NARRATOR: Treasure
hunting has captured our
imaginations for centuries. KIM: I think everybody at
some point in their life has dreamed about
finding treasure. JOHN: I knew straightaway
that it was gold. COREY: There was over 30 tons
of silver ingots on board,
200,000 coins, gold, emeralds. GARY: Once treasure and
treasure diving gets in your
blood it's hard to get it out. NARRATOR: Sunken treasures
remain lost below
the waves, until now. Imagine if we could
empty the oceans, draining the water away
to reveal the secrets
of the sea floor. Now, we can. Using the latest underwater
scanning technology
piercing the deep oceans. And turning accurate
data into 3D images. How do you excavate a fortune
in sunken silver from a
wreck lost in shifting sands? MARTIJN: It's an
amazing amount of money. NARRATOR: Why is the
treasure from a wrecked
Spanish galleon, spread over 10 miles
of Florida seabed? And how can the
world's biggest haul
of lost gold bullion be recovered from
the Arctic depths? ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Today,
moving money is simple. JAMES: These days you
push a button and funds are
electronically transferred. But in the past the oceans
were a pretty consistent means
of moving the world's money. NARRATOR: For centuries
treasure ships sailed
the oceans of the world packed with silver,
gold and precious stones. Hunted by pirates. Battered by storms. Threatened by reefs
and rocky shores. -The reason that you would
find treasure underwater is
that the water has been the greatest highway
in human history. NARRATOR: And where
there's treasure, there
are treasure hunters. NIGEL: I think people
certainly catch gold fever. I think people love
searching for things. It's deep in our psyche. NARRATOR: Around the
world hundreds of treasure
wrecks remain unexplored. As the waters of the
oceans begin to drain away, they reveal their
most valuable secrets. The English Channel. Five miles off
the coast of Kent. The grave of an 18th
century merchant ship. Lost to the waves and
carrying a fortune in silver. The priceless wreck often
vanishes and re-appears under
ever-shifting sandbanks. Can draining away the English
Channel reveal the wreck and
the sunken treasure? January the 8th, 1740. The Dutch East India Company
ship, the Rooswijk, sets off from the Netherlands
into the English Channel. It's on an eight-month long
voyage to Indonesia, then known as the Dutch East Indies,
the center of the spice trade. On board are
merchants, soldiers,
and a precious cargo. -It's said that there were
about 300,000 guilders of
silver on board of the ship, in silver bars and
about 36,000 of coins. NARRATOR: A fortune in
today's money, equivalent
to around $100 million. A few miles off
the English coast, a
violent storm blows up. The ship hits sand
banks and disappears. 237 men die and the
silver is lost to the sea. Now, more than
270 years later, a team of underwater
archaeologists investigate. Martijn Manders
heads the expedition. -It's enormously unique
to do a large-scale
excavation underwater, we really have to take care of
what's down there underwater
or we lose it forever. NARRATOR: These are
treacherous waters. To locate the wreck the team
uses the latest technology:
multi-beam sonar scanning. RODRIGO: We came out and
did a multi-beam survey, you create a whole, a
whole image of the seabed. NARRATOR: Multi-beam
sonar fires sound
waves to the sea floor. The return signal displays
the shape and depth
of the features beneath. -That way we can start
putting that puzzle together. NARRATOR: Combining the
sonar data with the latest
visualization techniques, it's now possible to empty the
waters of the English Channel. As the sea drains away,
the first challenge the
team face is revealed, the landscape
under the surface. It's an incredible
hidden world,
miles of rolling dunes, like a desert underwater. The Goodwin Sands. Lying close to
the surface, these endlessly shifting sands
are a deadly threat to shippin. -They called it the
great ship-swallower. NARRATOR: It's the graveyard
for around 2,000 ships, each running aground in
the treacherous shallows. The Rooswijk is swallowed here
and disappears for centuries. Have the sands shifted
enough to finally reveal
this treasure ship? As the waters of the
English Channel continue
to drain away, a shape emerges. Twisted timbers of a ship
from the 18th century. To an expert eye,
