. Built in 1743 by Gilles Cambry Jr. for the East India Company, Le Prince de Conty was one of a series of fourteen ships built in Lorient. It was returning from a 22-month voyage to China via Indonesia and Brazil under the command of Captain Charles François Bréart de Boisanger.

On 3 December 1746, 22 months after setting sail and just a few nautical miles from its home port, the ship emerged from the fog and, in rough seas, crashed onto the steep cliffs of Port Loscat following a navigational error. Of the 229 men on board, only 45 survived. The captain perished in the shipwreck.

In the following year, various attempts to recover the cargo were made under the orders of the East India Company. These included using a diving bell suspended from a cable stretched between two tripods set into the rock on either side of the cove, and using English prisoners to cut stairs into the cliff face to access the wreck. Thirty-one cannons, more than 1,000 cannonballs, and about 21 tons of iron geuse ballast were saved; the tea and porcelain, which were too badly damaged, could not be recovered.

According to the Guardian, in the 1980s, archaeologists discovered fine 18th-century Chinese porcelain, the remains of tea crates, and three Chinese gold bars in and around the shipwreck. But a violent storm in 1985 dispersed the ship’s remains, ending official excavations. A 1983 trial found five people guilty of embezzlement and receiving stolen goods over the plundering of Le Prince de Conty. Gladu was not among them.

According to her website, Gay Courter has worked continuously as a writer in film, television, fiction, and non-fiction since graduation from Antioch College in 1966. She is the author of five best-selling novels with over three million copies in print.