WWI treasure ship...info needed.

291fifth

Quite a few years ago I read a story, possibly in Coin World, about a WWI British cruiser that that was sunk while carrying a large gold shipment either to or from Russia. Does anyone know the name of the ship and whether any salvage efforts have ever been mounted?

DaveG

You may be referring to the HMS Edinburgh, a cruiser that left Murmansk on April 29, 1942, escorting convoy PQ11. The ship was the flagship for the convoy commander, Rear-Admiral Stuart Bonham-Carter. Shortly before the convoy sailed, the Edinburgh was loaded with 93 small wooden boxes. Each box contained 5 gold bars (465 bars in all), each weighing 28 pounds (probably avoirdupois rather than troy), for a total of about 5 1/2 tons.

The Edinburgh was hit by two torpedoes fired by the U-456 on April 30th. Although heavily damaged, the Edinburgh tried to limp back to Murmansk, 250 miles away, while the rest of the convoy continued on its way.

On May 2nd, three German destroyers, dispatched from a base in Norway, caught up to the Edinburgh and its escorts. In the fierce battle that followed, the Edinburgh managed to sink the Hermann Schoemann, the largest of the three German destroyers. Shortly afterwards, the Edinburgh was hit by a torpedo fired by one of the surviving German destroyers. The ship developed a sharp list, and, concerned that it might turn turtle, Rear-Admiral Bonham-Carter ordered that it be abandoned. Unfortunately for Rear-Admiral Bonham-Carter, the ship did not sink and he finally ordered an English destroyer to sink it with another torpedo.

In the late 1970s, the Norwegian company, Stolt Nielsen, searched for, but did not find, the Edinburgh. A few years later, Jessop Marine, in partnership with North Sea diving company Wharton Williams, won the contract from the English and Russian governments to try again. They located the ship in April 1981. (I don't know how deep it was.)

By October, they had salvaged 431 out of the 465 gold bars on board. In 1986, Wharton Williams returned to the wreck and recovered the remaining 34 bars of gold.


(Source: Lost Treasure Ships of the Twentieth Century by Nigel Pickford, 1999)