artifacts of Dutch origin. And as it's revealed high
and dry it's finally clear, this is all that is
left of the Rooswijk. Archaeologists can now view
the remains of the ship from any angle and examine
it in fine detail. The hull shape is
long lost to the ocean, but
there is a pile of timbers, collapsed deck planks lying
at strange angles, and five
cannon scattered around. -We're basically uncovering
something that hasn't been
seen for the past 250 years. NARRATOR: But where
is the treasure? -We're gonna dive to it
and investigate it and hope to find the secrets
that this shipwreck reveals. For a lot of people
this is a treasure ship. For the archaeologists this
is a treasure ship because we
could get so much information. NARRATOR: Fast-moving tides
make the expedition difficult. Each day there might only
be one hour between tides
that's safe for diving. -It is a race
against the clock. -Ready to ride. -Going down into an elevator
is like going back in time. -It's a time capsule of 1740. MAN (over radio): Okay. NARRATOR: An umbilical cord
provides air 75 feet down. -It was really,
really exciting to
start diving there. I was swimming and then
suddenly you see these
cannons appearing and uh wood sticking
out of the sea bed. You really get this
idea that this is the place
where all these people died. This is a grave. NARRATOR: The drained
wreck of the Rooswijk shows
the scale of the challenge. Debris is spread
over a large area. Here's what's thought to be
the main part of the ship, but around 400 feet to the
north-west lie two anchors
and a pile of barrels. And more than 900 feet
to the north-east, ten
cannon spread around. To the east, eight
more cannon in a row,
next to another anchor. The team has only a 12-week
window to work the wreck site and it can take days
to excavate just a
few square feet, so they must
focus their search. -We have to make choices
and this is what we did on the basis of uh
the multibeam data. NARRATOR: Martijn decides
to home in on the stern. -It's the place
where the officers,
maybe the passengers, where the merchant men used
to live during their trip,
where money was stored. NARRATOR: But how
much treasure might
still be down there? Using enormous vacuums
to remove the sand, they hunt
carefully amongst the debris. NARRATOR: Martijn finds
a broken chest with its
contents spilling out. And then a thrilling moment. A silver coin, and
soon dozens more. Money destined for the
East Indies that's been lying
here for more than 270 years. The wreck of the
Rooswijk is beginning
to reveal its treasures. -Diver well?
-Diver well. These are Pieces of Eight,
eight Real, some people might know
them from the pirate films. NARRATOR: The Spanish
Real was the standard trading
currency of the 18th century. Made of silver, a single
coin is worth more than a
week's pay for a sailor. These coins are some of
the thousands that the Dutch East India Company
places on board ship. All minted just before
the Rooswijk sails. But some of the other
discovered coins are
noticeably different. -These are large
Ducatons, but they're old. They're very old. These are 17th century,
so they're probably
about 70 years, 80 years older than
when the ship wrecked. NARRATOR: They're not the
newly minted company money that the ship is
supposed to be carrying. Trading in private
money was banned by the
Dutch East India Company, so finding these coins
raises new questions. If they aren't company
money, whose are they and
what are they used for? The drained landscape around
the Rooswijk reveals clues. The Reals are found in
clusters, in the stern area, the part of the ship where
company money is stored. But surprisingly the
other coins are found
mixed in with them. Some even show evidence
of being kept secret. -But really interesting of
this coin is this little hole. Maybe it's, it's, it's
worn under the clothes. Maybe somebody had a collar
of all sorts of coins
and just keeping it hidden. NARRATOR: Could these
coins, found at the bottom
of the English Channel, be incredible new evidence
of one of the oldest trades
in history: smuggling. MARTIJN: So we have a notary
deed, an official document. NARRATOR: In Amsterdam,
Martijn Manders investigates
the sunken treasure of the Rooswijk and meets
historian Mateus van Rossum. -And this is the
interesting thing, we have
these combinations of coins, all different kinds, very old. MATTHIAS: That's
