100 tons silver coins found in a World War II Ship, SS City of Cairo sunk by a German submarine 480 miles south of St. Helena on November 4 1942 en route from Bombay to England. The treasure of the sunken ship found at depth of 17,000 feet – some 4,500 feet deeper than the Titanic, a new record for world undersea salvage.
SS City of Cairo was a mixed cargo and passenger ship belonging to Ellerman Lines and was on a voyage from Bombay to England, via Cape Town and Recife, Brazil, unescorted, in late 1942.
The ship was spotted by a German U-68 Submarine on the 6th of November 1942 and torpedoed at 2030 hrs. A second torpedo was fired 10 minutes after the first and the ship sank a few minutes later.
Only six people from the ship's 302 passengers and crew to escape on to lifeboats. When they approached the U-Boat, The German captain, Karl-Friedrich Merten, said to them in English: "Goodnight, sorry for sinking you."
The survivors were soon separated into two groups. One boat was picked up by a German blockade runner, which was subsequently intercepted by the HMS Scylla and was scuttled on 1st January 1943. One lifeboat made it almost to Brazil before survivors were rescued. The master and 154 of the survivors were picked up by the SS Clan Alpine and landed on St. Helena island and another 47 people were picked up by the British steam merchant ship Bendoran and landed at Cape Town. In all 104 people died, 79 crew, 3 gunners and 22 passengers.
Underwater company Deep Ocean Search (DOS), under contract to the UK Ministry of Transport, recovered several tens of tons of silver coins from a depth of 5150m – a world depth record.
DOS started the operations to look for the wreck of the SS City of Cairo in November 2011.
DOS research came up with the usual contradictions between the positions given by the submarine and that from the ships officers. A large search box was put together to try to reconcile these diverse statements. The seafloor was difficult with ridges and canyons throughout the area and the water depth varied between 5100 and 5500m.
A small target with little height and reflectivity was seen in amongst a hillside and was subsequently dived upon, with some reluctance, as it didn’t correspond to their expectations of what a wreck should look like at all. However, DOS’s procedures require that all targets which appear not to be natural be inspected. It turned out that it was a wreck and the identity was finally confirmed to be that of the City of Cairo. The ship was broken in two and buried deep in the seafloor silt. Parts of the ship had meters of mud heaped upon it, which goes some way in explaining the lack of height and of reflectivity.
The DOS team quickly found that operating at this depth caused serious technical difficulties which were new to them and which had to be resolved, quickly. The combination of pressure, temperature, repeated dives at this depth and other issues resulted in multiple breakdowns of systems such as they had not experienced before when working in 3000 - 4000m depths.
Many items were seen on and around the wreck including the end section of the second torpedo, where the contra-rotating propellers could clearly be seen. Apart from the silver cargo this was the only item recovered from the site.
DOS left a plaque commemorating their finding and visiting the ship before they left the site finally on the 25th September 2013. The announcement of the finding S.S. City Of Cairo in April 2015. £34 million of silver, a "large percentage" of the total, had been salvaged, the money generated from this recovery was shared between the UK Treasury and the salvagers, Deep Ocean Search.
