Push on to preserve secret treasure ship
- On 30/04/2008
- In Famous Wrecks
- 0 comments
By Randy Boswell
She was, at the dawn of the 20th century, a stately ship of dreams for thousands of British emigrants bound for a new life in Canada.
She became a ship of war, transporting wave after wave of Canadian troops overseas to help liberate Europe from the Kaiser's thrall.
Finally, she was the British government's secret treasure ship, packed with 39 tonnes of gold intended for Halifax to pay Canadian and U.S. munitions suppliers at the height of the First World War.
But that was the mission that doomed the SS Laurentic -- along with 354 of her British and Canadian crew -- when the ocean liner dressed in cannons struck a German mine off the Irish coast in 1917, sinking in the North Atlantic with her cargo of 3,211 ingots.
gold North Atlantic WW I Ireland
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