How the Nazis Sunk the Largest Underwater Treasure In the World [Video]

It was a dark, ice-cold February. The merchant ship SS Gairsoppa was seeking refuge in Ireland when a Nazi U-boat sunk her. She was loaded with seven million ounces of silver. That's worth $202.74 million in today's dollars.

According to the ship's manifest, she also carried 1700 tons of tea and a fair amount of pig iron. The Gairsoppa was on its way to Galway, Ireland, after leaving Convoy SL 64 because of low fuel. The convoy departed Freetown, Sierra Leone, on January 1941. Almost all of its 30 ships and ten escorts arrived to Liverpool on February 22. Some of them had to turn to other ports. Only the Gairsoppa was sunk.

Being alone at sea meant she was a good target for the Nazi sharks. A long-range German Focke-Wulf Fw 200 airplane found her at 08:00pm on February 16, 1941. About 14 hours later, the Kriegsmarine VIIB-class submarine U-101 commanded by Korvettenkapitän Ernst Mengersen spotted her on the open sea, 300 miles southwest of Galway Bay.

Mengersen, who you can see in the photo above wearing his Knight's Iron Cross, was one of the stars in the team of sea wolves created by Admirals Raeder and Dönitz. He sunk almost 70,000 tons of ships, most of them British cargo ships. He also sunk the HMS Broadwater, a Royal Navy destroyer.

After making contact with the Gairsoppa, Mengersen submerged his 66.5-meter-long U-boat—carrying 14 torpedoes and 26 mines—and prepared to kill the unsuspecting British ship. The commander ordered fire on the Gairsoppa's starboard side, sinking her in just 20 minutes. Most of the crew—88 sailors and officials, plus two gunners—died during the attack. As survivors of the initial barrage abandoned the ship, Mengersen mowed them down with the U-boat's machine gun. The only survivor was R.H. Ayres, the second officer, who reached the English coast 13 days after the attack.

Now, 70 years later, the treasure hunters at Odyssey Marine Exploration have found the Gairsoppa almost intact 4700 meters under water.

According to Odyssey, the seven million ounces of silver is "the largest known precious metal cargo ever recovered from the sea." They will keep 80%, while the British government would grab 20% of the total booty. They will start the recovery in 2012. The SS Gairsoppa had emergency stern steering which included a stern compass on the top of the poop deck. The binnacle housing the stern compass of the SS Gairsoppa shines in the lights of Odyssey's Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) during a visual inspection of the site approximately 4,700 meters deep.

Odyssey's crew is also excited by the finding itself. As Odyssey's Principal Marine Archaeologist Neil Cunningham Dobson puts it:

Being the son of a merchant mariner who worked for the same shipping line as the Gairsoppa's and as a former merchant mariner myself, the visit to the site via ROV was particularly personal. By analyzing the known configuration and research about the Gairsoppa and her final voyage and painstakingly exploring the shipwreck site to record each element and item, our team of experts was able to positively identify the site as the Gairsoppa. Even though records indicate that the lifeboats were launched before the ship sank, sadly most of her crew did not survive the long journey to shore. By finding this shipwreck, and telling the story of its loss, we pay tribute to the brave merchant sailors who lost their lives.

Indeed, it's exciting. Everything is exciting when there's seven million ounces of silver waiting for you. [Odyssey]

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Watch Five Breathtaking Underwater Videos Made by Robots [Video]

Every year, the government gives scientists money that they use for amazingly cool things, like building robots that dive to extreme underwater depth and record video like this.

Thanks to funding from taxpayers and philanthropists (and, of course the Internets, which come to think of it also launched as a government program), you can sit on your couch in your underwear and watch magma flow deep under the sea.

This post is part of the Public Science Triumphs organized by our sister site io9 in partnership with several other publications that cover science. On November 23, the U.S. Congress has pledged that its budget supercommittee will present a proposal for US$1.2 trillion in cuts to government spending, which makes us fear for publicly-funded science institutions in the United States. We hope the series will help you and U.S. government representatives remember that science is a non-partisan public good that enriches local and global economies - and makes it all the more awesome to be human.

The video above (you might want to turn down your sound; the scientists get excited) was recorded on equipment carried by the Jason remotely-operated vehicle, which you can see in the foreground. Jason was designed and built by the Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute, which gets funding from federal agencies, private contributions, and endowments. The vehicle gives scientists access to the seafloor without leaving the deck of a ship. In the video scientists witness for the first time glowing lava from a submarine volcanic eruption. The undersea volcano is part of the Mariana arc, which extends from south of Guam northward more than 800 nautical miles. It's amazing the lava is so hot that it remains red for a split second before the water snuffs it. It was recorded during the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's (a government-funded institution) Submarine Ring of Fire 2006 exploration.

This is another video from the 2006 NOAA Ring of Fire expedition. Scientists were trying to take samples when the "Brimstone Pit" erupts and nearly engulfs the submarine in an ash plume.

This gorgeous video shows what arctic ice looks like from under water (again, you might want to mute). The 2002 Arctic Expedition Dive, which was supported by the NOAA Ocean Exploration Program, funded team of 50 scientists from the United States, Canada, China and Japan to explore the frigid depths of the Canada Basin in the Arctic Ocean for the first time.

Robert Ballard was the first diver to find the sunken Titanic in 1985. In 2004, thanks to funding from the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration, he returned to study the ship's rapid deterioration. Ballard and his team spent 11 days in June at the wreck site, mapping the ship and studying its decay. Using the remotel operated vehicles, they used high-definition video and stereoscopic still images to provide an updated assessment of the wreck site 12,600 feet below the surface.

Ok, this is a cheesy IMAX preview. But: Dolphins! The National Science Foundation helped fund this 2000 film so divers could share with anyone who didn't already know how awesome and smart dolphins are. The divers mounted cameras on the front of remote-controlled torpedo-shaped vehicles to examine how dolphin families and societies form, how they communicate with one another, and how humans sometimes adversely affect their health and mortality. The divers (and their dogs!) also have super fun play time in the water with dolphins, which is just mesmerizing to watch.

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There's Going to Be an Underwater Tunnel Connecting Russia to Alaska [Tunnels]

???? ????????! Let us toast the Russians and their $65 billion Siberian-Alaskan underwater train tunnel! At 65-miles, the proposed tunnel would be twice as long as the Chunnel between France and England, and could connect New York City with London.

Unfortunately for vagabonds, the high speed rail system proposed by the Russians would be used for cargo purposes (approximately 100 millions tons/year), not passenger travel, yet even with that bummer of a caveat, its engineering chops are nevertheless indisputable.

This private- and publicly-funded project would also be very, very green reports Inhabitat (via The Times):

Proposed tidal energy plants could provide 10 gigawatts of energy and a string of wind power fields could churn a constant supply of clean energy, serving as a vital link to a worldwide energy grid. The tunnel alone would take fifteen years to complete - and an energy and railway network would take many more - but the project would significantly change the shipping and energy industry.

Fifteen years! We'll be flying our cargo around in hovertrains by then. [The Times via Inhabitat via Autoblog - Thanks, Keith]

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