Largest amount of precious metal ever found at sea; British vessel SS Gairsoppa was returning fromIndia in 1941 when she was torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat
London A shipwreck holding silver worth £150million has been discovered in the Atlantic — the largest amount of precious metal ever found at sea. About 200 tons of the bullion sank off Ireland with British cargo steamer the SS Gairsoppa when it was hit by a German torpedo in 1941. But it has now been found by US treasure hunters hired by UK Department for Transport.They will now attempt to salvage the silver and will have to hand 20% of its value to the British Treasury. Treasure hunter: The RV Odyssey Explorer, bristling with high-tech equipment, which went looking for and found the wreck of the Gairsoppa The US team lowered a robot 2.9 miles to the seabed and it found a gaping hole in the side of the ship where the torpedo had struck 70 years ago. Greg Stemm, chief executive of underwater archaeology and salvage firm Odyssey Marine Exploration, said: “We were fortunate to find the shipwreck sitting upright, with the holds open and easily accessible. “This should enable to us to unload cargo through the hatches, as would happen with a ship alongside a cargo terminal.” Valued then at 600,000 pounds, the silver today is worth about £150million, which would make it history's largest recovery of precious metals lost at sea, Odyssey said. After a competitive tender process the British government awarded Odyssey an exclusive salvage contract for the cargo, and under the agreement Odyssey will retain 80 percent of the silver bullion salvaged from the wreck. In May 2007, Odyssey announced it had found half a million silver coins and hundreds of gold objects from a ship they code-named the "Black Swan," which went down in 1804 off the Strait of Gibraltar. The find is being contested by Spain, which claims the trove. Sunken Treasure Hoard: The ship, which was torpedoed after breaking away from a convoy, was carrying silver • The 125-metre Gairsoppa had been sailing from India back to Liverpool in February 1941 bearing a cargo of silver, pig iron and tea, and was in a convoy of ships when a storm struck. • Running low on fuel, the Gairsoppa broke off from the convoy and set a course for Galway, Ireland. • It was hit by a German torpedo in the contested waters of the North Atlantic • Of the 85 people on board, only one survived • The Gairsoppa came to rest nearly 4,700 m below the surface. A previous effort to locate the shipwreck failed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As late as the 1750s, India had an export surplus; its favourable trade balance was matched by bullion import, as the world had nothing else to offer India in return for its fine textiles. British colonialism reversed this process, first by monopolising trade and then — in the early 19th century — by demolishing Indian industry. During the period when British trade established supremacy, goods were exported by India but the bullion never reached the country. British merchants purchased goods in rupee receipts in India, and exchanged them abroad for bullion. Much before Dadabhai Naoroji and the so-called ‘modern nationalist’ school came up with a figure for India’s drain of wealth, Mughal chroniclers had put it at more than 100,000 million pound sterling per annum. Dadabhai NAVROJIproved that the average annual income of an Indian was barely Rs 20. Examining the import and export figures for 37 years, he proved that India's exports exceeded its imports by Rs 50 crores (approximately $135 million) annually. In fact, bullion owed to India helped finance England’s Industrial Revolution. Then, in order to flood Indian markets with European goods, India was de-industrialised. From being a supplier of luxury goods, it was turned into an exporter of raw material. Between 1820 and 1840, de-industrialisation closed down more than 12,000 markets, controlled and operated by peasants and small entrepreneurs in northern India The ideological moorings of imperialism have been many. From liberal
tradition of orientalism to that of not so good utilitarianism. All
these affected the political as well as the economic fabric. The
imperial powers started as trading organisations and later developed
into full fledged political powers. This transformation was to a large
extent based on the control over resources. In India's context, this had
meant things like:
# Use of territorial revenue by British trading company as 'investment',
whereby during the eighteenth century, it would use the territorial
revenue of Bengal to buy goods from Bengal and export that to Europe,
and would show that this money was their 'investment' in India!
#Trade imbalance that had gradually transformed India from an exporting
country in goods like Cotton to that of an importing country of cotton.
#Transfer of wealth in form of invisibles eg. transfer of profit,
pensions, cost of maintenance of Office of Secy etc all these coming
from Indian revenue.
Destruction of handicraft industries (during the later eighteenth
century), when the industrial revolution had only just started~ and
perhaps the societies were poised in a balanced way. This is also
related to an important phenomena of "proto-industrialisation" and
"deindustrialisation". # Destruction of technological industries like shipping in the early nineteenth century. Here it is interesting to note that shipping of India was not outdone by any Western technology, but by the non-technological political policies made in Britain. Scholars like Gunder Frank also puts the western superiority in areas like shipping only by 1840s. All these meant technological impoverishment in the long run Churchill's legacy leaves Indians questioning his hero status ...www.bbc.com › news › world-asia-india-53405121 Jul 20, 2020 — A cyclone and flooding in Bengal in 1942 triggered the famine. But the policies of Sir Winston Churchill and his cabinet are blamed for making ... Sep 8, 2017 — 5. Famines in India. Between 12 and 29 million Indians died of starvation while it was under the control of the British Empire, as millions of tons of ... Bengal famine of 1943 - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org › wiki › Bengal_famine_of_1943 The Bengal famine of 1943 was a famine in the Bengal province of British India during World ... Aid increased significantly when the British Indian Army took control of ... given provincial governments in November 1941 under the Defence of India Act, 1939. ... Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Famine had been a recurrent feature of life the Indian sub-continental countries of India, ... The first major famine that took place under British rule was the Bengal Famine of 1770. ... place in the historiography of famine due to Sen's classic work of 1981 titled Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Apr 16, 2019 — PDF | During British rule India and other colonial coutries were visited by devastating and recurrent famines.During ... poverty, chronic hunger and starvation. Over nine ... 1918-19, 1920-21, 1936-38, 1939-40, 1941-43 and 1946- WHEN INDIA WAS STARVING AND DYING BRITISH COLONIAL RULERS WERE TAKING SILVER OUT OF THE COUNTRY IN A HURRY FOR 2ND WORLD WAR! |