The Republic
©1997 Joseph M. Cocozza

It was the summer of 1987. A group of maritime salvors and marine historians had finally got the salvage rights and the venture capital needed to begin the salvage of the RMS Republic. I am a video engineer by profession and a shipwreck diver by passion. When I was hired on to work on a documentary of the salvage, I knew it was the job of a lifetime.

The RMS Republic has all the elements that make a good shipwreck story: tragic irony, political intrigue, historical significance and of course GOLD.

The Republic was a 570 foot Steamship of the White Star Shipping Line (the same shipping line as the Titanic) on Jan 23, 1909 she collided with the Italian steamship Florida.

The Republic was the first ship ever to use a Radiotelegraph to broadcast a distress signal. Due the SOS signal, a US Revenue Cutter was able to come to the rescue, resulting in a minimal loss of life. But the ship’s injuries were fatal and she slipped beneath the sea.

She now lies in 260 of water about 45 miles off of Falmouth MA.

But what distinguishes the Republic from the thousands of similar North East shipwrecks is the lore and legend of US Gold Eagle coins.The story of the Republic's gold is somewhat apocryphal, and like most legends they have a basis in fact and history.

A brief history follows:
It was 1909, Europe was entwined in a complex set of alliances, economic dependencies and hostilities between old rivals . France’s was allied with Czarist Russia. The Russians were at odds with Austria-Hungery and Austria-Hungery was allied with Germany who was antagonistic to France. Germany’s Von Schieflin plan kept the peace by establishing a balance of terror. Europe was a powderkeg; this was the eve of World War One.

The French government, in an effort to help prop up the economically abysmal Czarist Empire, convinced French Bankers to sell “Russian Bonds”. The French public was persuaded that these Russian bonds were a low risk, high yield investment. (NOT)

Now we all now what happened to the Czar on that October day in 1916. (If you don’t- I recommend you rent the movie REDS). The Russian bonds went bust. The Bank of France purchased US Gold Eagle coins to back the Russian Bonds. One of those shipments of US Gold Eagles was supposedly on board the Republic when she sank.

At the time of the sinking, the Gold Eagles were valued at three million dollars. But today the coins would be valued at over 900 million.So who besides a group of intrepid underwater salvors who else could lay claim to this let shipwreck and her gold.

-Many French families lost their fortunes due to the collapse of the Russian Bonds- that sting is still felt today. Decedents of the French who lost money might be able to make a claim for the gold.
- The present Russian government could lay claim to gold, after it was purchased for them.
-It was being shipped on board a British flagged vessel so the British government would be interested in making a claim.
-The gold was delivered from the US Mint, so presumably the US government could stake an interest.
-Last but not least- some pointy head archaeologist might claim that Gold Eagles are a “historic treasure” and try to confiscate the coins for their own ends.
In lieu of all this, Sub Ocean Salvors International (SOSI). Had done painstaking research and had gone to the admiralty courts to secure salvage rights to the Republic.
The video production company, that I worked for, had done a series of promotional videos to attract investors in the salvage project. It was the 1980’s: everybody had too much money.
SOSI had outfitted an research/salvage ship. The ship was the SS Inspector, she was a 280 ft and equipped to support saturation divers engaged in commercial salvage and deep diving operations.

A video crew was to go out to document the progress of the salvage operation, if the Gold Eagles were found, it would be a major media event and documentary. So I looked forward to spending some choices weeks of that summer; 45 miles out to sea on a ship anchored on a four point anchor.

As a kid, I had read about the Navy’s SEALAB and Cousteu’s CONSHELF projects, so I knew the basic theory behind saturation diving.

Every novice diver understands the basics of nitrogen absorption. As you dive deeper and longer you absorb more gas into your tissues. The tables (or the RDP for you PADI divers) tell you how much time you must take surfacing to decompress the gas without getting bent.

Obviously the longer you stay down the longer the decompression. But the concept behind saturation diving is thus: At certain point your body’s N2 level reaches equilibrium with the surrounding pressure. At this point your tissues are saturated, which means the they are absorbing no more N2. Stay an additional hour and your decompression time will not increase; stay an extra week decompression time will be the same.

Sat diving is more efficient because it allows divers to work for extended periods of time without having to repeatedly go through staged decompression. Divers will work and live in a pressurized environment for 30 days, at the end of their duty cycle they will do one long decompression (over twenty four hours), and they would be replaced by another dive crew.

They way this extended diving is accomplished is through the use of a Saturation Tank. A Sat Tank looks like a very large recompression chamber. On the Inspector the Sat tank was located inside the ship. it was pressurized to an equivalent depth of 270’ FSW. Like a tiny space capsule the divers would live, sleep, eat and work inside the chamber.

Obviously, at a depth of 270 FSW it is too deep for air. So the Divers were breathing Heliox. In a nearby control room, called the Saturation Van, a technician monitored: pressure, temperature, gas and CO2 levels.
Now you might be asking yourself “well its all find and dandy that a group of four divers are living in a Sat Tank on the surface but how are they supposed to do underwater salvage.”

At one end of the Sat Tank was a hatch, that hatch would mate to a diving bell. Two divers would climb into the bell. The hatch would then be secured and the bell would be moved into position over the moon pool. The moon pool reminded me of that old TV show- Voyage to the Bottom of The Sea. It was a hole in the center of the ship through which a the diving bell would descend to the wreck below. The surface crew would lower the diving bell to the wreck below.

Once the diving bell descended to the wreck, the diver would open the hatch and enter the black murky depths. It is at this point when the Diving supervisor would take over. The Dive Supervisor was located in The Control Van. Each diver had a black and white helmet camera as well as a microphone to the surface. Relaying sound and pictures to the surface.