definitely private trade. NARRATOR: Private trade
means a booming black
market in smuggled silver. -Isn't that illegal? -It was illegal because
the company banned the
shipment of silver from the Republic
to Asia and back. -So this is evidence? -This is basically
all illegal. NARRATOR: Silver is worth
more in the East Indies
than in the Netherlands, because it can be used to
buy trade goods like spices. Enterprising members of
the crew collect cash from
their families and friends. Then, once they arrive
in Asia, they simply sell
their private silver to the Dutch East India Company
for a profit. It's illegal, but the company
turns a blind eye to the trade because they use the smuggled
silver to buy more spices. Draining the Rooswijk reveals
that not only are the private
coins found in the stern they're also discovered in
other areas of the wreck. This poses a new question. -Was it only the
merchants did this or,
or was it more widespread? -This was actually
very widespread. The captain, the first mate,
the surgeons, the company
merchant on board the ship, then the lower ranks does
indicate that the whole crew participated to some degree
in this, in this trade. NARRATOR: For two centuries,
the Dutch East India
company dominates trade between Asia and its
headquarters in Amsterdam, making the city the key
commercial center in the world. -The Dutch East India Company
was one of the very first large multinational
corporations. NARRATOR: Its
mission is profit. To trade silver for
spices, using ships like the
Rooswijk to spearhead trade. An earlier commercial dive
uncovers the first evidence
of the high value of the ship, two chests. Cracked open, there's
a sight straight out of a
high seas adventure story. In each, 50 bars of silver
bullion, blackened by the wate, worth a fortune and now
divided between the salvage
team and the Dutch Government. But the smuggled coins add
new understanding to one of the most colorful sagas
in the age of discovery. And reveal that everyone
is secretly in on the take. -It's estimated that
50% of all the silver on
board was smuggled money. So, if you think about
the Rooswijk, 36,000
coins on board officially, so that means 36,000 coins
on board unofficially. That's an amazing
amount of money. NARRATOR: How much
more is there to find? It's six weeks into
the 12-week expedition. At a harbor side lab experts
carefully record the
archaeological treasures so they can be studied
anywhere in the world
in stunning 3D detail. Pewter tableware,
glass bottles from
the Captain's table, and more company coins. DAN: We've only found 700
so far, there are many
thousand more to find. NARRATOR: With only a few
weeks left on the project the race is on to recover
as much as possible. And the team now also want
to solve the Rooswijk's
long-standing mystery, how exactly did
it meet its fate? The drained wreckage of
the ship reveals clues. The stern section can
be seen lying in a pile. More than 300 feet
away, there's an anchor. And further out, several
cannon, grouped together. What does this spread
of clues reveal? -This is the evidence of
the people struggling and
trying to save their ship. The ship was caught by the
storm, was pushed on the sandbanks of the
Goodwin Sands. It's just being
smashed on the sands. So, what do you do? You throw away your
heavy equipment and you
start with your cannons. NARRATOR: During the storm,
the crew ditches at least
23 cannons in an attempt to lighten the ship and break
free from the sandbanks. Then the crew drops anchor. But there's no
chance of escape. -It just gets stuck
further and further. The sea lifting the
ship and just pounding
it on to the sand and breaking it in
thousands of pieces. And everybody was lost. It's almost unimaginable. NARRATOR: The loss of
the Rooswijk's silver is a big blow for the
Dutch East India company. -Shipwrecks are one of
the, the recurring threats
for, for the company so yearly there would be losses
of ships, one or two on average. And some historians see this
as, as one of the factors that contributes to the demise of
the Dutch East India Company. NARRATOR: Now, after 12 weeks
of challenging excavation, the archaeological expedition
is almost at an end. -So this is the last
night of the project. 12 weeks of great dives
but also uh we had storms, we had lots of difficult tides, bad visibility but we've
also made a lot of progress. -We've found
around 2,000 coins. NARRATOR: It's only a
