NARRATOR: Treasure hunting has captured our imaginations for centuries.
KIM: I think everybody at some point in their life
has dreamed about finding treasure.
JOHN: I knew straightaway that it was gold.
COREY: There was over 30 tons of silver ingots on board, 200,000 coins, gold, emeralds.
GARY: Once treasure and treasure diving gets in your blood it's hard to get it out.
NARRATOR: Sunken treasures remain lost below the waves, until now.
Imagine if we could empty the oceans,
draining the water away to reveal the secrets of the sea floor.
Now, we can.
Using the latest underwater scanning technology piercing the deep oceans.
And turning accurate data into 3D images.
How do you excavate a fortune in sunken silver from a wreck lost in shifting sands?
MARTIJN: It's an amazing amount of money.
NARRATOR: Why is the treasure from a wrecked Spanish galleon,
spread over 10 miles of Florida seabed?
And how can the world's biggest haul of lost gold bullion
be recovered from the Arctic depths?
*
NARRATOR: Today, moving money is simple.
JAMES: These days you push a button and funds are electronically transferred.
But in the past the oceans were a pretty consistent means of moving the world's money.
NARRATOR: For centuries treasure ships sailed the oceans of the world
packed with silver, gold and precious stones.
Hunted by pirates.
Battered by storms.
Threatened by reefs and rocky shores.
-The reason that you would find treasure underwater is that the water has been the
greatest highway in human history.
NARRATOR: And where there's treasure, there are treasure hunters.
NIGEL: I think people certainly catch gold fever.
I think people love searching for things.
It's deep in our psyche.
NARRATOR: Around the world hundreds of treasure wrecks remain unexplored.
As the waters of the oceans begin to drain away,
they reveal their most valuable secrets.
The English Channel.
Five miles off the coast of Kent.
The grave of an 18th century merchant ship.
Lost to the waves and carrying a fortune in silver.
The priceless wreck often vanishes and re-appears under ever-shifting sandbanks.
Can draining away the English Channel reveal the wreck and the sunken treasure?
January the 8th, 1740.
The Dutch East India Company ship, the Rooswijk, sets off
from the Netherlands into the English Channel.
It's on an eight-month long voyage to Indonesia, then known
as the Dutch East Indies, the center of the spice trade.
On board are merchants, soldiers, and a precious cargo.
-It's said that there were about 300,000 guilders of silver on board of the ship,
in silver bars and about 36,000 of coins.
NARRATOR: A fortune in today's money, equivalent to around $100 million.
A few miles off the English coast, a violent storm blows up.
The ship hits sand banks and disappears.
237 men die and the silver is lost to the sea.
Now, more than 270 years later,
a team of underwater archaeologists investigate.
Martijn Manders heads the expedition.
-It's enormously unique to do a large-scale excavation underwater,
we really have to take care of what's down there underwater or we lose it forever.
NARRATOR: These are treacherous waters.
To locate the wreck the team uses the latest technology: multi-beam sonar scanning.
RODRIGO: We came out and did a multi-beam survey,
you create a whole, a whole image of the seabed.
NARRATOR: Multi-beam sonar fires sound waves to the sea floor.
The return signal displays the shape and depth of the features beneath.
-That way we can start putting that puzzle together.
NARRATOR: Combining the sonar data with the latest visualization techniques,
it's now possible to empty the waters of the English Channel.
As the sea drains away, the first challenge the team face is revealed,
the landscape under the surface.
It's an incredible hidden world, miles of rolling dunes,
like a desert underwater.
The Goodwin Sands.
Lying close to the surface,
these endlessly shifting sands are a deadly threat to shippin.
-They called it the great ship-swallower.
NARRATOR: It's the graveyard for around 2,000 ships,
each running aground in the treacherous shallows.
The Rooswijk is swallowed here and disappears for centuries.
Have the sands shifted enough to finally reveal this treasure ship?
As the waters of the English Channel continue to drain away,
a shape emerges.