Methodical search . The dive supervisor had charts, drawings and side scan sonar print outs of the wreck. Methodically the divers would search inch by inch for the elusive gold. Along the way other artifacts would be recovered
But it was the gold, that potential for immense riches (for which the divers had a share) that inspired everyone on. But that gold was hard to find. One of the Dive supervisors told us in an interview: “Imagine you take a 50 story skyscraper. Lay it on its side, shake it up, put it on the ocean floor where its is cold and black. Now divers have to go inside this massive building and have to locate a specific small closet and recover a suitcase.” That’s was the challenge in finding the gold. (if there was gold).

The divers did have help from a one man submersible called a DuPlus Mini Sub. The Mini Sub operated tethered to the surface. The driver operated the sub from the prone position. The sub had a black and white camera, two claw arms and a bank of UW lights. The sub’s primary mission was to reconnoiter new sections of the wreck before the divers. The video crew had another job for it.

We had already taken a helmet cam feed from the divers and where recording that to tape , but we would need to get some underwater footage of the divers in action, preferably in color. So we turned the mini sub into an underwater camera platform.

The sub already has a video feed, but the camera is a low rez black and white vidicon. At the time SONY broadcast had just come out with an inexpensive (for the Broadcast market ) 3 CCD camera, the DXC-3000. So removing the camera chassis, the sub crew was able to fashion and underwater housing.

The sub had an extensive array of UW lights that could illuminate large portions of the wreck. We could now direct the sub to shot live color video of the operation from underwater. On the surface, we taped deck operations and interviews with the crew. The crew was a mixed bag and each had there own reasons for being there. The Captain, the Chief Engineer and the Able Seaman where all from Denmark. The diving supervisors, divers and support personnel where all Canadians. The three man mini sub crew was British.

The leader of the mini sub crew was a former Royal Navy Diver who had participated in the Fauklands War. He inferred that his demolition team had entered the Faukland islands before the British Army. One night about 1am, I got pulled out of my bunk. The divers have attached the ships crane to the Republics anchor. As the camera crew reaches the afterdeck-we see the full ships crew prepared to recover this major artifact.

Tungsten work lights are illuminating the blackness of the the ocean plane. The noise and activity of men operating heavy machinery. Our camera is focused on the heavy wire cable that pierces into the blackness of the Atlantic. Then we see it- the anchor breaches the surface. Its an old style anchor, the type that's familiar to every non seaman. The crew move the anchor to the deck.

The anchor is a major artifact- it along with bottles of wine, china, portholes etc; is to be auctioned off at Christies.The owners of the ship need more capital to continue operating. But the crew is interested in finding the gold now. Due to the seasons, they can only operate for another couple of months. If and when the salvage resumed next year most of the crew would not be able to return. They would lose all there shares to the gold.So as far as the divers were concerned it was a waste time salvaging bottles of wine and silverware. They wanted to go for the gold.

After about a week you kind of settle into a routine. Besides shooting interviews with the crew, deck operations- me and the camera man are on 12 hours shifts - if the control van finds something, we will be recording it as it happens.

It was a late afternoon, I hanging out on the bridge with the Captain, we were eating pie and swapping sea stories. The captain eyes focused about a hundred yards off the port beam. He smiled and said.
“Two gray whales- they are feeding, do you want to film them.”

The answer is YES. The cameraman and myself quickly got the camera package together. We ran to the aft deck where the seamen were readying the zodiac for launching. The cameraman, the captain and myself scrambled down the Jacobs ladder to zodiac. And we were off.

The Captain explained to us that gray whales feed in mated pairs. That one whale will run ever tightening circles around a school of krill. As the school condensed the other whale swims up through the center- eating as it goes. Nice cooperation ,huh.

The only unfortunate thing is that we are quickly approaching twilight. Video rule number two: you can’t shoot video in the dark (later revised during the gulf war where video crews used night vision devices to shoot the bombing of Baghdad.) The motor of the zodiac slowed down to a putt. We were now bobbing in a sea of deep royal blue. Only twenty feet ahead, a spouter. This is better than the movies. The cameraman says he got it, then twenty feet off our starboard- a tale breaches the surface, its amazing, this huge creature is mere feet from us. We are in the open ocean on a three meter rubber raft. With one swat from that massive tail we would be pancakes.

The cameraman got that shot too. For the next few minutes we communed with our warm blooded cousins- but by the then the sun had set and we were maybe three hundred yards away from the ship. During the next two weeks there was some false alarms but no Gold Eagles. In four weeks we had shot every conceivable video possible. On the surface or with the mini sub underwater. It was decided that the video crew was to go home. If the Gold Eagles were found we could have a crew out to ship in 24 hours.

A six pack fishing boat shuttled us back to Falmouth Massachusetts. In the four weeks that transpired the only gold we got was our golden tans. As we drove back to New York we all thought that the gold would found within the week and we would be called to shoot it. But, the crew of the Inspector worked well into September but the elusive Gold Eagle coins eluded them. The project ended and no gold was ever found. In the last ten years no one else has launched such a major operation on the Republic. Maybe the Gold does not even exist.

But today, with the boom in Technical diving, maybe on some summer weekend, some Trimix diver will be diving on the Republic and stumble across a decayed lead lined box. He or she will attach two 300lb lift bags and send the coffer to the surface. His or her buddies on the dive boat will all kid about his or her GRAB, but when they crack the case open and look at the contents--- glistening as brightly as the day there were lost 90 years ago, ...........................