Dr Saul flies to UK to congratulate crew on $38m silver haul

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Former Premier David Saul flew to England yesterday to meet the ship carrying his company’s $38 million silver haul.

Odyssey Marine Exploration, of which Dr Saul is a founder and director, this week recovered an initial 48 tons of silver from a Second World War shipwreck deep in the Atlantic.

Dr Saul, who was in Luxembourg on business, told us: “I am going to go to England to meet the ship today, Thursday, to congratulate the crew. The whole team have done a fantastic job and more silver is yet to be recovered.”

Odyssey said it retrieved 1,203 silver bars, or about 1.4 million ounces of the metal, from the SS Gairsoppa, a 412-foot British cargo ship that sank after being torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1941. It was found last year three miles beneath the Atlantic.

The recovered silver represents about 20 percent of the bullion that may be on board the Gairsoppa, some 300 miles off Ireland.

Odyssey has salvage contracts with the UK allowing it to retain 80 percent of the net silver value recovered. The value of the cargo is an estimated $186.4 million.

The silver recovery operation was the subject of a TV documentary produced by JWM Productions airing on Discovery Channel in the US and Channel 5 in the UK.

A Discovery Channel promo for Emmy-winning JWM’s “Treasure Quest” says: “The world of deep-sea wreck hunting is a fast paced, enormously expensive gamble but Odyssey Marine is the best in the business.”

Information about the Gairsoppa project, including pictures of the operation, can be found on Odyssey’s website: http://shipwreck.net/ssgairsoppa.php.

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