British shipwreck holds £2.6 billion treasure, explorers claim

[Happy Times]

Salvagers claim to have found the world's richest wreck – a British ship sunk by a Nazi submarine while laden with a £2.6 billion cargo that included gold, platinum and diamonds

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/archeology/4330310/British-shipwreck-holds-2.6-billion-treasure-explorers-claim.html

I found the same things as the reporter before i found this article, but this is fun so let me know if you come up with something interesting.:D

http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/

[Happy Times]

They are blowing smoke in every way, for exsample, why would the ship sail to a South American port to unload general cargo. I think that if the ship really was sunk near Guyana, it was coming from South Africa.:hmm:

[Fincuan]

Yup, either Uboat.net or those guys are getting quite a few facts wrong:

The picture resembles Port Nicholson?! The picture in that article is exactly the same as on the page of Port Nicholson (http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/1821.html) in uboat.net. The ship was hit and sunk by U-87 during it's third patrol.

Also U-87's track for its 3rd patrol (http://www.uboat.net/boats/patrols/patrol_3657.html), 19 May - 7 July 1942, shows it operating in Northern Atlantic all the time. Daily positions for all 51 days of the patrol, so either Philadelphia experiments were actually a Nazi affair or the treasure guys are wrong.

[XabbaRus]

Well I'd go with uboat.net first of all....I'm tyring to get a list of all Hogarth ships in the war that were sunk and cross referencing.

[XabbaRus]

Well I found all the Hogart ships sunk in WWII and there were a couple off Brazil but no where near Guyana.

So either the Baron Blue codename is a smokescreen and the Telegraph are off chasing tails...

[Happy Times]

If we assume that the wrecks general location is true, this is my favourite.


Solon II

Name Solon II
Type: Steam merchant
Tonnage 4.561 tons
Completed 1925 - W. Gray & Co Ltd, Sunderland
Owner T. & J. Brocklebank Ltd, Liverpool
Homeport Swansea
Date of attack 3 Dec, 1942
Nationality:British

Fate Sunk by U-508 ( Georg Staats)
Position 07.45N, 56.30W - Grid EO 5225
Complement 82 (75 dead and 7 survivors).

Route Iskerderun, Turkey - Capetown - Pernambuco - Trinidad - Baltimore
Cargo Manganese ore and 2000 tons of copper
History Built as French Solon for Compagnie de Navigation d´Orbigny, Paris. On 17 Jul, 1940, the Solon was seized at Swansea by Britain, transferred to the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) and renamed Solon II.
Notes on loss At 23.56 hours on 3 Dec, 1942, the unescorted Solon II (Master John Robinson) was torpedoed and sunk by U-508 northeast of Georgetown, British Guiana. The master, 68 crew members and six gunners were lost. The fourth engineer Alexander Macfarlane and six survivors made landfall at Weldad, 12 miles west of the River Berbice, British Guiana on 7 December.

http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/2488.html