Treasure hunter pitches for investors after $3B discovery
Sunken ship ‘laden with platinum’
AU.S. shipwreck hunter claims to have discovered a startling, $3-billion treasure of platinum ingots inside a torpedoed Second World War merchant vessel — the 1942 sinking of which claimed the lives of two Canadian sailors who apparently had boarded the crippled ship in an ill-fated attempt to recover its cargo.
Greg Brooks, co-founder of Maine-based Sub Sea Research, says his salvage firm has located and identified “the world’s richest shipwreck” — the British-flagged freighter Port Nicholson — in waters off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass. That’s where the vessel is known to have gone down after being attacked by a German U-boat in June 1942 during a voyage from Britain to New York City via Halifax.
Brooks claims the 160-metre British ship, under escort by the Canadian corvette HMCS Nanaimo and other warships, was carrying more than 1.7 million ounces in platinum bars, as well as significant amounts of gold and copper, at the time of the sinking — a secret cargo representing a massive payment by the Soviet Union to the U.S. for U.s.-made war materiel that previously had been shipped to Europe under the LendLease Agreement.
The equipment-supply deal had enabled the U.S. to lend crucial support to the Allied cause before the country’s official entry into the war in December 1941.
Online historical records show the damaged Port Nicholson was still floating, but taking on water, several hours after the U-boat strike, at which point, a team of British and Canadian sailors went aboard to assess the prospects of salvaging the ship or its contents.
Rising waves suddenly swamped the freighter and quickly sent it to the seabed, overturning the lifeboat in which some members of the reconnaissance team had tried to escape.
Two of the four who died were Royal Canadian Navy volunteer reserve officer Lt. John Molson Walkley of Montreal and RCNVR Able Seaman Leslie Horne of Winnipeg. According to historical records, Walkley and Horne were both posthumously “mentioned in dispatches,” a military honour awarded for their “gallant services in escort of convoys.”
Brooks first gained international media attention in 2009 after announcing he’d found a bullion-laden, Second World War-era cargo ship. But he divulged few further details at that time.
This week, however, Sub Sea Research released a statement in which Brooks identified the sunken ship as the Port Nicholson and claimed to have proof — gathered during a dive to the wreck site by a robotic mini-sub — of the riches it was carrying.
Brooks said his team “has already recovered several identifying and critical artifacts” and verified that “it is without a doubt the Port Nicholson.”
He could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.
The claims, however, have attracted some skepticism. And the Sub Sea Research announcement of the find was accompanied by a pitch for investors to help the company overcome “extremely difficult” conditions at the wreck site that are preventing clear access to the purported stockpile of precious metal.
“There is nothing more frustrating for each of our crew, as well as our financial supporters, to see, touch and feel the bullion box and not be able to quickly and simply retrieve it,” Brooks said in the statement.