Twisted timbers of a ship from the 18th century.
To an expert eye, artifacts of Dutch origin.
And as it's revealed high and dry it's finally clear,
this is all that is left of the Rooswijk.
Archaeologists can now view the remains of the ship from
any angle and examine it in fine detail.
The hull shape is long lost to the ocean, but there is a pile of timbers,
collapsed deck planks lying at strange angles, and five cannon scattered around.
-We're basically uncovering something that hasn't been seen for the past 250 years.
NARRATOR: But where is the treasure?
-We're gonna dive to it and investigate it and
hope to find the secrets that this shipwreck reveals.
For a lot of people this is a treasure ship.
For the archaeologists this is a treasure ship because we could get so much information.
NARRATOR: Fast-moving tides make the expedition difficult.
Each day there might only be one hour between tides that's safe for diving.
-It is a race against the clock.
-Ready to ride.
-Going down into an elevator is like going back in time.
-It's a time capsule of 1740.
MAN (over radio): Okay.
NARRATOR: An umbilical cord provides air 75 feet down.
-It was really, really exciting to start diving there.
I was swimming and then suddenly you see these cannons appearing and
uh wood sticking out of the sea bed.
You really get this idea that this is the place where all these people died.
This is a grave.
NARRATOR: The drained wreck of the Rooswijk shows the scale of the challenge.
Debris is spread over a large area.
Here's what's thought to be the main part of the ship,
but around 400 feet to the north-west lie two anchors and a pile of barrels.
And more than 900 feet to the north-east, ten cannon spread around.
To the east, eight more cannon in a row, next to another anchor.
The team has only a 12-week window to work the wreck site
and it can take days to excavate just a few square feet,
so they must focus their search.
-We have to make choices and this is what we did
on the basis of uh the multibeam data.
NARRATOR: Martijn decides to home in on the stern.
-It's the place where the officers, maybe the passengers,
where the merchant men used to live during their trip, where money was stored.
NARRATOR: But how much treasure might still be down there?
Using enormous vacuums to remove the sand, they hunt carefully amongst the debris.
NARRATOR: Martijn finds a broken chest with its contents spilling out.
And then a thrilling moment.
A silver coin, and soon dozens more.
Money destined for the East Indies that's been lying here for more than 270 years.
The wreck of the Rooswijk is beginning to reveal its treasures.
-Diver well? -Diver well.
These are Pieces of Eight, eight Real,
some people might know them from the pirate films.
NARRATOR: The Spanish Real was the standard trading currency of the 18th century.
Made of silver, a single coin is worth more than a week's pay for a sailor.
These coins are some of the thousands that the
Dutch East India Company places on board ship.
All minted just before the Rooswijk sails.
But some of the other discovered coins are noticeably different.
-These are large Ducatons, but they're old.
They're very old.
These are 17th century, so they're probably about 70 years,
80 years older than when the ship wrecked.
NARRATOR: They're not the newly minted company money
that the ship is supposed to be carrying.
Trading in private money was banned by the Dutch East India Company,
so finding these coins raises new questions.
If they aren't company money, whose are they and what are they used for?
The drained landscape around the Rooswijk reveals clues.
The Reals are found in clusters, in the stern area,
the part of the ship where company money is stored.
But surprisingly the other coins are found mixed in with them.
Some even show evidence of being kept secret.
-But really interesting of this coin is this little hole.
Maybe it's, it's, it's worn under the clothes.
Maybe somebody had a collar of all sorts of coins and just keeping it hidden.
NARRATOR: Could these coins, found at the bottom of the English Channel,
be incredible new evidence of one of the oldest trades in history: smuggling.
MARTIJN: So we have a notary deed, an official document.
NARRATOR: In Amsterdam, Martijn Manders investigates the sunken treasure of the
Rooswijk and meets historian Mateus van Rossum.
-And this is the interesting thing, we have these combinations of coins,
all different kinds, very old.
MATTHIAS: That's definitely private trade.
