Preserving undersea remains of SS Laurentic

Kyt · May 7, 2008

Sunken treasure: Efforts underway to preserve undersea remains of SS Laurentic

She was, at the dawn of the 20th century, a stately ship of dreams for thousands of British emigrants bound for a new life in Canada.

Then a ship of war, transporting wave after wave of Canadian troops overseas to help liberate Europe from the Kaiser's thrall.

Finally, she was the British government's secret treasure ship, packed with 43 tons of gold and intended for Halifax to pay Canadian and American munitions suppliers at the height of the First World War.

But that was the mission that doomed the SS Laurentic - along with 354 of her British and Canadian crew - when the ocean liner dressed in cannons for the occasion struck a German mine off the Irish coast, slipping to the North Atlantic's depths with her cargo of 3,211 ingots.

Now, 91 years after the loss of the majestic, 172-metre vessel - its story already woven deeply into the fabric of Canadian history - the Laurentic has become the focus of an enterprising scheme to preserve her remains, promote her past and, most tantalizingly, retrieve the last remnants of her sunken gold.

At a ceremony last week in Belfast, the city's mayor and a host of dignitaries - including the naval attache from Canada's embassy in Ireland, Capt. Norman Jolin - marked the launch of an education campaign and a share offering that invites history buffs to buy an ownership stake in the famously ill-fated "gold bullion ship."

The project is aimed at attracting more international attention to the Laurentic tragedy and financing future treasure hunts.

During and after the war, Royal Navy divers recovered most of the gold bars from the wreck. Other salvage efforts have left all but 20 ingots unaccounted for.

But that means a significant fortune in gold is still missing, hidden amid debris scattered 40 metres deep at the bottom of Lough Swilly inlet, some 50 kilometres northwest of the city of Derry.

The estimated value of the remaining ingots - a mere fraction of the original shipment of British gold worth billions in today's dollars - is $20 million.

"That's the hook," chuckles Jolin, who applauds the education initiative but doesn't expect the $100 Laurentic share certificates will ever be worth much more than that. "The gold ingots are giving this some added excitement. But it's really a big effort to bring some attention to this ship."

Its sinking, he adds, "is a sad story. And the locals want people to remember it."

Among those on board the Laurentic when it headed for Canada on Jan. 25, 1917, were at least 20 sailors from Newfoundland, still a British colony at that time.

When the ship struck the mine laid by a German U-boat, 18 of the Newfoundlanders drowned or died of exposure while awaiting rescue in life rafts, along with hundreds of their British compatriots.

Earlier this year, on the anniversary of the sinking, Jolin and Canada's ambassador to Ireland, Pat Binns, attended a memorial near the wreck site honouring those who perished in the disaster.

"There's huge connections to Canada," said Jolin.

He and Binns later attended a reception at the Laurentic, a restaurant in the coastal town of Buncrana and unofficial headquarters of the bid to transform the 1917 tragedy into an economic boon for a remote region of Ireland.

Years ago, the British government sold salvage rights at the wreck site to Irish businessman Ray Cossum.

Efforts by Cossum, his son Des and others to promote the history of the Laurentic, recreational diving at the wreck site and the possible recovery of more of the ship's missing gold have drawn considerable attention in Ireland.

"What we're really doing here is giving people a chance to own a piece of history," Des Cossum told Canwest News Service. "We want to preserve the wreck site. It's not about plundering it."

The Laurentic was built at the famous Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast where - just months after its completion - work began in the same slipway on another ill-starred ocean liner: the Titanic.
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Preserving undersea remains of SS Laurentic

Kyt Άρης

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