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The Sunken Gold
A Story of World War I Espionage and the Greatest Treasure Salvage in History
Joseph A. Williams
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eBook - ePub
The Sunken Gold
A Story of World War I Espionage and the Greatest Treasure Salvage in History
Joseph A. Williams
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About This Book
On January 25, 1917, HMS Laurentic struck two German mines off the coast of Ireland and sank. The ship was carrying 44 tons of gold bullion to the still-neutral United States via Canada in order to finance the war effort for Britain and its allies. Britain desperately needed that sunken treasure, but any salvage had to be secret since the British government dared not alert the Germans to the presence of the gold.
Lieutenant Commander Guybon Damant was the most qualified officer to head the risky mission. Wild gales battered the wreck into the shape of an accordion, turning the operation into a multiyear struggle of man versus nature. As the war raged on, Damant was called off the salvage to lead a team of covert divers to investigate and search through the contents of recently sunk U-boats for ciphers, minefield schematics, and other secrets. The information they obtained, once in the hands of British intelligence, proved critical toward Allied efforts to defeat the U-boats and win the war.
But Damant had become obsessed with completing his long-deferred mission. His team struggled for five more years as it became apparent that the work could only be accomplished by muscle, grit, and persistence. Using newly discovered sources, author Joseph A. Williams provides the first full-length account of the quest for the Laurentic's gold. More than an incredible story about undersea diving adventure, The Sunken Gold is a story of human persistence, bravery, and patriotism.
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PART I
1
The Titanic in Miniature
THE CITY OF LIVERPOOL was the strategic entry and exit port of Great Britain’s western approaches during the First World War. Foodstuffs, munitions, equipment, and weapons all passed through Liverpool first. Likewise, ships debarked from the city to voyage all around the globe to Britain’s far-flung colonies and dependencies. HMS Laurentic was one of these vessels and on January 24, 1917, was being loaded for its dangerous voyage to Halifax, Canada.
The Laurentic was a former transatlantic liner, built in 1908 by the famous White Star Line. The White Star Line was known for the outstanding design of its vessels and gave the world some of the most memorable ships of the age, especially its gigantic Olympic-class liners: the eponymous Olympic, the Britannic, and the Titanic. The Laurentic was smaller than the great liners, being roughly a third the size of the Titanic. This did not diminish its grace. The ship’s black hull gleamed, and its single red funnel poured out a column of smoke and steam that thickened against the winter cold. Pennants fluttered on its fore and aft masts, with the most prominent of all being the British Union Jack.
HMS Laurentic. © Derry City and Strabane District Council, Ray Cossum Papers
Observers had lauded the Laurentic’s splendid stateliness, revealed in the ship’s long, handsome lines, and while the vessel did not have the fame of the great liners, it reflected their luxury. Its public rooms were high-ceilinged and ornate. The first-class lounge on the upper promenade was fashioned in the rococo manner of the court of Louis XV of France, where oaken panels matched a fine parquet floor. The first-class dining saloon, paneled in the intricate style of the court of Charles II, extended the entire width of the vessel, contained a veranda for a bandstand, and could seat up to 212 passengers. The first-class reading room was fashioned with neoclassical columns that rose high into the ceiling. The smoking room was bright with sunlight beneath a ceiling partially made of glass. Even the second- and third-class accommodations were designed with aesthetics in mind—stately and ornate.
The Laurentic was also built with some of the latest technologies. An electric elevator connected the decks. First-class staterooms were equipped with portable electric lamps, which passengers used to read while resting on Pullman beds. Even individual cabins were rigged with manual thermostats. The ship was equipped with the latest Marconi wireless devices, assuring passengers that if the Laurentic met danger, it could signal for help. For those who could not afford the price of the large liners, the Laurentic was an affordable option that offered most of the same innovations and opulence. The Laurentic, in effect, recalled the Titanic in miniature.