NARRATOR: Private trade means a booming black market in smuggled silver.
-Isn't that illegal?
-It was illegal because the company banned the shipment of silver
from the Republic to Asia and back.
-So this is evidence?
-This is basically all illegal.
NARRATOR: Silver is worth more in the East Indies than in the Netherlands,
because it can be used to buy trade goods like spices.
Enterprising members of the crew collect cash from their families and friends.
Then, once they arrive in Asia, they simply sell their private silver to the
Dutch East India Company for a profit.
It's illegal, but the company turns a blind eye to the trade
because they use the smuggled silver to buy more spices.
Draining the Rooswijk reveals that not only are the private coins found in the stern
they're also discovered in other areas of the wreck.
This poses a new question.
-Was it only the merchants did this or, or was it more widespread?
-This was actually very widespread.
The captain, the first mate, the surgeons, the company merchant on board the ship,
then the lower ranks does indicate that the whole crew
participated to some degree in this, in this trade.
NARRATOR: For two centuries, the Dutch East India company dominates trade
between Asia and its headquarters in Amsterdam,
making the city the key commercial center in the world.
-The Dutch East India Company was one of the very first
large multinational corporations.
NARRATOR: Its mission is profit.
To trade silver for spices, using ships like the Rooswijk to spearhead trade.
An earlier commercial dive uncovers the first evidence of the high value of the ship,
two chests.
Cracked open, there's a sight straight out of a high seas adventure story.
In each, 50 bars of silver bullion, blackened by the wate,
worth a fortune and now divided between the salvage team and the Dutch Government.
But the smuggled coins add new understanding to one of
the most colorful sagas in the age of discovery.
And reveal that everyone is secretly in on the take.
-It's estimated that 50% of all the silver on board was smuggled money.
So, if you think about the Rooswijk, 36,000 coins on board officially,
so that means 36,000 coins on board unofficially.
That's an amazing amount of money.
NARRATOR: How much more is there to find?
It's six weeks into the 12-week expedition.
At a harbor side lab experts carefully record the archaeological treasures so
they can be studied anywhere in the world in stunning 3D detail.
Pewter tableware, glass bottles from the Captain's table,
and more company coins.
DAN: We've only found 700 so far, there are many thousand more to find.
NARRATOR: With only a few weeks left on the project
the race is on to recover as much as possible.
And the team now also want to solve the Rooswijk's long-standing mystery,
how exactly did it meet its fate?
The drained wreckage of the ship reveals clues.
The stern section can be seen lying in a pile.
More than 300 feet away, there's an anchor.
And further out, several cannon, grouped together.
What does this spread of clues reveal?
-This is the evidence of the people struggling and trying to save their ship.
The ship was caught by the storm, was pushed on the
sandbanks of the Goodwin Sands.
It's just being smashed on the sands.
So, what do you do?
You throw away your heavy equipment and you start with your cannons.
NARRATOR: During the storm, the crew ditches at least 23 cannons in an attempt to
lighten the ship and break free from the sandbanks.
Then the crew drops anchor.
But there's no chance of escape.
-It just gets stuck further and further.
The sea lifting the ship and just pounding it on to the sand and
breaking it in thousands of pieces.
And everybody was lost.
It's almost unimaginable.
NARRATOR: The loss of the Rooswijk's silver
is a big blow for the Dutch East India company.
-Shipwrecks are one of the, the recurring threats for, for the company so
yearly there would be losses of ships, one or two on average.
And some historians see this as, as one of the factors that
contributes to the demise of the Dutch East India Company.
NARRATOR: Now, after 12 weeks of challenging excavation, the
archaeological expedition is almost at an end.
-So this is the last night of the project.
12 weeks of great dives but also uh we had storms,
we had lots of difficult tides,
bad visibility but we've also made a lot of progress.
-We've found around 2,000 coins.
NARRATOR: It's only a fraction of the coins known to be on board.
Including the smuggled ones, the value of Rooswijk' silver
could now be up to $125 million.
