Gold from the sea after 40 years

Press, 9 October 1982, Page 16

Gold from the sea after 40 years

Stalin's Gold. By Barrie Penrose. Granada, 1982. 223 pp. $24.95. (Reviewed by Ted Glasgow)

The “Sunday Times” called it “the salvage mission of the century.” The mission, which was successful, was to recover £40,000,000 • worth of gold ingots from the wreck of a British cruiser lying in 800 feet of water in the Barents Sea, which is within the Arctic Circle. If this story were presented as fiction one would be inclined to dismiss it as improbable or mere fantasy. But it did happen, only one year ago, and the feats of the salvors and divers, as recorded by Barrie Penrose, make fascinating and absorbing reading. H.M.S. Edinburgh, a cruiser of 10.000 tons, was one of the escort vessels for a convoy bound from Murmansk to Iceland. It was a run which had become notorious for the heavy losses of merchant ships in the convoys and their naval escorts. It was April, 1942, when the Edinburgh took aboard a valuable cargo: five tons of gold in 281 b bars, packed five to a box. It was Russian gold, destined for the United States, in payment for war material supplied to Russia. The convoy sailed, and when it was some' 170 miles from Murmansk it was attacked by German submarines. The Edinburgh was torpedoed and was so badly damaged that she had to be abandoned and was sunk by a British ship. So she went to the bottom, taking with her five tons of gold. There she was to remain untouched for nearly 40 years. The physical difficulties facing any would-be salvors were immense: the extreme depth of the wreck and the extreme cold of the Arctic seas, the savage weather, and the condition of the wreck, almost certainly full of jagged pieces of steel, fuel oil, mud, slime and other hazards for divers.

And, of course, there were other problems. Whose wreck was it? The gold had been insured, so neither Russia nor the United States had suffered monetary

loss, but some sort of official blessing, if not actual permission from Moscow and London, would be necessary for a salvage attempt. Another complication was that the Edinburgh had been declared a British war grave. Many of her complement had gone down with her and there would be public opposition to any interference with the wreck. In the face of all this who was prepared to put up the vast sum of money required for an attempt to salvage the gold, having first found the wreck? The first section of the book gives a detailed account of the naval engagement which culminated in the loss of H.M.S. Edinburgh. Then follows the story of Keith Jessop, a Yorkshireman, a salvor in a small way of business, but with a mighty dream: to recover the gold from the wreck of the Edinburgh. How did this man. head of a company with a capital oi LlOO, persuade big salvage companies to

risk millions? How did he survive in the jockeying for position and later the infighting that went on among the big interests involved?

It is a fascinating story, well told by Barrie Penrose. Equally well told is the story of the problems involved in keeping a team of divers working at 800 feet in the Barents Sea. Reader may well reflect that the heading in the “Sunday Times” was over-modest. I refrain from repeating the old saw about truth and fiction, but it is an amazing tale that everyone should enjoy.

Footnote: A black mark against Mr Penrose for this “... had raised gold from the wreck of the Niagara, which had sunk during the war off the Australian coast.” (The Niagara struck a German-laid mine in the approaches to the Hauraki Gulf on June 19, 1940.)