NEW YORK (AP) _ In 1903, a barge carrying about 8,000 silver bars belonging to the Guggenheim family spilled the precious cargo in the Arthur Kill, a busy shipping channel between Staten Island and New Jersey.
Most of the silver bars were recovered, but it's believed about 1,400 _ worth $6,000 to $7,000 each are still beneath the water.
Now Aqua Survey, a company in Hunterdon County, N.J., which specializes in environmental research, is trying to locate them, using advanced technology to map the waters.
A five-member team was out last week in a small boat in the harbor's Story's Flats, just north of the Outerbridge Crossing and south of the Arthur Kill landfill on Staten Island. It probed the murky bottom, usually coming up with thick mud and sediment nicknamed "black mayonnaise."
Ken Hayes, president of the Kingwood-based company, said they do not fancy themselves treasure hunters but rather scientists with curiosity.
The team has used advanced global positioning software, electromagnets and sonar equipment to locate about 270 potential targets. The software is designed to locate silver but not iron, making the search easier "though we could also just find a car battery," Hayes said ashe piloted a motorboat on the relatively calm water last week.
Late in the evening of September 27, 1903, a tow of 13 canal boats and the barge Harold left the East River docks in Manhattan, bound for the American Smelting and Refining Company plant at Perth Amboy, N.J. The tow was being pulled by the tug Ganoga, and only the Harold carried cargo – but what a cargo it was! Stacked neatly on her open deck were almost 300 tons
of silver-lead alloy ingots that had arrived from Mexico earlier in the week.
According to all accounts, the bay was flat and calm, with a bright moon. Harold’s position in the tow was dead aft and outboard, moored to the port side of one of the canal boats. The only crewman on board was Peter Moore whose only real job was to inspect the mooring lines once in a while and check to see that she hadn’t sprung any bad leaks – not too taxing and, in fact downright boring at times. Moore spent the evening talking and drinking with the canal boaters who eventually offered him a comfortable bunk on their boat. After one last check of his barge, Moore turned in for the night.
Somewhere around 2 a.m., a thunderous crash woke every man in the after end of the tow. Moore scrambled on deck with the rest of the men and looked over at the barge. Her lines were secure and she was riding all right, but in the bright moonlight he saw that her load of silver ingots was gone!
Background into incident
Shaky and confused, Moore made his way forward over the other canal boats to report the incident to Ganoga’s captain, a pilot named Hennessey. He stood in the bow of the lead boat shouting and waving at Hennessey, but couldn’t make himself understood over the rumble of the tug’s big engine. Eventually, he gave up and went back to bed, later saying he thought that the smelter owners must have sent another tug to take Harold out of the tow and substitute an empty barge in her place. Apparently Moore hadn’t noticed that around 200 bars of silver still lay on the deck. The loss wasn’t discovered until the Ganoga arrived at the smelter the next morning.
The Guggenheim family, who owned the silver, demanded an explanation. Their insurance agents demanded a full investigation. And everyone demanded top security and secrecy over the entireincident. Both Moore and Hennessey were interrogated at length by the insurance men as
well as agents of the Baxter Wrecking Company, who’d been hired to locate the silver. But Moore’s testimony was next to worthless, and Hennessey’s was sketchy at best. They knew the crash had occurred about 2 a.m., but neither man had bothered to take bearings or mark the position in any way. The best guess was that the incident – whatever it had been – happened somewhere between Elizabethtown and Perth Amboy, a distance of twelve and one-half
miles, on a possible path more than a mile wide.
What they did know, because there wasn’t any other possible explanation, was that all that silver was somehow dumped in the river – nearly 6,900 bars of seventy-five percent silver. There are a couple of ways it could’ve happened.
When Harold left the East River docks she had nothing in her hold and almost 300 tons of ingots
stacked on deck, six to eight feet above the water line. If Captain Hennessey was trying to save time by cutting corners in the channel, she could have bumped a sandbar off one of the many points of land that jut out into the sound along Ganoga’s route. Being top heavy, she would have flipped like a tippy canoe.
Or, since she was know to leak a little, she might have had sufficient water in her bilge so that a
swell or even the wake of a passing ship could have caused the load to shift suddenly, making her
roll. In either case, as soon as the silver slid overboard, Harold would have come back on an even
keel.
Keeping as low a profile as possible, the Baxter crew began searching the vast expanse of water
using wire drags and sounding leads. Secrecy was of the utmost importance. In 1903 the waterfront dives along the New York-New Jersey shore were full of lawless, desperate men who lived by preying on others. Robbery and murder on the waterways were commonplace, and more than one barge captain had his throat slit for the sake of a few buckets
of coal. The lives of the Baxter crew would be in serious jeopardy if word of the silver got out.
For nine days they cruised the barge’s route,trying not to draw attention to themselves. Finally, on October 5, tapping along the bottom in an area known as Story’s Flats, the crew hit metal.Immediately, the salvage vessels Fly and John Fuller were dispatched to the scene.
For ten days they managed to salvage without drawing undue attention – first by digging with an
orange peel bucket, then by sending divers down to find and pick up individual ingots. Slowly they recovered about 85 percent of the lost treasure.
The insurance company paid off on the estimated 1,000 bars that remained on the bottom. Surprisingly, there have been very few reported attempts to find them.
It’s surprising because the “Silver of Story’s Flats” is a treasure rivaling those of the early
pirate ships – but is more accessible and doesn’t involve any of the red tape of dealing with
foreign governments. Each of the estimated 1,000 ingots weighs 75 pounds and consists of 75
percent silver. At today’s prices, they’re worth roughly $6,000,000.
The last attempt to get the silver – now settled deep into the mud of the badly polluted Story’s
Flats – was made by The Big Apple Silver Mine Inc. of New York City in the mid-1980s. They had to jump through all kinds of hoops – for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and a private group called the Natural Resources Protective Association of Staten Island. Big Apple eventually got the salvage permit, but were held up for four years by company problems. Last word was they
never got into the field.
International Explorations is gearing up to succeed where Big Apple failed. We’ve been
brought in as expert consultants by American WetWood, who have been researching the site and
securing permits for the past three years. We’re putting together a crew with a goal of anchoring
off Story’s Flats by the summer of 2007. With more sophisticated technology than was ever available before, and with a new piece of detection equipment designed and built by Tony Kopp, we’re confident that this expedition will yield something extraordinary.
Posts