Martijn plans to return to the wreck site.
How much more of the Rooswijk's sunken treasures
can be recovered from the shifting sands below?
Archaeologists and treasure hunters continue to scour the seas.
And as the world's oceans continue to drain away they reveal yet more tantalizing
clues of fortunes lost under the waves.
The Florida Keys.
In 1622, a Spanish galleon sinks here laden with an
extraordinary haul of silver, gold and gems.
For decades, treasure hunters pursue a dream:
to find one of the richest wrecks in history.
Can draining the oceans here reveal the fabled motherlode
of the vanished treasure ship, Atocha?
KIM: I'm Kim Fisher and I'm a treasure hunter.
Gold fever, treasure fever.
I think everybody at some point in their life
has dreamed about finding treasure.
NARRATOR: Off the coast of Key West, Florida, a team of self-styled treasure hunters
is chasing the legend of the treasure ship Atocha,
known to have been lost in these waters.
GARY: Nice clean bottom, looks like we've got something coming in here.
Nice target.
Once treasure and treasure diving gets in your blood it's hard to get it out.
NARRATOR: Maritime archaeologist Corey Malcolm has spent two decades
investigating the fate of the Spanish galleon.
COREY: The Atocha we know er, specifically carried 260 people on board.
Some of these people were the wealthiest people in the world.
You had religious figures, you had explorers.
NARRATOR: September the 4th, 1622.
The 'Nuestra Senora de Atocha' is part of a fleet of 28 ships
that leaves Havana, Cuba bound for Spain.
It's laden with silver, gold, and gems.
More than a year's worth of treasure obtained by the Spanish from their empire in
Mexico and South America.
-The Atocha was a tremendously important ship to Spain.
It was carrying a huge amount of treasure,
I mean there was over 30 tons of silver ingots on board,
200,000 coins, gold and emeralds.
NARRATOR: But the Atocha quickly runs in to trouble.
JOHN: It wasn't a day out from Havana that they started feeling the wind increase,
the seas starting to build and they knew they were caught.
NARRATOR: A hurricane closes in.
The ship is lost.
Only five men survive to tell the tale.
And their testimonies say that what sunk the ship wasn't just the high wind and waves.
There is clearly something else here that poses a deadly threat to shipping.
This area is notorious for shipwrecks.
Around 1,000 ships have been doomed along the Florida Keys.
Ships are drawn to these waters to make use of the Gulf Stream,
the ancient highway of the seas.
The best way to see what might have wrecked the Spanish galleon is to drain the ocean.
Now multi beam sonar scanning details the extraordinary
subsea landscape around the Florida Keys.
As the waters drain away a vast coastal mountain range is revealed.
The shallow Florida Keys are just the peaks.
Beyond them the land drops down, up to 6,000 feet into an ocean abyss.
This is the edge of the North American continental shelf.
-We have a pretty dramatic drop off here, it goes down like a wall.
NARRATOR: Further in from the leading edge, an amazing sight is now revealed:
hard, rock-like formations.
This is North America's only coral reef, known as the Florida reef tract and
it lies just under the surface of the sea.
Today, lighthouses stand guard here but for the Spanish traders on the Atocha
there is no such warning.
-A ship like a Spanish galleon that might draw 12 feet.
It is going to hit a shallow reef like that and,
and it's going to have its bottom torn out and sink.
NARRATOR: But will draining the Florida Keys reveal the Atocha and its treasure?
Throughout the 1970s treasure hunter Mel Fisher searches for the lost ship.
He and his family are driven by stories of the legendary treasure.
-My dad was an eternal optimist.
Today is the day he told us every day, today's the day we're going to find it.
NARRATOR: For more than a decade, the Fisher Team finds clues of the Atocha.
cannon, and even silver coins.
These finds are tantalizing and help finance the continuing search for
what the team call the motherlode.
-In the early years you know people thought Mel was crazy oh it's you know,
you're never going to find it.
NARRATOR: For some observers, treasure hunting and
archaeological preservation don't mix.
