During the First World War, on 28 April 1917, at 6:05 a.m., a German submarine (U 31) sank the British steamboat ‘Medina’ with just one torpedo in the English Channel off the southern coast of England. Five British sailors lost their lives. The passengers and the remaining crew of the ‘Medina’ were rescued.
Initially, the British Governor of Bengal in India, Lord Thomas David Gibson Carmichael (1859–1926), and his wife Mary, were also among the passengers aboard the ‘Medina’, travelling back to their home country. However, in the Suez Canal the couple left the ship and boarded an English armoured cruiser.
Their luggage was left in the hold of the ‘Medina’ and sank in the sea off the coast of England – together with the ship and Sir Carmichael’s art collection. In 1931, five years after the death of the English Lord, an Italian diving team was able to determine to exact location of the wreck of the ‘Medina’ at more than 55 meters under the sea near the English coast. It was not until 1984 that a private British salvage company endeavoured to get hold of the treasures in the sunken ‘Medina’. It took the treasure hunters three years to free the cargo of the ‘Medina’ from layers of thick mud and bring it back to to light – after exactly seventy years on the bottom of the sea. Among the finds was also Lord Carmichael’s art collection: valuable Buddha statues, Hindu deities made of bronze, beautiful brass vessels and many more ‘sunken treasures’!
On 26 May 1988, all these valuable objects were sold at auction at Sotheby’s in London under the title ‘Medina Cargo’, producing a whopping 22,000 GBP in revenues! The present, finely engraved and chased Indian brass bowl was also part of the collection of the British Governor of Bengal.
After seventy years under the sea, this object, too, was sold at the memorable 1988 auction, as is visible on a label on the underside: 'SOTHEBY'S MEDINA CARGO'.
It is a small, very delicately crafted, milled brass bowl. Probably one of the well-known metal works from Benares (today: Varanasi). Engraved and chased on the outside. The upper and lower sections feature bands of interlacing leafy tendrils separated by ten medallions depicting girded male figures in sumptuous gardens facing each other. The present piece is not only very finely crafted, but also extremely interesting from a historical perspective. With a few dark corrosion stains after seventy years on the bottom of the sea.
Around 1900. H: 3 cm, diameter: 9.5 cm. (ME)

Provenance: Hungarian Private Collection, Budapest.

additional pictures:
From Lord Carmichael’s sunken treasure.
The British ship ‘Medina’ before it was sunk on 28 April 1917.

Lord Carmichael 1859–1926