fraction of the coins
known to be on board. Including the smuggled ones,
the value of Rooswijk' silver could now be up
to $125 million. Martijn plans to return
to the wreck site. How much more of the
Rooswijk's sunken treasures can be recovered from
the shifting sands below? Archaeologists and
treasure hunters continue
to scour the seas. And as the world's oceans
continue to drain away they
reveal yet more tantalizing clues of fortunes
lost under the waves. The Florida Keys. In 1622, a Spanish galleon
sinks here laden with an extraordinary haul of
silver, gold and gems. For decades, treasure
hunters pursue a dream: to find one of the
richest wrecks in history. Can draining the oceans here
reveal the fabled motherlode of the vanished
treasure ship, Atocha? KIM: I'm Kim Fisher and
I'm a treasure hunter. Gold fever, treasure fever. I think everybody at
some point in their life has dreamed about
finding treasure. NARRATOR: Off the coast of
Key West, Florida, a team of
self-styled treasure hunters is chasing the legend of
the treasure ship Atocha, known to have been
lost in these waters. GARY: Nice clean bottom,
looks like we've got
something coming in here. Nice target. Once treasure and treasure
diving gets in your blood
it's hard to get it out. NARRATOR: Maritime
archaeologist Corey Malcolm
has spent two decades investigating the fate
of the Spanish galleon. COREY: The Atocha we know
er, specifically carried
260 people on board. Some of these people
were the wealthiest
people in the world. You had religious figures,
you had explorers. NARRATOR: September
the 4th, 1622. The 'Nuestra Senora de Atocha'
is part of a fleet of 28 ships that leaves Havana, Cuba
bound for Spain. It's laden with
silver, gold, and gems. More than a year's worth
of treasure obtained by the
Spanish from their empire in Mexico and South America. -The Atocha was a tremendously
important ship to Spain. It was carrying a huge
amount of treasure, I mean there was over 30 tons
of silver ingots on board, 200,000 coins,
gold and emeralds. NARRATOR: But the Atocha
quickly runs in to trouble. JOHN: It wasn't a day out
from Havana that they started
feeling the wind increase, the seas starting to build and
they knew they were caught. NARRATOR: A
hurricane closes in. The ship is lost. Only five men survive
to tell the tale. And their testimonies say
that what sunk the ship wasn't
just the high wind and waves. There is clearly something
else here that poses a
deadly threat to shipping. This area is notorious
for shipwrecks. Around 1,000 ships have been
doomed along the Florida Keys. Ships are drawn to
these waters to make
use of the Gulf Stream, the ancient
highway of the seas. The best way to see what
might have wrecked the Spanish
galleon is to drain the ocean. Now multi beam sonar scanning
details the extraordinary subsea landscape
around the Florida Keys. As the waters drain away
a vast coastal mountain
range is revealed. The shallow Florida
Keys are just the peaks. Beyond them the land
drops down, up to 6,000
feet into an ocean abyss. This is the edge of
the North American
continental shelf. -We have a pretty
dramatic drop off here,
it goes down like a wall. NARRATOR: Further in from
the leading edge, an amazing
sight is now revealed: hard, rock-like formations. This is North America's
only coral reef, known as
the Florida reef tract and it lies just under
the surface of the sea. Today, lighthouses stand
guard here but for the
Spanish traders on the Atocha there is no such warning. -A ship like a Spanish galleon
that might draw 12 feet. It is going to hit a
shallow reef like that and, and it's going to have its
bottom torn out and sink. NARRATOR: But will draining
the Florida Keys reveal the
Atocha and its treasure? Throughout the 1970s
treasure hunter Mel Fisher
searches for the lost ship. He and his family are
driven by stories of
the legendary treasure. -My dad was an
eternal optimist. Today is the day he told
us every day, today's the
day we're going to find it. NARRATOR: For more than
a decade, the Fisher Team
finds clues of the Atocha. cannon, and even silver coins. These finds are tantalizing
and help finance the
continuing search for what the team call
the motherlode. -In the early years
you know people thought Mel
was crazy oh it's you know, you're never going to find it. NARRATOR: For some observers,
treasure hunting and archaeological
