$70 Million in Coins Recovered Off Oman
Treasure hunters said Sunday that they have recovered silver coins worth $70 million from the wreck of a U.S. merchant ship torpedoed by a German U-boat--just a small part of what they hope still to find.
Sheik Ahmad Farid al Aulaqi, the owner of the rights to salvage the treasure from the vessel John Barry, said his team has raised about 1.5 million silver coins.
He said the team hopes in early 1995 to retrieve the remaining treasure of more than 2,000 tons of silver ingots and coins.
The John Barry was loaded “under conditions of great secrecy” in the United States during World War II, said a spokesman for the operation.
It was torpedoed in 1944 by a German submarine and broke in half, slipping to a depth of 8,500 feet, about 125 miles off the coast of Oman.
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