BID FOR MILLIONS.

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 141, 17 June 1922, Page 10

BID FOR MILLIONS.

Another bid is to be made for millions lying on the bed of the ocean. A salvage engineer stated in England that he had secured oxoluEive information oJ the loca-. tion. in international waters of a torpedoed vessel containing £2,000,000 of bullion, which could bo salved in threeweeks. Speculative as such an^undert.aking appears, writes a Daily Chronicle representative, the fact remains that in four years the- now defunct Admiralty Salvage Department raised 440 important vessels and recovered property to tho.va.lu" of £50,000,000. There aro over 2000 British merchant vessels, sunk by the enemy, whose positions have been ph-arted. Nearly 2,000,000 of tonnage is \ within workable 'depth. A naval expert told the Daily Chrouiolo representative that tho Admiralty have charted all sunken ships and know exactly what each contains. "They rca-Hy belong to tho Treasury," ho said, "and anyono desiring to undertake salvage attempts must obtain permission and buy the Vessel as she stands. It is alway6 a speculative undertaking, but although tho Admiralty have raised all the ships they considered worth while, it is still pos-' sible that valuable cargoes can even now be salved. About a year ago a company socur-sd from a sunken, vessel a cargo of grain. -Tho exterior was coated with grease, and beneath it the grain was found to bo in quite an ediblo condition." Vast sums of money have been recovered from modern ships. In the case\of tho' Laurentic, sunk off Lough Swilly, with a huge amount o£ bullion, divers working against almost insuperable .difficulties have wrested nearly tho whole quantity from the ocean bed. Atlantic gales had broken tho vessel up to such an extent that the bullion was pinned beneath tons of wreckage. Blasting had to bo resorted to, and tho depth was just about the limit at which the divers could work.