preservation don't mix. Mel Fisher invented a
propeller blast system
to clear away sand. Recovering sunken
treasures this way can
damage the sea floor and some of the
artifacts that lie upon it. But the treasure hunters
believe that their work also
helps us understand the past. -We're kind of saving history. You know if we didn't go out
there and recover these items,
in a responsible manner and bring them to light
for the public, they
would be lost forever. NARRATOR: 15 years after the
Fisher Team begin searching,
there's a breakthrough. Cameras capture murky
images on the sea floor. Draining away the waters
of the Florida Keys reveals
clearly one of the most valuable shipwrecks in history. Based upon the latest
scanning data and computer
visualization technology, it's possible to empty
the seas, exposing what
the Fisher family spent almost two decades looking for. Visible for the first
time in four centuries,
wreckage of the Atocha, 55 feet down, once again
open to the light of day. Strewn around, timbers
from the ship's hull. Stones carried as
ships' ballast. Poking out of the mud, debris
of shattered treasure chests. -It really doesn't look
like a ship anymore. It's broken up, it's decayed. NARRATOR: Among the wreckage,
a pile of blackened metal. It's a massive block of
silver bars: 30 tons in total. The motherlode of the Atocha
exposed for all to see. ANDY: It's an emotion.
It was a wonderful
feeling of accomplishment to see Mel Fisher's dream,
the motherlode. MAN (over radio):
There's lobsters
around the whole thing. -When I got out of the water
I went over to my chart and I
put a real X on the chart of "here's the treasure". It was totally overwhelming. -We were all elated, you know. We'd spent most of my life
looking for this one wreck
and now there it was. NARRATOR: It's arguably
the biggest ever haul
of Spanish treasure, making the Fisher family,
and their backers, wealthy
beyond their wildest dreams. -The motherlode in
1985 was valued at about
$400 million at that time. Between now and then we've
recovered a lot more, and
the value in today's numbers, you know it's somewhere
probably twice that, you know approaching a
billion dollar wreck. It's kind of mind boggling. NARRATOR: Among the
treasures are an emerald
and gold cross and ring. Rare silver from
the Incan empire. Gold chains, and cups. And the Fishers are
not finished yet. Their search for more of
the Atocha riches continues. -Based on what we see
on the manifest and
what's been recovered, we can estimate there's
300 silver bars. There was about 70 pounds
of emeralds smuggled on
board the Atocha and we've only found about
six or seven pounds so far. -There's still a lot of
treasure out there to be found. NARRATOR: The Fisher team
has discovered that treasure
from the Atocha has been found not just at the motherlode
but spread out over miles. Why is it spread so
widely, and can draining
the trail of wreckage lead to finding a
second motherlode? GARY: Keep your eye
on that forward sonar. Let me know if you
see any targets. NARRATOR: The hunt for
the Atocha's lost emeralds is now focused on a
missing part of the ship: the sterncastle, where
the wealthiest people on
board have their cabins. -My number one target's
probably a pile of emeralds. KIM: Emeralds are so valuable
that you could have one box
full of emeralds that would be worth a whole ship
full of silver. The Muzo mine produces
the best emeralds in
the world, even today. So keep your eyes
open for big emeralds. That's, that's the big prize. NARRATOR: Critical clues lie
in the spread of wreckage and previously
discovered treasures. The treasure hunters
call it the Atocha trail. -That's looks good there's a
target coming in right there. Might be something
we have to go dig. NARRATOR: With the waters of
the Florida Keys drained away, the true extent of the
Atocha trail is revealed. Survivors' accounts
report that the ship
hits the outer reef here, and eventually sinks two
miles away at the site where
the motherlode is found. But then, the trail
of wreckage appears to
continue on for miles, each point here marks a
treasure already discovered. COREY: It creates
almost a, a breadcrumb
trail on the sea floor. NARRATOR: Why are the
Atocha's treasures spread
over 10 miles of seabed? Following the trail
itself gives the treasure
hunters the answer. -We've pieced together
what happened. NARRATOR: After the
