Nothing short of amazing. Funny how every sunken warship was supposed to have been "carrying gold bullion" though, innit? "A Russian warship that sank 113 years ago has been found off the coast of a South Korean island, salvagers say. The Shinil Group, a South Korean firm, says it found the vessel Dimitrii Donskoi near Ulleungdo island. Companies have claimed in the past to have found the wreck, amid historic rumours of treasure on board. The cruiser was scuttled by her crew in 1905 after Japan's victory in the Battle of Tsushima - a key moment of the Russo-Japanese War. Setting sail in 1885, the armoured cruiser served in the Mediterranean and the Baltic before heading to the Pacific. While not badly damaged in the battle itself, the ship fell behind the fleet and was attacked by the Japanese. Her crew scuttled the Donskoi off Ulleungdo. Rumours persist that the Donskoi was carrying the gold for Russia's Pacific Fleet, used to pay crew salaries and docking fees - gold which would be worth billions of dollars if found today. But no proof exists that the ship carried gold, with academics raising doubts that a warship would carry such valuable cargo." //www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44876968
And now it turns out it was probably a scam- "A tall tale about $130 billion worth of gold being stashed aboard a shipwreck off South Korea was likely a cryptocurrency scam, police believe. Shinil Group claimed in July it had found the long-lost Russian Empire cruiser Dmitri Donskoi and it was laden with gold bullion ready for the taking. The company convinced 120,000 Korean investors to buy $53 million worth of a cryptocurrency called Shinil Gold Coin it set up, with the promise of riches. Investors were supposed to receive dividends worth 10 per cent of the gold's value in the first half of last year for their trouble. Instead, the company disappeared off the face of the Earth, deleting underwater footage of the wreck from YouTube and shutting down the cryptocurrency website. Police opened a fraud investigation two weeks ago and on Thursday spoke with two former Shinil executives and now believe it to be 'a scam by a fraudster family,' according to Yonhap." www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6065279/South-Korean-firms-claim-theyd-130-billion-gold-treasure-Russian-warship-scam.html
............well darn..........that sucks for the investors.........and people like us who like cool historical things laden with freaking Gold!
Apparently one of the rumors was that the 6000-ton cruiser was carrying 14,000 tons of gold, about 1/10 of all the gold ever mined on Earth. And of course the Russians would entrust their gold to one of the oldest ships in the fleet.