Mel Fisher invented a propeller blast system to clear away sand.
Recovering sunken treasures this way can damage the sea floor
and some of the artifacts that lie upon it.
But the treasure hunters believe that their work also helps us understand the past.
-We're kind of saving history.
You know if we didn't go out there and recover these items, in a responsible manner and
bring them to light for the public, they would be lost forever.
NARRATOR: 15 years after the Fisher Team begin searching, there's a breakthrough.
Cameras capture murky images on the sea floor.
Draining away the waters of the Florida Keys reveals clearly one of the most
valuable shipwrecks in history.
Based upon the latest scanning data and computer visualization technology,
it's possible to empty the seas, exposing what the Fisher family spent
almost two decades looking for.
Visible for the first time in four centuries, wreckage of the Atocha,
55 feet down, once again open to the light of day.
Strewn around, timbers from the ship's hull.
Stones carried as ships' ballast.
Poking out of the mud, debris of shattered treasure chests.
-It really doesn't look like a ship anymore.
It's broken up, it's decayed.
NARRATOR: Among the wreckage, a pile of blackened metal.
It's a massive block of silver bars: 30 tons in total.
The motherlode of the Atocha exposed for all to see.
ANDY: It's an emotion. It was a wonderful feeling of accomplishment
to see Mel Fisher's dream, the motherlode.
MAN (over radio): There's lobsters around the whole thing.
-When I got out of the water I went over to my chart and I put a real X on the chart of
"here's the treasure".
It was totally overwhelming.
-We were all elated, you know.
We'd spent most of my life looking for this one wreck and now there it was.
NARRATOR: It's arguably the biggest ever haul of Spanish treasure,
making the Fisher family, and their backers, wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.
-The motherlode in 1985 was valued at about $400 million at that time.
Between now and then we've recovered a lot more, and the value in today's numbers,
you know it's somewhere probably twice that, you know
approaching a billion dollar wreck.
It's kind of mind boggling.
NARRATOR: Among the treasures are an emerald and gold cross and ring.
Rare silver from the Incan empire.
Gold chains, and cups.
And the Fishers are not finished yet.
Their search for more of the Atocha riches continues.
-Based on what we see on the manifest and what's been recovered,
we can estimate there's 300 silver bars.
There was about 70 pounds of emeralds smuggled on board the Atocha
and we've only found about six or seven pounds so far.
-There's still a lot of treasure out there to be found.
NARRATOR: The Fisher team has discovered that treasure from the Atocha has been found
not just at the motherlode but spread out over miles.
Why is it spread so widely, and can draining the trail of wreckage
lead to finding a second motherlode?
GARY: Keep your eye on that forward sonar.
Let me know if you see any targets.
NARRATOR: The hunt for the Atocha's lost emeralds
is now focused on a missing part of the ship:
the sterncastle, where the wealthiest people on board have their cabins.
-My number one target's probably a pile of emeralds.
KIM: Emeralds are so valuable that you could have one box full of emeralds that would be
worth a whole ship full of silver.
The Muzo mine produces the best emeralds in the world, even today.
So keep your eyes open for big emeralds.
That's, that's the big prize.
NARRATOR: Critical clues lie in the spread of wreckage
and previously discovered treasures.
The treasure hunters call it the Atocha trail.
-That's looks good there's a target coming in right there.
Might be something we have to go dig.
NARRATOR: With the waters of the Florida Keys drained away,
the true extent of the Atocha trail is revealed.
Survivors' accounts report that the ship hits the outer reef here,
and eventually sinks two miles away at the site where the motherlode is found.
But then, the trail of wreckage appears to continue on for miles,
each point here marks a treasure already discovered.
COREY: It creates almost a, a breadcrumb trail on the sea floor.
NARRATOR: Why are the Atocha's treasures spread over 10 miles of seabed?
Following the trail itself gives the treasure hunters the answer.
-We've pieced together what happened.