hurricane sinks the Atocha
in September of 1622, another great storm
pounds the sunken wreck. -30 days after the Atocha sank
the second hurricane came. -The bow and the stern
and the upper decks all ripped
loose in that second storm and started bouncing along,
leaving a trail of treasure... NARRATOR: Lying four miles
from the motherlode is what's
thought to be the bow section of the ship, but
the trail appears to
continue even further. JOHN: That superstructure
carried off, breaking
up as it went along and, and dropping things. NARRATOR: The missing
sterncastle and a huge
amount of treasure is projected to lie
somewhere in this area. And now new technology,
a hovering autonomous
underwater vehicle or HAUV, allows the treasure hunters
to find the tiniest clues. -It lets us scan large
areas of sea floor. NARRATOR: Working under
a legal permit, the new
equipment will use a high-frequency magnetic
field detector. -So, we can detect metals
deeper than ever before, and we can start to discriminate
different metals. NARRATOR: And where there's
more metal, the Fisher
team expects to find the missing part of the ship,
and lost emeralds. -That looks like we
got something coming
in right here. That's just a matter of
systematically working the
trail of known artefacts and kind of like bread crumbs
through the forest. NARRATOR: The
search continues. The age of the Spanish
galleons is what many consider the first Golden Age of
treasure on the high seas. But across the world's
oceans the amount of gold
moved in the 20th century, especially during
World War II, dwarfs
all other periods. As the oceans of the world
drain away an extraordinary wreck is revealed near
the Arctic Circle. Can draining a sunken British
warship uncover the fate of the world's largest ever
haul of gold bullion? The Arctic Ocean. 200 miles off the
coast of Russia. Somewhere beneath these
freezing waters lies one of the greatest secrets
of World War II. As the ocean begins
to empty it reveals
an astonishing sight. The 600-foot long wreck
of HMS Edinburgh, visible in its entirety
for the first time in
more than 70 years. The British warship's
guns can be seen in
the clear light of day. On the stern, the
quarterdeck is peeled back. There's clear evidence
of torpedo damage, a
huge hole in the side. But a German torpedo
didn't sink the Edinburgh. So, what did and why? April 30th, 1942,
the Barents Sea in
the Arctic Circle. It's the height of
World War II and a convoy
of 13 British ships is on a perilous 1700-mile
voyage from Russia to
their Allies in the west. ERIC: It's one of the
hardest campaigns of the war. You were under very serious
attack, from submarines, from aircraft and even
from surface ships. NARRATOR: Escorting the convoy
is the 600-foot long, 10,000
ton cruiser, HMS Edinburgh. It's a formidable warship
with more than 24 guns. A German U-boat attacks. -The Germans carried
out a torpedo attack. (explosion). Another torpedo hit the
ship increasing the damage. (explosion). NARRATOR: 60
people are killed. Two days later,
the remaining crew are
ordered to abandon ship, forcing a fateful
decision on the Navy. RIC: The admiral decided that
it was too far gone and he
ordered one of the destroyers to put a torpedo
into her engine room. (explosion). -She went down within a
couple of minutes and she
went completely vertical. NARRATOR: HMS Edinburgh sinks
beneath the waves, 200 miles
off the coast of Russia. Sunk by its own navy. -It was vitally important,
you didn't want her
falling into German hands. NARRATOR: But why take such
extreme measures to keep the
Edinburgh out of Nazi hands? The answer is gold. -The gold that was loaded
on board the Edinburgh
at Murmansk was, we know for certain was, five
and a half tons, that's what
the admiral signed for and five and a half
tons was 465 bars. NARRATOR: It's payment from
Russia for war supplies and worth $240 million
in today's money. In 1942 recovering the
gold from the damaged ship just before it sinks
is too dangerous. The sunken treasure lies
undisturbed for decades and the ship is recognized
as a war grave. But then a dive expedition,
sanctioned by the British
and Russian governments, is launched to salvage it. Leading the hunt is
treasure diver Keith Jessop, working with marine
engineer, Ric Wharton. -What drove us to
it is interesting. There was the allure of gold but
frankly we didn't have great
expectations at that stage, there were so many
