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Devildogg4ever
08-17-03, 09:16 AM
1860s steamer said to carry as much as $180 million in gold
MITCH STACY
Associated Press

TAMPA, Fla. - Explorers believe they have found the sunken remains of an 1860s steamer that could yield the richest cargo ever recovered from a shipwreck: thousands of gold coins worth as much as $180 million.

The SS Republic was carrying 59 passengers and 20,000 $20 gold coins from New York to New Orleans when it sank in a hurricane off Savannah, Ga., on Oct. 25, 1865, according to newspaper accounts and other records.

All the passengers survived, but the coins -- intended to help pay for reconstruction of the South after the Civil War -- went to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. An expert has estimated they would be worth $120 million to $180 million today.

After searching for 12 years, Greg Stemm and John Morris of Odyssey Marine Explorations Inc. said Saturday that they found the wreck last month in 1,700 feet of water about 100 miles southeast of Savannah.

Documentation and excavation of the site using remotely operated robotic equipment is set to begin next month. Stemm said the Tampa-based company recently bought a 250-foot ship and a special robotic "remotely operated vehicle" to carry out the project.

"It's almost like having a hand down there," Stemm said of the apparatus. "You can literally feel the pressure when you're picking things up and moving them around."

Because the wreck is so far out in international waters, the company doesn't need a permit to begin work, but it has been granted federal "admiralty arrest" of the site to make it illegal for others to lay claim to it.

Odyssey crews combed 1,500 square miles of ocean using a robotic vehicle, sonar and magnetometer technology before they found what they believe is the Republic, a side-wheel steamer that once served in the Union fleet.

"After all the years of searching for this particular shipwreck, finally finding it with just an incredible team of folks, it's just an indescribable feeling," Stemm said.

Odyssey, a publicly traded company founded in the mid-1990s, has a number of shipwreck search projects under way.

The company recently entered a historic partnership with the British government to excavate the HMS Sussex, which sank in 1694 off Gibraltar while leading a British fleet into the Mediterranean Sea for a war against France.

Historians believe it was carrying 9 tons of gold coins aimed at buying the loyalty of the Duke of Savoy, a potential ally in southeastern France. The Sussex's cargo could be more valuable than the Republic's, but Odyssey will have to share it with England: The company will get 80 percent of the first $45 million and about 50 percent thereafter.

The company had planned to begin work on the Sussex next month but the Republic project will now take priority.

"Its proximity to the U.S., the location of our equipment and the comparative weather windows between the Mediterranean and Atlantic make the choice to do the SS Republic project prior to the Sussex an easy one," Morris said.

The richest haul previously came from the wreck of the SS Central America, which sank in a hurricane off the N.C. coast in 1857 carrying a vast treasure of California gold. That wreck surrendered about $100 million in gold in 1987, including the largest known ingot from the California Gold Rush, a 10-inch-long brick that sold for a reported $7 million.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/6552068.htm