Photographs of the interior of the Megantic. The Megantic was the sister ship of the Laurentic and had virtually identical interiors. Courtesy of Rich Turnwald
The Laurentic was also fast. Its designers had experimented by giving it triple propellers, also known as screws, instead of the standard two. The ship proved its speed in 1911 by setting a record for a round-trip voyage to Canada from Britain in thirteen days. The Laurentic became one of the most popular ships in the White Star Line’s Dominion service line between Liverpool and Montreal or Quebec City. The company, seeing the effectiveness of the ship’s design, incorporated elements of it into its Olympic-class ships. The Titanic, for example, was given the same triple-screw design.
It was because of this speed that the Royal Navy saw fit to impress the Laurentic into military service at the outbreak of war in August 1914. The Laurentic was refitted into an armed merchant cruiser. Casks of stowed wine were replaced by artillery shells, and within the ship’s labyrinthine passages where passengers once ambled, men in blue woolen uniforms marched out to the decks where they manned eight six-inch guns.
The Laurentic was under the command of forty-two-year-old Captain Reginald Arthur Norton. He had served on at least two dozen different ships since entering the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1887. Comments found in his official record include “zealous,” “very attentive to duty,” and “reliable.”
Norton, perhaps more than anybody aboard the Laurentic, could appreciate the unique dangers presented by the naval war against Germany. At the outset of the conflict, Norton had been assigned as executive officer aboard the battle cruiser HMS Hogue. The Hogue was attached to two other vessels, the Aboukir and Cressy, as part of a squadron to support the Royal Navy, which was trying to hem the German fleet into its ports on continental Europe. The ships were old, out of date, and manned by inexperienced reservists. Several senior officers in the Royal Navy feared that the ships were at extreme risk of destruction by the enemy. Within the fleet, these ships became known as the Live Bait Squadron.
On September 22, 1914, at 6:00 AM, the squadron was on patrol near the Dutch coast in an area known as the “broad fourteens,” since the depth remained roughly consistent throughout the region at fourteen fathoms—eighty-four feet deep.1 At the same time, the U-9, an Unterseeboot (better known in English as a German U-boat or submarine) of the Imperial German Navy, came upon the ships. The U-9’s commander, Kapitänleutnant Otto Weddigen, positioned his submarine and stalked the ships with his periscope.
At 6:20 AM the U-9 fired its first torpedo at the Aboukir, which struck home. The captain of the Aboukir assumed his ship had crashed into a mine. Being the senior officer of the flotilla, he ordered the other ships to render assistance. Two of the Hogue’s lifeboats were launched. Soon after, the U-9 launched two torpedoes at the Hogue, which exploded into the ship’s starboard side near the center. All hands now realized that a German submarine was single-handedly destroying the Live Bait Squadron.
This German propaganda postcard depicts the sinking of the Live Bait Squadron. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, George Grantham Bain Collection, LOT 11274-1
Norton’s commanding officer, unable to raise the engineering room on the voice tube, ordered him to go down to assess the damage. After Norton spent precious minutes disciplining crew to prevent panic, he descended into the ship. As he hurried, he met a crew member coming from the other direction. The seaman informed Norton that the engine room was fully flooded. The watertight doors below the decks had all been (carelessly) left open, thus making the ship sink quicker than it should have.
Norton turned back to the bridge. But suddenly the Hogue listed, tilting to starboard. The ship was rolling over in what mariners call “turning turtle.” In these last moments, desperate sailors jumped from the ship. Norton grasped a ringbolt and hung in the air for some time before crashing onto the deck. Then a great wave washed him into the sea. Norton tried to regain the ship by climbing onto the Hogue’s side, but he was again washed off as the ship fully turned over and sank. Norton clung to pieces of wreckage until he was rescued.
The U-9 sank all three ships, killed 1,459 men, and managed to spread terror of U-boat attacks among the Allies. The scale of the disaster was unprecedented. If so much destruction can be caused by one U-boat manned by twenty-five crew and four officers, what would happen if the Germans launched a full-scale submarine war? Otto Weddigen was feted in Germany and decorated with the Pour le Mérite and the first- and second-class Iron Cross, prestigious medals. He even published an article, “The First Submarine Blow Is Struck.”2
As for Reginald Norton, he was eager to return to sea. Perhaps he felt his own personal honor was stained by the disaster, or maybe he believed it was his patriotic duty to avenge the Hogue. When he made his report to the Admiralty, he wrote, “I have the honour to submit that I may be appointed to another ship as soon as I get a kit.”
