SS Gairsoppa

The SS Gairsoppa was a British steam merchant ship built in Jarrow and launched in 1919. After a long civilian career, she saw service during the Second World War. The name Gairsoppa was given in honour of the stunning waterfalls in Karnataka, India. She sailed with several convoys, before joining Convoy SL 64. Running low on fuel, she left the convoy and headed for Galway, Ireland, until in 1941 a German U-boat torpedoed and sank her.

The wreck of the Gairsoppa was located in 2011, and it was announced that an operation to recover its cargo of silver bullion, with an estimated value of £150 million, would begin in 2012. On 18 July 2012 Odyssey Marine Exploration, of Tampa, Florida, reported that it had recovered 48 tons of silver, making this probably "the deepest, largest precious metal recovery in history".

Description
Gairsoppa was 399 ft long, with a beam of 52 ft. She had a depth of 28 ft and a draught of 25 ft. She was propelled by a 517 nhp triple expansion steam engine driving a single screw propeller. The engine was built by Palmers. It had cylinders of 27 in, 44 in and 78 in diameter by 48 in stroke. It could propel the ship at 10.5 kn.

Career
Ordered by the British Shipping Controller as SS War Roebuck from Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company of Jarrow, she was taken over during construction by the British-India Steam Navigation Company, and completed as SS Gairsoppa. Gairsoppa was completed in November 1919. Her port of registry was Glasgow. She was allocated the United Kingdom Official Number 141924. On 29 April 1930, she ran aground at Fulta Point, India. She was refloated undamaged later that day. Gairsoppa used the Code Letters GCZB from 1934.

Sinking
Attached to convoy SL-64 under master Gerald Hyland, she was returning from India to Britain in 1941 with a cargo of silver ingots, pig iron and tea. She joined the 8 knot convoy in Freetown, Sierra Leone, but while in a heavy storm and running low on coal off the coast of the neutral Republic of Ireland, Gairsoppa split off from the convoy and set course for Galway harbour at a reduced speed of 5 knots.

A German Focke-Wulf Fw 200 aircraft circled her at 08:00 on 16 February, and at 22.30, U-101 under the command of Ernst Mengersen, spotted her. Torpedoed on the starboard side in No. 2 hold, she sank within 20 minutes (Note: German logbooks kept in German time state she sank at 00.08 hours on February 17, 1941). Her last reported position was 50°N, -14°W, 300 mi southwest of Galway Bay. The wreck lies 4700 m below the surface.

It was thought that three lifeboats launched, but only one in the charge of the second officer, R. H. Ayres, with four Europeans and two Lascars on board, made it away; the rest of the crew was lost. By the 13th day only the second officer, the radio officer, and one seaman gunner remained alive. Ayres and his boat reached the Cornish coast two weeks later at Caerthillian Cove in the parish of Landewednack. The boat capsized before the Lizard lifeboat could reach them, and only the second officer was pulled from the sea alive. Two of the men aboard, Robert Frederick Hampshire (Radio Officer), and an un-named Indian seaman, died trying to get ashore. They are buried at St Wynwallow's, Church Cove, Landewednack. Ayres was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his attempts to rescue his fellow sailors; he lived until 1992.

Memorial
Eleven crew members are commemorated on the 51st panel of the Tower Hill Memorial. Seventy lascars are commemorated on the Chittagong War Memorial.

Recovery
In 1989, the British government invited tenders to salvage the cargo and received just one, from Deepwater Recovery and Exploration Ltd. After a further tender in January 2010, the government awarded a US company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, a two-year contract to find and salvage the 7,000,000 ounces of silver, which when the ship was lost was worth £600,000 ($1.8 million US - $0 million in 2024), but hundreds of times that original amount now.

On September 26, 2011, Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration confirmed the identity and location of the Gairsoppa after less than two months of searching. The wreck of the ship was found on the sea floor at a depth of nearly 4700 m off the coast of Ireland. Footage of the wreck of the Gairsoppa was provided by the Odyssey Marine Exploration company on September 26, 2011 and published at the NYTimes.com Odyssey Marine later reported that its recovery effort in 2012 yielded 1,218 silver ingots weighing approximately 1.4 million ounces, and that a further recovery effort had commenced operations on May 29, 2013. Odyssey Marine believes the site contains a residual 1,599 insured silver ingots and an unknown, possibly substantial, amount of uninsured silver. Odyssey will retain 80% of the value of any recovered cargo, with the remainder going to HM Treasury. On July 23, 2013 it was reported that a total of 61 tons of silver bullion had been recovered from the wreckage, with an estimated value of £137 million ($210 million US).