Portland treasure hunters on the verge of bringing up $3 billion in shipwreck loot
PORTLAND, Maine The only thing between a team of Portland explorers and nearly $3 billion in sunken treasure is about 700 feet of water.
Sub Sea Research LLC has located off the coast of Cape Cod the shipwreck of the Port Nicholson, a British freighter secretly carrying 71 tons of platinum when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1942.
This is the richest shipwreck thats ever been found, bar none, Greg Brooks, co-founder of Sub Sea Research told the Bangor Daily News Tuesday. We think toward the end of February, if we get some good weather, well get some of that cargo up on the deck. And once you get some of that on the deck, everything changes.
Each ingot sort of like a narrow brick of platinum is now worth roughly $600,000, Brooks said, and there are about 4,600 ingots littering the sea floor in and around the Port Nicholson. http://bangordailynews.com/2012/02/01/news/portland/maine-treasure-hunter-takes-aim-at-3-billion-sunken-bounty/
An informative story and video about the discovery at the link.
Response to bluedigger (Original post)
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sakabatou
(42,152 posts)ellisonz
(27,711 posts)Good work MIRT!
sakabatou
(42,152 posts)O.o
ellisonz
(27,711 posts)I was on the jury for it. Maybe not enough DUers on at this hour...
lol - still waiting for the jury verdict to come back.
Edit:
You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Thu Feb 2, 2012, 04:43 AM, and the Jury voted 6-0 to HIDE IT.
Juror #1 voted to HIDE IT and said: An outrageous ad of this nature has no place anywhere on DU.
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT and said: Spam ad.
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT and said: Jesus H Fucking Christ on a pogo-stick....
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT and said: this spammer has already been banned. Post needs to be hidden
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Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT and said: spam
sakabatou
(42,152 posts)bluedigger
(17,086 posts)Spam attention is better than no attention.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)if they aren't worried about Russia putting in an ownership claim...
Also given the shallow depth of the platinum, why would you make an announcement to the press? What's preventing someone else from going down and taking a piece or two?
Ruby the Liberal
(26,219 posts)"Off the coast of Cape Cod" - isn't that Massachusetts?
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Since the payment never arrived, Russia paid it again at a later date so there is no U.S. government interest in the salvage
Ruby the Liberal
(26,219 posts)Thanks for connecting the dots.
bluedigger
(17,086 posts)SSR does have the legal salvage rights. Russia has no claim, as the USSR (which has since dissolved) and the US settled all their lend-lease obligations decades ago. Apparently the cargo was written off as unrecoverable.
I also thought it was rash of them to announce the find prior to recovery, but it seems that there are sufficient technical difficulties to recovery that they feel confident that no one else can get to it first. Basically, it's really, really, hard to lift platinum from the seabed.
I hope they can pull it off!