On January 25th 1809, the 800+ ton Admiral Gardner set sail for India from England with a cargo of anchors, cannonballs, copper ingots, iron bars, and copper coins freshly minted by the East India Company. As the ship sailed through the English Channel it encountered rough weather. Captain John Eastfield anchored the Admiral Gardner offshore to ride out what turned into a terrible storm, but the ship was blown onto the deadly "Goodwin Sands" sandbar. By the next morning the ship had sunk, taking it's cargo and the lives of 4 crewmen.

The coins offered here were recovered from the wreck almost two centuries later, in 1985 and are of better quality than often seen.

The obverse of these coins bears the Coat of Arms of the the East India Company. The reverse shows a Persian inscription giving the coins' values in the diplomatic language of Mughal, India - "X or 10 Cash" - an equivalent of 3/4 farthing in 1808. That made them acceptable by the local laborers as their medium of exchange.