1,000 ounces of gold recovered from sunken ship

CHARLESTON: An expedition to bring back the remaining gold from a steamship that sank in 1857 off South Carolina in one of the nation's worst maritime disasters has recovered almost 1,000 ounces of gold - the first gold recovered from the wreck in almost a quarter century.

The S.S. Central America was bringing gold back from the California when it sank in a hurricane claiming 425 lives. In addition, thousands of pounds of gold went to the bottom aboard the 280-foot, side-wheel steamship.

About $50 million was recovered during expeditions to the wreck in the late 1980s and early 1990s before legal disputes shut down the operation.

Odyssey Marine Exploration of Tampa, Florida, announced Monday that almost 1,000 ounces of the gold was recovered during a reconnaissance dive last month.

The newly recovered gold includes five gold bars and two $20 Double Eagle gold coins. One of the coins was minted in San Francisco the year that the Central America sank. The gold bars weigh between 106 and 344 ounces.

"While we weren't planning to recover gold so quickly, it did confirm that the site has not been disturbed since it was last visited in 1991 and there is gold remaining," said Mark Gordon, Odyssey's president and chief operating officer.

An expedition that left North Charleston in April is expected to be on the site about 160 miles off the coast until late summer. Gordon said that in recent weeks the crew of 41 aboard the Odyssey Explorer has been conducting an extensive survey of the site and the recovery of more gold will begin once that is completed.

It is not clear how much gold might remain. The ship was carrying gold bars shipped by banks and commercial interests. Passengers were thought to be carrying a lot of gold of their own in the form of coins - perhaps an amount equaling the commercial shipment.

The initial expeditions 25 years ago were halted because of legal disputes.

One of them involved investors from Ohio who staked out the money for shipwreck enthusiast Tommy Thompson, an Ohio native, who led the 1988 expedition that recovered the initial cache of gold.

The investors claimed they had fronted Thompson almost $13 million but never saw any return. Thompson has been a fugitive for almost two years after failing to show up for a court hearing.

A deal approved by an Ohio judge in March cleared the way for the new expedition.

The receiver for Thompson's companies will get more than half of anything that is recovered, to be disbursed in part to the investors who backed the initial expedition.

 

Rescuers scour sea for 11 missing in Hong Kong ship sinking

HONG KONG: An air and sea rescue mission scoured choppy waters near Hong Kong Tuesday in a desperate search for 11 crew still missing more than 24 hours after their Chinese cargo ship sank.

The Zhong Xing 2, which was laden with cement, went down after colliding with a container ship in the early hours of Monday just south of the island of Po Toi, on the edge of Hong Kong´s maritime territory.

A 46-year-old mainland Chinese crewman is so far the sole survivor of the ship´s crew of 12 -- he was plucked from the sea by a passing fishing boat.

Chinese authorities are coordinating the rescue operation, sending 15 ships and three helicopters to hunt for the missing crew, according to China´s official state news agency Xinhua.

Hong Kong also deployed a helicopter and eight rescue boats, but rescue efforts have so far been in vain.

"We are still trying to find the wreckage and the missing 11 persons," a Hong Kong government spokesman told.

The cause of the accident is not yet known and is under investigation, he said.

The 97-metre (318 feet) Zhong Xing 2, which was carrying cement from the Chinese province of Hebei to the southern island of Hainan, collided with the Marshall Islands-registered MOL Motivator container ship -- more than three times its size.

The cargo ship sank two nautical miles (around four kilometres) south-west of Po Toi.

Fears over the safety of Hong Kong´s waterways were sparked after a ferry crash in October 2012 that killed 39 -- the city´s worst maritime disaster for more than 40 years. The collision between a high-speed ferry and a pleasure boat shocked the Asian financial hub, which prides itself on its good safety record.

Waters around the territory are notoriously crowded with hundreds of vessels -- from tiny wooden fishing boats to gigantic container ships -- plying the routes to and from one of the world´s busiest ports. In other major incidents, a 190-metre long cargo ship sank 80 kilometres (50 miles) south-west of Hong Kong in August 2013, when a powerful typhoon generated towering waves.

