Hanging inside the wooden frame is the Lutine Bell. In 1799 the HMS Lutine, a thirty-two-gun Royal Navy frigate, sank off the coast of the Netherlands while carrying a million pounds’ worth of silver and gold. The treasure was never found. But almost sixty years later, the ship’s bell was salvaged from the ocean floor and put on display in the Lloyd’s Underwriting Room, where for the next century it was rung to announce the fate of overdue vessels: once for a loss, twice for safe.
