[Mr T.]

The 138-year-old shipwreck with a £95m treasure on board
By Marcus Warren in New York
(Filed: 18/08/2003)


Salvagers are planning to retrieve gold coins thought to be worth as much as £95 million from the wreck of a 19th century steamship discovered off the coast of Georgia.

If the operation succeeds, the hoard from the SS Republic would be one of the most valuable sums of treasure ever recovered from the sea bed.

The ship sank during a hurricane in 1865 en route from New York to New Orleans and, although most of its passengers and crew survived, its cargo of $400,000 in coins was believed to be lost for ever until the wreck was found this summer.

According to an expert advising the firm preparing to bring the money to the surface, the cargo could fetch up to £95 million on the open market. "That would make it the greatest treasure ever recovered" from an old shipwreck, Donald Kagin told the New York Times. The coins were intended to pay for reconstruction of the South after the Civil War.

Salvagers from Odyssey Marine Exploration, a Florida-based company, spent a decade combing 1,200 square miles of the Atlantic in a secret search for the Republic but only discovered the wreck last month. Images shot by an underwater robot this month show a paddle wheel buried in sediment, fragments of an engine, glass bottles and the rudder.

Odyssey has signed a deal with the British Government to recover an even greater prize, the wreck of HMS Sussex, which sank off Gibraltar in 1694. It was carrying nine tons of gold coins, which could now be worth more than £2 billion