The 21-member crew of the bulk carrier Trans Summer were forced to abandon ship as the vessel tipped on its side and sank, triggering a rescue by two helicopter teams and a passing ship.

In November of the same year, a high-speed double-deck hydrofoil ferry travelling from Hong Kong to Macau collided with an "unidentified object", injuring 87 people.

China frees Japan ship after $28 mn paid in 1930s row

SHANGHAI: China on Thursday released a seized Japanese ship after its owner paid $28 million in compensation, a court said, in a business dispute dating to the 1930s which underlines tensions between the countries.

The Shanghai Maritime Court announced Saturday it had impounded a large freight vessel owned by Mitsui O.S.K. Lines in accordance with the law, as the Japanese company had failed to pay a Chinese firm.

But the case had political overtones given uneasy ties between the two Asian giants, which are locked in a territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea.

"The court has delivered a ruling at 8:30 am on April 24, 2014, to lift the detention of the Baosteel Emotion ship," the court said in a statement.

Mitsui had "fulfilled its obligations" by paying compensation and additional court costs of around $390,000, the court said. It did not name the Chinese party awarded the compensation.

Japan had lodged a formal diplomatic protest over the seizure and warned it could "intimidate Japanese companies doing business in China".

Japanese media suggested the seizure of the ship was meant to underline China´s growing assertiveness before US President Barack Obama´s arrival in Tokyo on Wednesday on the first leg of an Asian tour.

Tokyo believes that the seizure undermines a 1972 joint communique that normalised ties between Japan and China, in which Beijing agreed to renounce any demands for war reparations.

China replied that the case was a civil matter and had nothing to do with war reparations.

The ship seizure comes as a set of lawsuits related to wartime forced labour have also been filed in China against Japanese corporations.

Mitsui´s predecessor chartered two ships from a company called Chung Wei, now referred to by mainland China as Zhongwei, in 1936.The ships were reportedly commandeered by the Imperial Japanese Navy and were sunk during World War II, media reports said.

A compensation suit was brought against Mitsui by the descendants of the founder of the Chinese company, and in 2007 a Shanghai court ordered Mitsui to pay compensation.

Mitsui said in a statement on Monday that it had been seeking an out-of-court settlement after China´s supreme court rejected its appeal in 2011, but the vessel was "suddenly" impounded.

The ship was expected to depart China later on Thursday, Japan´s Kyodo news agency said.

The Baosteel Emotion, designed to carry ore, was docked at Majishan island off Shanghai, according to Chinese media reports. (AFP)

Chinese ship in search for missing jet 'detects signal'

 

AP Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, centre, speaks as Malaysian Deputy Foreign Minister Hamzah Zainuddin, left, and Malaysian Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi listen during a press conference for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Saturday.

The ship Haixun 01 detected a pulse signal with a frequency of 37.5 kHz, the same frequency that an airplane's black box is expected to emit

China said on Saturday that a patrol ship carrying a black box detector had picked up a pulse signal in the southern Indian Ocean, where aircraft and vessels have been scouring the remote waters for any debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing.

The ship Haixun 01 detected a pulse signal with a frequency of 37.5 kHz - the same frequency that an airplane's black box is expected to emit, the State run Xinhua news agency said.

The signal was picked up at 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east latitude, Xinhua said, adding that it was "yet to be established whether it is related to the missing jet".

Aircraft and vessels from a number of countries have been scouring the waters of the southern Indian Ocean in a race against time to find any trace of the aircraft, which disappeared on March 8.

Batteries of the black box, which records flight data and is also equipped with an underwater signalling beacon, last for 30 days, leaving only until Sunday or Monday for the black box to be traced from its signals.

AP adds:

The Australian government agency coordinating the search for the missing plane said early Sunday that the electronic pulse signals reportedly detected by the Chinese ship are consistent with those of an aircraft black box. But retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the head of the search coordination agency, said they “cannot verify any connection” at this stage between the electronic signals and the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.