Norton’s new “kit” was the Laurentic, to which he was assigned in December 1916. Norton was acting captain, since as a commander he was not senior enough to formally take the command of such a large vessel. Since there was a shortage of senior officers in the Royal Navy, the appointment was not unusual. Norton proved capable, leading the Laurentic on hunts for German raiders and making the run to Halifax, Nova Scotia, twice. Norton had learned lessons from the Hogue and had become as cautious as the war would allow. He ensured that the Laurentic was fully equipped with life jackets and that the watertight doors below decks were shut at all times.
Commander Reginald Norton, acting captain of the Laurentic. London Daily Mirror, January 29, 1917
Norton had 475 officers, crew, and passengers in his charge. All were either Royal Navy or Royal Navy Reserve (RNR) personnel. But there was a strange quality to the upcoming voyage. Secret consignments consisting of small plain wooden boxes, each twelve inches long, twelve inches wide, and six inches deep, weighing in at approximately 140 pounds, had been brought by train from London in the early hours of January 20.
The boxes were carefully counted, stacked, and stowed inside the second-class passenger baggage room instead of the cargo holds. Meanwhile, sentries prowled the decks, and crew searched the magazine and ammunition holds for bombs. Plainclothes detectives maintained a watch on the gangplank, checking all persons who sought entry for a pass.
As to what lay in those boxes, only Norton and perhaps a couple of the other senior officers aboard the Laurentic knew.
2
The Damants of Cowes
WHEN MR. HENRY CASTELL DAMANT married Mary Wilson on September 30, 1879, the future seemed bright. Harry, as Mr. Damant was known, was the son of a prominent solicitor on the Isle of Wight who had followed his father in practicing law, setting up shop in the town of Newport. Mary was a lady of Irish Protestant heritage and an amateur author and thespian who drew admiration for her charitable theatrical performances. Harry set up a residence at Bedford House in Northwood, a village just south of the town of Cowes, before moving in 1887 to a new house named Forest View, which had magnificent views of the sea. It was a comfortable life, with Harry Damant earning somewhere between £300 and £500 annually, which allowed them the luxury of keeping two servants who were paid up to £18 a year.
The Damants had dwelled on the Isle of Wight for two generations. Harry had seven siblings who, by the time of his marriage, had spread to all corners of the island. But not all the Damant siblings chose to stay there. Harry’s eldest brother, Guybon,1 was a political officer in India. Harry had last seen his brother at Guybon’s wedding a year prior. Just three weeks after Harry’s own wedding, he received unfortunate news. On October 14 Guybon had led a contingent of British soldiers to confiscate weapons from a tribe of headhunters in the Nagaland, where he was killed. It was said that his widow saw Guybon’s head thrown down a well, and there were rumors that he was cannibalized. Officially, Guybon was shot.
In June 1880 Mary gave birth to a son they named George Sancroft. But three months later the child died of an unknown cause. They buried their son in the West Cowes Cemetery, marking the grave with a small Celtic cross.2 Mary and Harry conceived again, and on July 25, 1881, she gave birth to a boy whom they named Guybon. The infant’s full name, Guybon Chesney Castell Damant, took into account other pedigreed Norfolk and Suffolk families that had intermarried with the Damant line. Usually, he went by Guy. He was joined in quick succession by three brothers: James Charles Wilson, Henry Kirkpatrick, and John Alister.
Guybon Chesney Castell Damant as a toddler.
Courtesy of Mary Harrison
The Damants left Forest View and Harry built a new home, named Lammas, after the family’s ancient estate on mainland Great Britain. Harry made sure to build the house just outside the boundary of East Cowes, to avoid the higher tax rate. As such, the home lacked certain services. Lammas had water shortages, and on one occasion after a well had been sunk, paraffin leaked into the well, contaminating it. Guy always suspected that his father built Lammas “on the cheap” and was relieved when East Cowes’s boundaries were shifted in the 1890s to include their home. Not that this improvement in municipal services alleviated the somewhat backward, bucolic nature of the Isle of Wight in the 1890s. Tollgates, for example, remained long in force on the island after they were done away with on mainland...