LAURENTIC’S GOLD.

Shannon News, 29 October 1924, Page 3

LAURENTIC’S GOLD.

BARS WORTH £6,000,000 RAISED. TJp to elate the Admiralty has salvaged over £6,000.000 in gold bars from the torpedoed White ’ Star! liner Lauren tic, which, was. sunk off Lough Swilly in 1917. The operations, which have been charge of Commander Guidanv and the chief salvage officer of the admiralty, were begun in 1918, a’nd it is hoped to finish the work this season, as only about half a million pounds worth of bullion remains to be recovered. It is now disclosed for’the first time that just when the operations were about to be abandoned a discovery was mu ~ in the forepart ofthe ship of another £250.000 of gold bars. These have practically all been recovered a'nd the divers arc only waiting a spell of,fine weather to bring up the few remaining. The ship lies in fifteen fathoms of water and the salvage operations have lasted .five years. They have been conducted without loss of life, the only serious accident having been the fracture of a diver’s leg. But they l\ave been full of excitement and danger. The divers always carry knives td ward off attacks of huge dogfish which they encounter almost daily. Besides their pay as petty officers, the divers get a bonus of’seven shillings for each submersion and one sixty-fourth of the value of all treasure saved.

The treasure belongs to the British Government, and will prove a neat windfall to the treasury.

able percentage of these bodies could be done without and their work absorbed 1 by the remaining local, authorities. 1 ; "There are also some thirty-nine Harbour Boards in existence constituted as, such by special legislation, aiid, in addition, there are fourteen other harbours in respect of which the local authority is delegated with and carries out the powers ami functions of a Harbour Board. Even some of the specially constituted Harbour Boards could have, carried on satisfactorily under the administration of an existing local authority. “Possibly t’ne time has not yet arrived for the organisation of a Local Governmemnt Board, but it does seem to me that we should take into early consideration the creation of a plan whereby no local authority may proceed with the raising' of a loan until the proposal has been first submitted to experts for investigation.’’