unknowns, like a moon shot. NARRATOR: The Edinburgh
is 800 feet beneath the
waves in freezing waters and there's no
guarantee of success. The first challenge is finding
a precise spot to search. It's suspected that the gold
is stored in the bomb room. The problem is this is
one of the most secure
areas on the ship. Situated deep inside the
hull, the bomb room is
where explosives are kept along with valuable cargo. And it's behind the ship's
four-inch armor plating. Will draining the Arctic Ocean
reveal how to access the wreck of HMS Edinburgh to
recover its treasures? NARRATOR: At 800 feet down
the wreck of HMS Edinburgh
is too deep for scuba divers. To stand any chance of success
it will take a remarkable
feat of human endurance. The team need to operate in a
high-tech pressurized chamber, that looks like something
found on a space station. It's a technique called
saturation diving. JOHN: You basically go into
your chamber and you dive in,
your body is saturated with diving gases and you
remain saturated for the
duration of the dive. NARRATOR: Saturating the
diver's body with a mix of
diving gases avoids long and costly decompression times. Leaving the chamber, the
divers enter a diving bell,
which drops through a hole in the ship and enters the
freezing Arctic waters. They leave the diving
bell but remain attached
by an umbilical cord. -The biggest problem I think
we had diving at depth on the
Edinburgh, was staying warm. We had hot water
suits and we had hot water
being pumped down through, from the surface. NARRATOR: Too hot and the
divers could be badly scalded. Or, if the supply fails,
they could find themselves at the mercy of the
freezing cold Arctic waters. -Then we'd be breathing
a very hot gas, which is
starting to burn the lungs. It was like being
kicked in the back of
the head by a mule. It wasn't pleasant diving. NARRATOR: The plan is for
the divers to enter the ship
through the torpedo hole in the side then work
their way through the
ship to the bomb room. But during the first dive
there's an unexpected problem. RIC: When they got into that
hole, it was completely... we couldn't get
the debris out. NARRATOR: It's a setback, and
the team is forced to rethink. -The boat was ringed with
armored plating and we
would've struggled to get through that, so we
decided to go underneath
the armor plating and cut our way into the ship. NARRATOR: Cutting
into the bomb room is
fraught with danger. It may still contain
unstable explosive charges
left over from the war. -We knew the inherent dangers;
we knew the risks and we were
very slow and cautious when we were cutting our
way into something. I actually cut my way
into the bomb room first. There's no visibility. You couldn't see your hand
in front of your face. Everything was done by feel. And then I touched something
that was slightly heavier. I tried to pick it
up, and because of its
size it should have, easily been able to lift it,
but the weight straight away,
gave me some sort of idea that this wasn't
something ordinary. As soon as I lifted
it I knew straight
away that it was gold. -You don't see that
often at 800 feet. -Roger, roger. I don't know about John
but I'm shaking like hell. -And then euphoria broke
out on the boat as well
everybody's running around, shouting and
screaming and carrying
on from the crew down. So, it was a very
exciting moment. NARRATOR: In total 460
bars of gold are recovered, worth about $240 million
in today's money. It's the biggest haul
of lost gold bullion ever
recovered from the seabed. -This is a lead
copy, gold plated. There's a serial number at
the top, which is KP0620. Below that you see the hammer
and sickle and the Russian
markings in a cartouche and below that it said 99.99. That's pure gold. NARRATOR: The value of the
treasure is shared between the Russian and British
governments and
the salvage team. -It was a vast
amount of money. We all did very
well out of it. It completely changed our
attitude to work because we
never really had to again, we did of course. NARRATOR: Now emptied of
its sunken treasure, peace
returns to the Edinburgh. -Gold has always captured
peoples' imagination. GARY: Yeah, it's
treasure fever. NIGEL: There's millions
of shipwrecks out there,
but for every 10,000 shipwrecks on the
seabed probably one
might be high value. -Once you start, once
you go look for one
you can never stop.
