ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO Saturday March 31, 1923
Gold in the North Channel
The salvage vessel Racer will in a few days set out on another attempt to recover the £5 million worth of gold from the wrecked Laurentic, which lies scattered on the seafloor off the North of Ireland.
This is the seventh year of the operations which have been carried out in face of great difficulties.
The Laurentic, with a cargo of bullion for America, was torpedoed and sunk in January 1917. The wreck lies 15 miles from land, off the entrance to Lough Swilly.
Up to August last year, when work was suspended owing to rough weather, as much as £1,600,000 in gold had been salved.
The wreck has been broken up and buried beneath heavy accumulations of sand. It is unlikely that the whole of the lost treasure of some £7 million will ever be brought to the surface.
The greatest enemy of the divers is the male dogfish. During the breeding season, these fish will attack the men furiously if disturbed.
They snap at the divers’ naked hands and at the material of their suit, the tearing of which may have serious consequences for the men.
The crew managed to abandon ship successfully after the ship struck a mine; everyone made it to the lifeboats but, of the 475 passengers and crew on board, 354 of them died of hypothermia.
The gold was bound for Canada and the USA to buy munitions for the First World War. The salvage divers received a bounty of half-acrown (12.5 pence) for every £100 of gold they recovered.
It is thought that up to 25 gold bars remain but the salvage rights are still owned by a company and the wreck is in Irish territorial waters, protected by its National Monuments Act, and you have to apply for a licence to dive what remains of the wreck.