Portland treasure hunters on the verge of bringing up $3 billion in shipwreck loot

[bluedigger]

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 that’s 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, we’ll 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.

[sakabatou]

2. WTF is this shit?!

[ellisonz]

3. And it's gone...

Good work MIRT!

[sakabatou]

4. I'm still seeing it

O.o

[ellisonz]

5. The poster is PPR.

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
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT and said: spam

[sakabatou]

6. Thank you jurors

[bluedigger]

7. Well, at least I got a reply.

Spam attention is better than no attention.

[Blue_Tires]

8. I guess Sub Sea Research bought the salvage rights to the wreck

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]

9. I am not familiar with maritime law - why would the Russians put in a claim?

"Off the coast of Cape Cod" - isn't that Massachusetts?

[Blue_Tires]

10. It's their loot, initially a payment to the USA for war supplies

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]

12. Oh - gotcha.

Thanks for connecting the dots.

[bluedigger]

11. Read the whole story.

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!

[Tiggeroshii]

13. can california have it?