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By Brendan Mcfadden - Mail Online

A WW1 navy crew's daring secret mission to salvage 44 tonnes of gold bars worth £1.3 billion from the wreck of a ship sunk during the First World War is revealed in a new book.

HMS Laurentic was carrying the gold to Canada and the US when it was blown up by two German mines off the coast of Lough Swilly, Ireland on January 25, 1917. The merchant cruiser sank within an hour, resulting in the deaths of 354 out of 479 passengers on board.

Cash-strapped Britain needed the gold to finance its war effort and put together an elite diving team to retrieve it from the shipwreck which lay on the seabed at a depth of 130ft.

The operation started in 1917 and needed to be done in stealth because the British government could not afford for the Germans to learn about the gold in the wreck of the White Star Line ocean liner.

The little-known salvage operation was headed up by the highly experienced Lieutenant Commander Guybon Damant. Over the next seven years, he was able to retrieve 3,186 of 3,211 gold ingots that went down with the ship, with a value of £5 million at the time.

The recovery of the gold is to this day the largest recovery, in weight, of a sunken gold hoard.

The extraordinary operation is revealed for the first time in unprecedented detail by historian Joseph A. Williams in his new book, Sunken Gold.

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By Josef Cutajar - Times of Malta

Some 110 meters underwater off the coast of Xlendi Bay there lay, for centuries, an archaeological treasure that is now warming the cockles of archaeologists and historians.

Unearthed in an expedition that was far from your ring-lost-in-the-sand search, the mesmerising shipwreck clasps intriguing artefacts dating back to 700 BC, knowing their origin to Phoenician traders. And for the first time on these islands, a selection of the artefacts – from what Heritage Malta describes as the oldest wreck ever found in this region – are on public display, at the Cittadella in Gozo.

“This exhibition is another jewel in the Cittadella’s crown,” said Timmy Gambin, from the University of Malta, the man who led the search. Speaking to The Sunday Times of Malta, Prof. Gambin said the exhibition was not the end of the years’ long excavation and research.

Over the coming years further information and more artefacts would throw additional light on that period of the island’s history. Gozitan historian George Azzopardi said this was no ordinary exhibition.

“First, we’re dealing with an underwater excavation where the context is extremely difficult to study. Second, the wreck was found undisturbed, which is utterly rare.”

There were at least two reasons why this archaeological discovery could be called a ‘treasure’, said Dr Azzopardi. “One is its massive size.

We’re not talking here about a single object but about a whole wreck. Two, it looks like the wreck is the oldest from the Classical period ever found in the Mediterranean.”

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By Vasco Cotovio and Theresa Waldrop - CNN
 

Archeologists have found a centuries-old shipwreck off Portugal's coast near Lisbon, a local mayor's office said Saturday.

Aboard the ship, thought to have sunk between 1575 and 1625, divers found spices, including pepper; Chinese ceramics from the period; and cowries, a type of shell used as currency for the slave trade in some parts of Africa at the time.

The project's science director, Jorge Freire, called it the "discovery of the decade." "From a conservation perspective, both of the assets as of the ship itself, this discovery is of great patrimonial value," he said.

Also found were some of the ship's bronze cannons, engraved with the Portuguese coat of arms and the armillary sphere that are still featured in the Portuguese flag.

Judging by what's been found so far, the ship was probably coming into Lisbon from India, Freire said. The wreck was discovered September 3 as part of an underwater investigation project spearheaded by Cascais, a city near Lisbon, with help from Nova University of Lisbon, the Portuguese government and navy.

The ship was found just 40 feet (12 meters) below the surface.

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From CCN

Millions of dollars are estimated to have been sunk by investors seeking a piece of the ‘Russian treasure ship’ ICO fronted by a South Korean ‘treasure-hunting’ firm.

According to South Korean police, it has been tentatively concluded that about 2,600 people invested around 9 billion won or slightly over US$8 million in Shinil Group which claimed to have discovered a shipwreck containing gold worth US$130 billion.

As initially reported by The Korea Herald, investors also poured money on a token known as Shinil Gold Coin which the South Korean firm claimed would be backed by the treasure from the wreckage of the Russian warship known as Dmitrii Donskoi.

The Russian warship was run aground off the South Korean coast by her crew following severe damage during combat with the Japanese in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese war.

Per the police, the investor losses could be larger since the estimates they have come up with are based only on the trading accounts which they have so far managed to track. “If we find more related accounts or confirm cases in which investors used cash, the amount could go up,” the Sophisticated Crime Investigation Unit of Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said.

There is also a possibility that the victim count could fall according to the Seoul police: “The number of victims could go down, however, if we exclude cases where the same person transferred money using different accounts.”

As previously reported by CCN, plans by the Shinil Group to conduct an ICO were announced in mid-July after the company posted a video on YouTube alleging that had managed to find the Russian warship’s wreckage containing 200 tons of gold coins and 5,500 boxes of gold bars.

