New Ship Wreck may contain up to 20,000 U.S. $20 gold coins worth $300 Million

Boca Raton, Florida (FK) - A professional salvage company announced today they believe they have found the sunken remains of the 1860s steamer the S.S. Republic which may yield the richest cargo ever recovered from a shipwreck: thousands of gold coins worth as much as $200 million.

According to newspaper accounts and other historical records to the history the S.S. Republic was carrying 59 passengers and 20,000 $20 U.S.Gold Coins (known as "Double Eagles") from New York to New Orleans when it the ship encountered a hurricane off Savannah, Ga., on Oct. 25, 1865, and sunk.

The sinking of the S.S. Republic saw no casualties as all its passengers were able to board life boats and were rescued, but the hoard of gold coins - intended to help pay for reconstruction of the South after the Civil War - went to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean along with the Republic.

James DiGeorgia, the Chief Numismatist of Finestknown.com estimates that the hoard is worth between $150 and $200 million in today's market. "These are almost certainly coins minted from by the Philadelphia Mint in the early 1860's. Up to now the big hoards recovered from Shipwrecks have been coins struck from the San Francisco mint. The number of coins struck by the San Francisco Mint was 5 to 6 times greater than struck by the Philadelphia Mint. The key with this hoard is going to be condition. If they net out in the same condition of those San Francisco Minted $20 Gold coins recently recovered from the sea this hoard could be worth up to $15,000 a coin or $300 million.

The discovery of the Shipwreck and possible rare coin bonanza was made by Greg Stemm and John Morris of Odyssey Marine Explorations Inc. who have been searching for this shipwreck for 12 years. They announced on Saturday that they found the wreck last month in 1,700 feet of water about 100 miles southeast of Savannah, Georgia. Because the wreck is so far out in international waters, the company doesn't need a permit to begin work at the site. It has, though, been granted federal "admiralty arrest" of the site to make it illegal for others to lay claim to it.

"After all the years of searching for this particular shipwreck, finally finding it with just an incredible team of folks, it's just an indescribable feeling," Stemm said.

Odyssey, a publicly traded company founded in the mid-1990s, has a number of shipwreck search projects in various stages. Stemm and Morris have performed only one other deep-water excavation, that of a Spanish wreck in the Dry Tortugas that yielded about $5 million in gold and thousands of artifacts.

The company made headlines recently when it entered a historic partnership with the British government to excavate the wreck of the HMS Sussex, which sank in 1694 off Gibraltar while leading a British fleet into the Mediterranean Sea for a war against France and its leader, Louis XIV.

Historians believe the 157-foot warship was carrying nine tons of gold coins aimed at buying the loyalty of the Duke of Savoy, a potential ally in southeastern France. The Sussex's cargo could be more valuable than the Republic's, but Odyssey will have to share it with England: The company will get 80 percent of the first $45 million and about 50 percent of the proceeds thereafter.

The company had planned to begin work on the Sussex next month but the Republic project will now take priority. The search crew of about 20 will expand to around 70 when the work begins.

"Its proximity to the U.S., the location of our equipment and the comparative weather windows between the Mediterranean and Atlantic make the choice to do the S.S. Republic project prior to the Sussex an easy one," Morris said.

The richest haul previously came from the wreck of the S.S. Central America, which sank in a hurricane off the North Carolina coast in 1857 carrying a vast treasure of California gold.

That wreck surrendered about $100 million in gold in 1987, including the largest known ingot from the California Gold Rush, a 10-inch-long brick that sold for a reported $7 million.

The excavation of the Republic is expected to take a few months and cost the company anywhere from $1 million to $3 million.