NARRATOR: After the hurricane sinks the Atocha in September of 1622,
another great storm pounds the sunken wreck.
-30 days after the Atocha sank the second hurricane came.
-The bow and the stern and the upper decks all ripped loose in that second storm and
started bouncing along, leaving a trail of treasure...
NARRATOR: Lying four miles from the motherlode is what's thought to be the bow section
of the ship, but the trail appears to continue even further.
JOHN: That superstructure carried off, breaking up as it went along and,
and dropping things.
NARRATOR: The missing sterncastle and a huge amount of treasure
is projected to lie somewhere in this area.
And now new technology, a hovering autonomous underwater vehicle or HAUV,
allows the treasure hunters to find the tiniest clues.
-It lets us scan large areas of sea floor.
NARRATOR: Working under a legal permit, the new equipment will use a
high-frequency magnetic field detector.
-So, we can detect metals deeper than ever before, and
we can start to discriminate different metals.
NARRATOR: And where there's more metal, the Fisher team expects to find the
missing part of the ship, and lost emeralds.
-That looks like we got something coming in right here.
That's just a matter of systematically working the trail of known artefacts and
kind of like bread crumbs through the forest.
NARRATOR: The search continues.
The age of the Spanish galleons is what many consider
the first Golden Age of treasure on the high seas.
But across the world's oceans the amount of gold moved in the 20th century,
especially during World War II, dwarfs all other periods.
As the oceans of the world drain away an extraordinary
wreck is revealed near the Arctic Circle.
Can draining a sunken British warship uncover the fate of
the world's largest ever haul of gold bullion?
The Arctic Ocean.
200 miles off the coast of Russia.
Somewhere beneath these freezing waters lies one of
the greatest secrets of World War II.
As the ocean begins to empty it reveals an astonishing sight.
The 600-foot long wreck of HMS Edinburgh,
visible in its entirety for the first time in more than 70 years.
The British warship's guns can be seen in the clear light of day.
On the stern, the quarterdeck is peeled back.
There's clear evidence of torpedo damage, a huge hole in the side.
But a German torpedo didn't sink the Edinburgh.
So, what did and why?
April 30th, 1942, the Barents Sea in the Arctic Circle.
It's the height of World War II and a convoy of 13 British ships is on
a perilous 1700-mile voyage from Russia to their Allies in the west.
ERIC: It's one of the hardest campaigns of the war.
You were under very serious attack, from submarines,
from aircraft and even from surface ships.
NARRATOR: Escorting the convoy is the 600-foot long, 10,000 ton cruiser, HMS Edinburgh.
It's a formidable warship with more than 24 guns.
A German U-boat attacks.
-The Germans carried out a torpedo attack.
(explosion).
Another torpedo hit the ship increasing the damage.
(explosion).
NARRATOR: 60 people are killed.
Two days later, the remaining crew are ordered to abandon ship,
forcing a fateful decision on the Navy.
RIC: The admiral decided that it was too far gone and he ordered one of the destroyers
to put a torpedo into her engine room.
(explosion).
-She went down within a couple of minutes and she went completely vertical.
NARRATOR: HMS Edinburgh sinks beneath the waves, 200 miles off the coast of Russia.
Sunk by its own navy.
-It was vitally important, you didn't want her falling into German hands.
NARRATOR: But why take such extreme measures to keep the Edinburgh out of Nazi hands?
The answer is gold.
-The gold that was loaded on board the Edinburgh at Murmansk was,
we know for certain was, five and a half tons, that's what the admiral signed for and
five and a half tons was 465 bars.
NARRATOR: It's payment from Russia for war supplies and
worth $240 million in today's money.
In 1942 recovering the gold from the damaged ship
just before it sinks is too dangerous.
The sunken treasure lies undisturbed for decades and
the ship is recognized as a war grave.
But then a dive expedition, sanctioned by the British and Russian governments,
is launched to salvage it.
Leading the hunt is treasure diver Keith Jessop,
working with marine engineer, Ric Wharton.
