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Russian warship ‘carrying £100B in gold’ discovered off South Korea

29 points by fold_left 8y ago

ommunist 8y ago
I am surprised. It is this one https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дмитрий_Донской_(крейсер) https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дмитрий_Донской_(крейсер), seems discovered 15 years ago. I do not think there is any gold there. Except somebody put it there somehow recently.
perl4ever 8y ago
"£100 billion in gold" sounds like an implausibly large amount. I estimate it is about 3 or 4 thousand metric tons. But could such a ship carry that much?
- lainga 8y ago
  Amount of gold aside, it looks like the Dmitrii Donskoi sank during or around the battle of Tsushima, having sailed all the way from the Baltic, and around the Cape of Good Hope, in one of the most ignominious and infamous fleet movements in history. Why would Russia put several hundred metric tonnes of gold on a cruiser which was heading to fight Japanese warships?
  - cafard 8y ago
    To pay the troops at Port Arthur, and because it anticipated winning any battles along the way.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    The whole thing was a farce. I’m not sure if it was a thing common with other navies but reading the history of the ship is reading a long list of accidents and mistakes. The shambles of the war with the Japanese is is well covered in Montifiore’s book on the Romanovs, and he presents it as a collection of worn out ships, a badly led navy and a massive vanity project with a healthy dose of racism leading to underestimation of Japanese abilities. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donskoi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Dons...
- Someone 8y ago
  At about $40k/kg for gold, I get 2,500 metric tons. The ship was about 6,000 tons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donskoi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donsko...) so it theoretically could carry that, but it would be over half of its maximum load. Add in fuel, engines, guns, about 600 men, their food, etc. and assuming (unlikely) it would still float, you would have to be suicidal to take it to sea. Wikipedia currently says 200 tons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donskoi#Wreck_located https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donsko...), but then it would be worth on the order of 10 billion. That still seems a lot to me. What would a warship “assigned to the cruiser force of the Second Pacific Squadron” at wartime would need that much gold for? Also, the current gold reserves of the USA are about 8,000 tons, worth in the ballpark of $200 billion. Even after striking out a zero, this find would be about 3% of that.
- jaclaz 8y ago
  Yes, something must be off of a factor of almost 20. According to the just updated Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donskoi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donsko... "200 tons of gold worth £100 billion (c. US$133 billion)" Which puts it at 500 British Pounds per gram, while it should be around 30.
wahern 8y ago
From a December 2000 NY Times report, Shares of Dong Ah surged 41 percent this week, to 410 won (33 cents, United States) on Wednesday. Today, the Korean Stock Exchange halted trading and ordered the company to provide an explanation on Friday. The run-up in the stock came after local media reports said that the venture, the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute, had discovered a warship of the Imperial Russian Navy, the 6,200-ton Dmitri Donskoi. .... ... Sergei Klimovsky, chief of scholarly research at the Central Naval Museum in St. Petersburg, told Bloomberg: "As far as we know, at best, there might have only been some gold coins on board to pay the salaries of officers. But there was no hoard of gold, and to send a large amount of gold by ship from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok is ridiculous. It would have been safer to send it by rail." https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/08/business/investor-frenzy-over-tales-of-gold.html https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/08/business/investor-frenzy-...
- lainga 8y ago
  I eagerly await the next South Korean discovery of the ship in 2034.
breadAndWater 8y ago
The ship sank in 1905, in case people who can't bypass the paywall might have been wondering.
- cardiffspaceman 8y ago
  Nowadays, several countries have GDP much greater than "£100B" and I think that was very much not the case in 1905. Anyone have the figures for 1905 at their fingertips?

29 points by fold_left 8y ago

I am surprised. It is this one https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дмитрий_Донской_(крейсер) https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дмитрий_Донской_(крейсер), seems discovered 15 years ago. I do not think there is any gold there. Except somebody put it there somehow recently.

perl4ever 8y ago

"£100 billion in gold" sounds like an implausibly large amount. I estimate it is about 3 or 4 thousand metric tons. But could such a ship carry that much?

lainga 8y ago
Amount of gold aside, it looks like the Dmitrii Donskoi sank during or around the battle of Tsushima, having sailed all the way from the Baltic, and around the Cape of Good Hope, in one of the most ignominious and infamous fleet movements in history. Why would Russia put several hundred metric tonnes of gold on a cruiser which was heading to fight Japanese warships?
- cafard 8y ago
  To pay the troops at Port Arthur, and because it anticipated winning any battles along the way.
- lostlogin 8y ago
  The whole thing was a farce. I’m not sure if it was a thing common with other navies but reading the history of the ship is reading a long list of accidents and mistakes. The shambles of the war with the Japanese is is well covered in Montifiore’s book on the Romanovs, and he presents it as a collection of worn out ships, a badly led navy and a massive vanity project with a healthy dose of racism leading to underestimation of Japanese abilities. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donskoi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Dons...
Someone 8y ago
At about $40k/kg for gold, I get 2,500 metric tons. The ship was about 6,000 tons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donskoi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donsko...) so it theoretically could carry that, but it would be over half of its maximum load. Add in fuel, engines, guns, about 600 men, their food, etc. and assuming (unlikely) it would still float, you would have to be suicidal to take it to sea. Wikipedia currently says 200 tons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donskoi#Wreck_located https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donsko...), but then it would be worth on the order of 10 billion. That still seems a lot to me. What would a warship “assigned to the cruiser force of the Second Pacific Squadron” at wartime would need that much gold for? Also, the current gold reserves of the USA are about 8,000 tons, worth in the ballpark of $200 billion. Even after striking out a zero, this find would be about 3% of that.
jaclaz 8y ago
Yes, something must be off of a factor of almost 20. According to the just updated Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donskoi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Dmitrii_Donsko... "200 tons of gold worth £100 billion (c. US$133 billion)" Which puts it at 500 British Pounds per gram, while it should be around 30.

wahern 8y ago

From a December 2000 NY Times report, Shares of Dong Ah surged 41 percent this week, to 410 won (33 cents, United States) on Wednesday. Today, the Korean Stock Exchange halted trading and ordered the company to provide an explanation on Friday. The run-up in the stock came after local media reports said that the venture, the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute, had discovered a warship of the Imperial Russian Navy, the 6,200-ton Dmitri Donskoi. .... ... Sergei Klimovsky, chief of scholarly research at the Central Naval Museum in St. Petersburg, told Bloomberg: "As far as we know, at best, there might have only been some gold coins on board to pay the salaries of officers. But there was no hoard of gold, and to send a large amount of gold by ship from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok is ridiculous. It would have been safer to send it by rail." https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/08/business/investor-frenzy-over-tales-of-gold.html https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/08/business/investor-frenzy-...

lainga 8y ago
I eagerly await the next South Korean discovery of the ship in 2034.

breadAndWater 8y ago

The ship sank in 1905, in case people who can't bypass the paywall might have been wondering.

cardiffspaceman 8y ago
Nowadays, several countries have GDP much greater than "£100B" and I think that was very much not the case in 1905. Anyone have the figures for 1905 at their fingertips?