A salvage company says it has found and dived the long sought-after wreck of the Dmitrii Donskoi, a Russian 5800-ton armoured cruiser that sank off South Korea in 1905.
The warship, scuttled in deep water to stop it falling into enemy hands during the Russo-Japanese war, has been claimed to have been carrying more than £100 billion worth of gold at today’s prices – the gold supplies of Russia’s entire Second Pacific Squadron.
Piloted submersibles of the Seoul-based Shinil Group exploration team were said to have been searching close to Ulleungdo island off South Korea’s east coast when they located the wreck on 14 July.
They found the Cyrillic name of the vessel still legible, and a “large number” of iron boxes at the stern. According to some historic accounts 200 tons of gold coins and 5500 cases of gold ingots were being carried in the hold, although other experts have questioned why a single warship would carry such a valuable cargo.
The wreck was reported to rest at an angle of 40° on a sloping seabed, with its stern 380m down and its bow at 430m. A third of the stern was damaged and the timber hull “half-broken”, but the upper deck was “almost untouched”, said Shinil Group.
The armour cladding on the side of the hull was also well-preserved, it said, while the anchors, 8in and 6in long-range guns and machine-guns remained in place. All three of the masts and the two funnels were broken.
The 93m Dmitrii Donskoi was built in 1883, originally as part of the Imperial Russian Navy’s Baltic Fleet, but spent much of her career in the Mediterranean before being transferred to the Pacific. She was part of a 38-strong fleet when she encountered 89 Japanese vessels at the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905.
Twenty-one Russian ships were sunk in the unequal engagement, with the deaths of 4500 crew, while only three Japanese ships were sunk with the loss of 117 lives.
The Dmitrii Donskoi was damaged but was able to escape north, trying to reach Vladivostok.
However, she then came under Japanese fire that killed at least 60 of the crew and wounded another 120. The survivors landed at Ulleungdo and sank the ship the following day. They were later captured by the Japanese, and Captain Ivan Lebedev died of wounds sustained during the sea battle.
An international consortium of salvage companies including from the UK is reported to be set to start raising the wreck in October for eventual museum display, and it has been reported that if the gold is recovered 50% of the profits will go to Russia and another 10% to developing Ulleungdo, a mainly uninhabited South Korean tourist attraction.
According to the BBC, however, the Shinil Group has yet to lodge an application for salvage rights with South Korea’s Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, the cost of which would be prohibitive.