-What drove us to it is interesting.
There was the allure of gold but frankly we didn't have great expectations at that stage,
there were so many unknowns, like a moon shot.
NARRATOR: The Edinburgh is 800 feet beneath the waves in freezing waters
and there's no guarantee of success.
The first challenge is finding a precise spot to search.
It's suspected that the gold is stored in the bomb room.
The problem is this is one of the most secure areas on the ship.
Situated deep inside the hull, the bomb room is where explosives are kept
along with valuable cargo.
And it's behind the ship's four-inch armor plating.
Will draining the Arctic Ocean reveal how to access the wreck
of HMS Edinburgh to recover its treasures?
NARRATOR: At 800 feet down the wreck of HMS Edinburgh is too deep for scuba divers.
To stand any chance of success it will take a remarkable feat of human endurance.
The team need to operate in a high-tech pressurized chamber,
that looks like something found on a space station.
It's a technique called saturation diving.
JOHN: You basically go into your chamber and you dive in, your body is saturated with
diving gases and you remain saturated for the duration of the dive.
NARRATOR: Saturating the diver's body with a mix of diving gases avoids long and
costly decompression times.
Leaving the chamber, the divers enter a diving bell, which drops through a hole in
the ship and enters the freezing Arctic waters.
They leave the diving bell but remain attached by an umbilical cord.
-The biggest problem I think we had diving at depth on the Edinburgh, was staying warm.
We had hot water suits and we had hot water being pumped down through,
from the surface.
NARRATOR: Too hot and the divers could be badly scalded.
Or, if the supply fails, they could find themselves
at the mercy of the freezing cold Arctic waters.
-Then we'd be breathing a very hot gas, which is starting to burn the lungs.
It was like being kicked in the back of the head by a mule.
It wasn't pleasant diving.
NARRATOR: The plan is for the divers to enter the ship through the torpedo hole in
the side then work their way through the ship to the bomb room.
But during the first dive there's an unexpected problem.
RIC: When they got into that hole, it was completely...
we couldn't get the debris out.
NARRATOR: It's a setback, and the team is forced to rethink.
-The boat was ringed with armored plating and we would've struggled to
get through that, so we decided to go underneath the armor plating and
cut our way into the ship.
NARRATOR: Cutting into the bomb room is fraught with danger.
It may still contain unstable explosive charges left over from the war.
-We knew the inherent dangers; we knew the risks and we were very slow and cautious when
we were cutting our way into something.
I actually cut my way into the bomb room first.
There's no visibility.
You couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
Everything was done by feel.
And then I touched something that was slightly heavier.
I tried to pick it up, and because of its size it should have,
easily been able to lift it, but the weight straight away, gave me some sort of idea that
this wasn't something ordinary.
As soon as I lifted it I knew straight away that it was gold.
-You don't see that often at 800 feet.
-Roger, roger.
I don't know about John but I'm shaking like hell.
-And then euphoria broke out on the boat as well everybody's running around,
shouting and screaming and carrying on from the crew down.
So, it was a very exciting moment.
NARRATOR: In total 460 bars of gold are recovered,
worth about $240 million in today's money.
It's the biggest haul of lost gold bullion ever recovered from the seabed.
-This is a lead copy, gold plated.
There's a serial number at the top, which is KP0620.
Below that you see the hammer and sickle and the Russian markings in a cartouche and
below that it said 99.99.
That's pure gold.
NARRATOR: The value of the treasure is shared between the
Russian and British governments and the salvage team.
-It was a vast amount of money.
We all did very well out of it.
It completely changed our attitude to work because we never really had to again,
we did of course.
NARRATOR: Now emptied of its sunken treasure, peace returns to the Edinburgh.
-Gold has always captured peoples' imagination.
GARY: Yeah, it's treasure fever.
NIGEL: There's millions of shipwrecks out there, but for every 10,000
shipwrecks on the seabed probably one might be high value.
-Once you start, once you go look for one you can never stop.
Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.