THE LAURENTIC’S GOLD.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 30 December 1924, Page 7

THE LAURENTIC’S GOLD.

FINAL OPERATIONS. NINETY PER CENT. RECOVERED. The Admiralty ship Racer, has just completed the salvage of the armed liner Laurentic, which was sunk by a IE-boat off the County Donegal coast during the late war. At the beginning of this .year there were 154 bars of gold remaining buried on the Wreck, and the salvage vessel Racer arrived on !tlie Spot- in the first days of April for the effort to. recover as many of these as possible before finally closing down. At an earlier period of the work all the structure of the sliip and wreckage had been removed right down to the outer skin of the vessel, which formed, as it were, a carpet- lying on the sea bed. Tliis carpet had been swept clear of gold, but it was crumpled and torn in many places. During the firstmonth of the present season a number of the bars were obtained by digging o,n and sifting the boulders and stiff clay where they were exposed" at holes, and as the excavations were deepened arid extended —so that divers could squeeze themselves right underneath the wreck —more gold " was discovered several feet from the tears and beneath the continuous plating. A very fine spring and early summer favoured the undertaking, but. with. .the. late summer bad weather set in. Soon the disturbance of the .surrounding wreckage caused stones and shinglO to sweep into and over the working place faster than it could be cleared out, and now any gold that is left there is buried several feet deep, about 25 bars in all. Of the £5,C00,000 worth of specie sunk, 90 J>er s J ent has been recovered and safely lodged in the Treasury.