20 tons of silver on shipwreck discovered off the coast of Ireland

The Mantola, which was carrying silver worth £11.4m in today’s money from London to Calcutta during the First World War, was discovered by US marine exploration company Odyssey.

Thanks to a deal with the UK Department for Transport, the company is expected to keep up to 80 per cent of the worth of the cargo.

Marine archeologist Neil Cunningham Dobson from St Andrews was on board an Odyssey craft when the Mantola was identified via a remote tethered underwater explorer.

“We were able to get a clear view. I saw the word Glasgow then the word Mantola. Then we knew for sure,” he said.

A shape had been picked up by sonar in roughly the right area – but the name on the side of the ship gave positive proof.

The wreck was found around 100 miles from the steam ship Gairsoppa, a Second World War steamer carrying £127m worth of silver, discovered by the same company in September.

Mr Cunningham Dobson, who has worked as a consultant for Odyssey since 2001, said the wreck was sitting upright on the seabed, around 2,500 metres below the surface.

“You could see the hole where the torpedo hit,” he said.

The Mantola, carrying silver to pay for war supplies, was less than a year old when she steamed out of London on 4 February 1917, captained by David James Chivas, the great nephew of the Chivas Brothers, founders of the Chivas Regal brand of whisky.

She was carrying 18 passengers and 165 crew members on a journey expected to take around a month. But four days out of port a German submarine fired a torpedo and she was lost. All on board reached the lifeboats, and only seven were lost at sea when a lifeboat sunk.

Further exploration of the wreck, which is lying about 200 miles from the coast of Galway, will have to wait until the North Atlantic weather improves in spring.

Researchers from Odyssey will study plans of the ship as well as photographs and film taken by remotely operated underwater vehicles and work out how to extract the cargo.

At more than a mile below the surface, the wreck is far too deep to be approached by divers so all the work will be done by remotely operated underwater robots controlled from onboard ship.

A spokesperson for the Department for Transport said: “The contract for the salvage of the SS Mantola was awarded to Odyssey Marine Exploration after they discovered the wreck during their search for the SS Gairsoppa. While we do not comment on the specifics of such commercial arrangements, the rate of return on this contract is higher than average.”