Sunk with 400 bars of gold - The Sinking and Salvage of HMS Edinburgh

at the start of may 1942 a british cruiser sank in the barents sea with four and a half tons of soviet gold ingots on board this is the story of how it got there and how it was reclaimed from the depths decades later this video is sponsored by keeps keeps is a subscription service that focuses on making it easier and more affordable for men to treat their male pattern and boldness online two in three men will experience some kind of male pattern baldness before they are 35 and the best time to do something about it is while you still have hair a little prevention can go a long way with keeps a licensed doctor will look at your information online and recommend the treatment for you then every three months your treatment will be shipped directly to your door keeps provides generic versions of fda approved medications for hair loss which makes it more affordable keeps treatment can take between four and six months to start seeing results so if you're interested then it might be important to act quickly to save as much hair as you can if you're ready to take action and prevent hair loss go to keeps.com historiograph or click the link in the description for 50 of your first order that's k-e-e-p-s dot com slash histogram thanks again to keeps for sponsoring this video at the outbreak of the second world war hms edinburgh was one of the royal navy's most modern light cruisers after two years of war service in late december 1941 she was assigned to escort convoys on their new supply route to the soviet union through the arctic ocean the arctic convoys were a fearsome logistical challenge for the british and the urgent need to supply the soviets meant that convoys continued well into the late spring of 1942 in the face of increasing attacks by german aircraft u-boats and surface ships at the end of april 1942 edinburgh was at murmansk having successfully escorted the convoy pq14 from iceland earlier that month it was now time for the return leg and the light cruiser was preparing to join up with the homeward bound qp 11 as part of an escort under rear admiral stuart bonham carter before leaving port though a very special cargo was loaded aboard under armed guard it was more than four and a half tons of gold bullion in 465 individual ingots this was part payment from the soviets for the supplies they had received through the arctic route over the previous months it had a value at the time of around one and a half million pounds sterling in today's money a valley of about 140 million sterling or 190 million us dollars it was a huge amount of money stacked in edinburgh's bomb room at its stern on april 30th edinburgh rendezvoused with qp11 the cruiser maneuvered to the front of the convoy and pressed ahead heading northwest little did they know ahead of them lay the german submarine u456 commanded by lieutenant max martin thai chart the g boats ambushed edinburgh with two torpedoes both smashed into the british cruiser gouging a hole amid amidships and totally wrecking the stern of the ship the rudder was destroyed along with the main propellers and huge amounts of sea water began to flood in edinburgh's captain hugh webb faulkner had to quickly order the affected compartments be sealed off in order to save the ship the damage edinburgh had sustained was serious so serious it made the chances of getting to iceland non-existent the ship would have to try and make it back to murmansk leaving the convoy behind the escorting destroyers of forsyth and forrester came to her aid joined for a while by two soviet destroyers that had been trailing qp11 with this new escort edinburgh crawled south at barely two knots having to make constant adjustments with her auxiliary propellers to stay on some kind of consistent course at o-600 on may first the two soviet destroyers detached themselves and headed back to murmansk citing low fuel they were replaced on station from murmansk by the british minesweepers gossamer harrier hussar and niger alongside the soviet guardship reuben and a civilian tug if edinburgh was to fail to make it back to port it would not be for a lack of trying meanwhile away to the north west three german destroyers were hurrying qp 11. under the command of commander alfred schultz henriks the z24 z25 and herman schumann had sorted early that morning reaching the convoy by the early afternoon they dealed with the four escorting destroyers damaging the tribal class ship amazon and sinking the soviet freighter with a torpedo shortly after 5 pm though the germans turned away giving up their attack on the convoy in order to bear down on what they now knew was an ailing like cruiser trying desperately to get back to port commander schulz henrik's destroyers arrived at edinburgh on the morning of may second cited by the minesweeper hussar the germans began to trade fire with the british escorts observing this captain falcon on edinburgh quickly decided that his ship was not about to sit this one out the russian tug was cast off and he accelerated to the ship's maximum speed of seven knots as edinburgh only had use of some of her engines and no rudder this put the ship into a slow continuous turn to port the forward guns were manned and with the radio firing director out of action would be manually aimed by now forsyth and forrester were engaged at close range with the german ships the german destroyers outgunned their british equivalents with five inch guns and this superiority told both british destroyers took bad hits and were forced to stop leaving them vulnerable to further attack but then out of the mist spinning in a circle came the six-inch guns of hms edinburgh with just their third salvo edinburgh incredibly managed to hit and disable the hermann sherman the german destroyer immediately began to list dangerously and came to a halt with one of their number foundering captain schulz hinrichs now pulled back his other destroyers from the attack foresight and forrester got the breathing room they needed to get going again and the germans made sure they could pull survivors off of herman sherman before it sank when the german attack was renewed it was met by the four little minesweepers who charged head-on to try and protect the edinburgh they were massively outgunned and the visibility was poor but they were determined to drive the destroyers off but before they could