Soundbounder
02-02-2012, 05:54 AM
A Portland, Maine-based company is hoping to retrieve at least one box of platinum ingots from a World War II shipwreck off Cape Cod — and thereby salvage its own operation.
Greg Brooks, co-founder and principal of Sub Sea Research LLC, believes that 1.7 million ounces of platinum ingots worth an estimated $3 billion is still with the Port Nicholson, a steam-powered 481-foot British freighter that reportedly sank 50 miles northeast of Provincetown after being torpedoed June 16, 1942.
Research of period documents as well as interviews with survivors, relatives of the crew and a German U-boat captain prove beyond a doubt that the platinum is there along with a possible $165 million in other precious metals, Brooks said.
"If this was a murder trial, the guy would hang," he said in a phone interview Tuesday.
Investors bankrolled the recovery operation back in 2010 with $6 million in shares. Brooks purchased and outfitted a 214-foot vessel and paid $500,000 for a Vector M5 remote operating vehicle from Deep Ocean Engineering of San Jose, Calif., to explore the wreck, he said.
From the start, however, the Vector was not powerful enough to withstand the swift currents it encountered diving on the wreck 600 to 800 feet below. But in reviewing hundreds of hours of underwater video taken of the shipwreck, technicians saw around 30 boxes within the hole that had been blown in the cargo hold by one of the torpedoes and as well as spilling onto the ocean floor, Brooks said.
"We weren't looking for boxes," Brooks said, but his subsequent research into a similar wreck revealed the very same boxes were used to ship gold ingots for lend-lease payments between the Soviet Union and the United States during World War II.
Video
http://boatinglocal.com/news/3-billion-in-gold-to-be-salvaged-from-cape-cod-wreck.html
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Greg Brooks, co-founder and principal of Sub Sea Research LLC, believes that 1.7 million ounces of platinum ingots worth an estimated $3 billion is still with the Port Nicholson, a steam-powered 481-foot British freighter that reportedly sank 50 miles northeast of Provincetown after being torpedoed June 16, 1942.
Research of period documents as well as interviews with survivors, relatives of the crew and a German U-boat captain prove beyond a doubt that the platinum is there along with a possible $165 million in other precious metals, Brooks said.
"If this was a murder trial, the guy would hang," he said in a phone interview Tuesday.
Investors bankrolled the recovery operation back in 2010 with $6 million in shares. Brooks purchased and outfitted a 214-foot vessel and paid $500,000 for a Vector M5 remote operating vehicle from Deep Ocean Engineering of San Jose, Calif., to explore the wreck, he said.
From the start, however, the Vector was not powerful enough to withstand the swift currents it encountered diving on the wreck 600 to 800 feet below. But in reviewing hundreds of hours of underwater video taken of the shipwreck, technicians saw around 30 boxes within the hole that had been blown in the cargo hold by one of the torpedoes and as well as spilling onto the ocean floor, Brooks said.
"We weren't looking for boxes," Brooks said, but his subsequent research into a similar wreck revealed the very same boxes were used to ship gold ingots for lend-lease payments between the Soviet Union and the United States during World War II.
Video
http://boatinglocal.com/news/3-billion-in-gold-to-be-salvaged-from-cape-cod-wreck.html
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