Suspicions immediately arose primarily because this was not the first alleged discovery of the Russian warship.

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By Dawn McCarty - Bloomberg

The story of the doomed luxury liner R.M.S. Titanic proved so alluring that divers were searching for the wreck seven decades after it sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Once it was found in 1985, fanfare over retrieved relics led to exhibits around the world and a blockbuster movie. But the company holding the rights to the ship and 5,500 artifacts has been mired in debt, placing the future of its collection in the hands of a bankruptcy court.

On Thursday, a judge weighed plans for auctioning the largest trove of Titanic memorabilia, which already is drawing the interest of U.S. hedge funds, Chinese investors, British museums and award-winning director James Cameron.

Among the items is the bell a crow’s nest lookout rang to warn the bridge of an iceberg ahead; window grills from the first-class dining area; a passenger’s three-diamond ring; and a suitcase full of clothes owned by William Henry Allen, an English toolmaker immigrating to America.

Titanic, once the biggest ocean liner ever built, sank almost two miles below the sea on its maiden voyage in 1912, killing more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers.

“It’s just sad to see that great ship of dreams, and the pieces of it, bounced around like an orphaned child,’’ said David Gallo, an oceanographer and former head of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who co-led an expedition to the wreck in 2010.

At least three groups are vying for the artifacts from the current owner, Premier Exhibitions Inc. It’s the successor to a company once owned by a wealthy Connecticut auto dealer, who bankrolled a French exhibition that retrieved artifacts from Titanic for the first time in 1987.

The wreck was discovered two years earlier by oceanographer Robert Ballard, who refused to remove anything from the site, which is 12,000 feet (3,700 meters) under water. Atlanta-based Premier organizes Titanic displays around the world, including at the Queen Mary hotel in Long Beach, California, the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, and the Guangdong Museum in China.

In recent years, the business was expanded to include exhibitions such as animatronic dinosaurs, human cadavers and bugs, along with sets and props from the Saturday Night Live TV show.
 

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By Lida Filippakis - Balkaneu

Whilst diving with tourists near the Croatian island of Pag, Vedran Dorušić, the president of the Diving Tourism Organisation at the Croatian Chamber of Economy and the rest of the divers came upon a wreck of a sunken Roman ship dated most probably to the beginning of the 1st century BC.

"The latest archeological finding in Croatian waters was met with understanding from the Ministry of Culture, to truly conduct, in cooperation with diving centres, the placement of video surveillance and other technical protection measures along with the application of new manners in presentation and tourist promotion.

With this specialized form of tourism and cultural offering, diving enthusiasts are on the front line when it comes to protection of the environment and are extremely aware of the importance of sustainable tourism", Dorušić said. It is believed that this "fresh" attraction will beef up diving tourism which has been on the rise in past years thanks to the nearly 180 diving centres that operate in Croatia.

Croatia Week reads: "The boat was lying completely on the sea floor and was slowly falling apart. As estimated 600 pieces of amphora were on the boat." It is possible it sank while seeking "shelter from the bura winds in the bay of Simuni on Pag, which, according to some traces, was a Roman harbour."

By Wooyoung Lee - UPI

Seoul police have raided the homes of officials involved in a local cryptocurrency exchange, in an investigation into a scam linked with a Russian shipwreck. Police searched and confiscated evidence at the residences and the prison cell of the former head of the cryptocurrency exchange, according to Kyunghyang Shinmun.

Seoul police launched an investigation earlier this month to look into the potential links between the shipwreck discovery and cryptocurrency trade. Shinil Group claimed last month to have found a 113-year-old Russian shipwreck that held gold bars and coins worth billions.

The wreckage belonged to the Russian naval cruiser Dmitri Donskoi, which sank off South Korea's eastern Ulleung Island during the Russo-Japanese war in 1905.

The company issued a new crypto currency and attracted investors with a pledge to return benefits from the "treasure ship."

From Forces.net

An investigation has launched into the fresh allegations of looting from a number of British Second World War wrecks in Asia. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said he was "very concerned" to hear claims that remains of four ships lying off the Malaysian and Indonesian coasts have been targeted.

The Mail on Sunday said HMS Tien Kwang, HMS Kuala, HMS Banka and SS Loch Ranza were targeted for their metal. The sunken wrecks are thought to be the final resting place for hundreds of Royal Navy sailors and civilians from WW2.

It comes after six wrecks, including Royal Navy battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, were feared to have been damaged or destroyed by scavengers. Mr Williams said the Government "absolutely condemns" the unauthorised disturbance of any wreck containing human remains.

"I am very concerned to hear any allegations of incidents of Royal Navy wrecks being plundered in the Far East," he said.

HMS Tien Kwang, a submarine chaser, and HMS Kuala, an auxiliary patrol vessel, were carrying hundreds of evacuees when they were attacked by Japanese bombers near the Indonesian Riau Islands on February 1942.

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