z34 fired a spread of three torpedoes in edinburgh captain faulconer saw them and tried desperately to use the engines to turn the ship towards the oncoming metal fishes but the ruined cruiser responded just too slowly a torpedo crashed into the ship's hull almost exactly opposite one of the holes made two days earlier the ship now appeared almost completely cut in half with only the deck and the keel holding it together this could give way at any moment so it was time to abandon ship the minesweepers harrier and gossamer came alongside and were able to take the crew off relatively easily as edinburgh was now so low in the water that the ship's decks were about level with each other altogether 790 of the 847 crew were saved hms foresight then sent edinburgh and her vast quantity of gold to the bottom with one final torpedo for decades after her sinking edinburgh lay undisturbed at the bottom of the barren sea even though both moscow and london were well aware of the huge value of the cargo on board the wreck edinburgh was formally marked as a war grave in 1957 which effectively ruled out the easiest form of salvage known as blast and grab this was to simply blow your way into the wreck with explosives and take what you came for as you can imagine there was little chance the british ministry of defense or public opinion would tolerate that on a war grave as a result it wasn't until the early 1980s that a consortium of british firms were able to secure the necessary approvals for a salvage attempt the consortium planned to use divers to cut into a small part of the wreck and retrieve the gold while doing the minimum amount of disruption to the rest of the ship finally at the end of april 1991 long-awaited approval from the soviet government was granted and the consortium was able to begin its salvage attempt at first though they had to find the wreck on the face of it this was no easy task edinburgh had made dozens of course changes in the two days before she sank and in the chaos of battle her own plotted positions were likely to be inaccurate in fact reports from multiple ships had given edinburgh's location at different positions scattered across an area the size of greater london substantial work would have to be done to work out which of these sightings would be most accurate eventually it was ascertained by kip punch of the survey company raquel decker that the minesweeper hms harriers track was probably the most accurate since it had made the fewest course corrections since leaving port and therefore its positions should be the closest to accuracy at the end of april 1981 the survey vessel damn tour sailed to confirm the location of edinburgh almost 39 years to the day since the ship sinking grainy images of the ship were beamed back to vedanta with edinburgh lying at almost the precise location harrier had plotted decades before 244 meters below the surface after a few months of preparation the actual salvage operation was able to begin in september 1981 aboard the salvage ship stefanotum it was a tremendously risky operation both physically and financially the divers would be working at world record depth for this kind of operation as rick wharton one of the architects of the salvaging puts it we were going off into the unknown at depths never before attempted in hostile waters both physically and politically we were now embarking on the diving equivalent of the first moonwalk the sandwich attempt was to be carried out using what's known as saturation diving on september 2nd eight divers entered a special sealed set of chambers on the staffanatum which were then pressurized to the depth they'd be working out on the seabed equivalent to 23 atmospheres each day in shifts they'd commute down to the wreck for work and return to the saturation chambers after they had finished this way of working meant that the divers did not have to make lengthy decompression stops at the end of each dive instead they would remain compressed as if they were on the seabed 24 7 until the job was done if for whatever reason they needed to leave early they'd be unable to without a lengthy decompression process on september 4th the first dive to the wreck took place initially progress seemed very slow as the divers had to assess the best route to the bomb room where the gold was stored and cut their way through the armor plating to access it inside the ship there was a large amount of debris between them and their target to complicate matters more when the divers eventually reached the bulkhead of the bomb room they found a large hole in it which had been gouged by a german torpedo this was partially good as it meant there was no buildup of explosive gases from decaying ordnance on the other side but also a massive hindrance as the bomb room had become covered in layers of silt and debris for day after day round the clock the divers worked tirelessly to clear the bomb room keeping a keen eye out for any flashes of gold finally on september 16th on dive number 27 at 10 48 pm they found it and where there was one bar more followed over the next three weeks hundreds of ingots were brought up the peak was the 40 bars retrieved in one dive by dougie matheson worth 4 million pounds alone by the time the diving operation had to be suspended on october 8th due to worsening autumn weather 431 of the 465 gold bars had been recovered it was an astonishing achievement we had recovered 93 of the edinburgh's cargo from a record depth in the most hostile waters in the world and we had done it without any serious injury the hall was worth around 40 million pounds sterling in 1981 a value roughly equivalent to 140 million in today's money it was a huge amount which ended up being split at various percentages between the british and soviet governments and the consortium which had put together the salvage efforts before departing the wreck site for murmansk and then the uk the crew of the stefano term held a short memorial service throwing a wreath over the side to commemorate the 57 sailors who went down with the ship 39 years earlier five years later in 1986 the sandwich consortium would return to retrieve 29 more bars from the wreck finally concluding the remarkable story of hms edinburgh and her golden cargo you

Channel: Historigraph

Views: 157,987

Keywords: historigraph, historiograph

Id: 8ITl1yYG9vs

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 09 2021