RMS Niagara
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- See also USS Niagara for several warships of this name.
RMS Niagara was a 13,415 gross ton ocean liner, length 165.5m x beam 20.2m, two funnels, two masts, triple screw, speed 17 knots. Accommodation for 290-1st, 223-2nd, and 191-3rd class passengers. She was built by John Brown & Company, Clydebank, launched on 17 August 1912 and owned by the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand.
At the start of World War II, RMS Niagara was in service with the Canadian-Australasian Line from Auckland, New Zealand, to Suva and Vancouver. On 19 June 1940 she had just left Auckland when, off Bream Head, Whangarei, she struck a mine laid by the German auxiliary cruiser Orion and sank in 125 meters of water. No lives were lost but a large consignment of gold from the Bank of England went down with the ship.
On 2 February 1941 the resting place of the Niagara was located. Armed only with a viewing diving chamber, a radio and a grab lowered from the surface the brothers William and John Edwards Jonstone successfully recovered more than eight tonnes of gold after blasting a hole in the hull of the ship. 555 gold bars were removed, followed in 1953 by a further 30 gold bars, leaving 5 bars still unrecovered in the wreck.
[edit] Further reading
- R. J. Dunn - Niagara Gold: The romantic story of sunken treasure retrieved from record ocean depths in New Zealand (Wellington, NZ, 1942)
- Keith Gordon - Deep Water Gold: the story of RMS Niagara – the quest for New Zealand’s greatest shipwreck treasure ISBN 0-473-10056-8
- James Taylor - Gold from the Sea George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., London, 1943
