100 miles off the shore of Gloucester, Massachusetts, in April 21st 1860, the majestic 370-foot long steamer called The SS Connaught begins to fill with water as it made its journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Whilst all passengers on board were miraculously saved, its haul of gold coins worth millions of dollars’ sank to the bottom of the ocean.

Endurance Exploration Group have now confirmed that they have discovered the resting place of The SS Connaught. They are now in the process of conducting a plan to retrieve the suspected bounty. CEO of the company, Mich Eldrd, has successfully built his business on the profitable shipwreck salvage business.

At this stage many people are probably imaging gold obsessed pirates desperately searching their treasure maps for the X that marks the spot and hoping to strike it lucky. The modern salvage industry however has moved far from this stereotypical image and employs the latest technology including sonar to produces accurate undersea maps of wreck sites and unmanned submersible vehicles to explore and verify even the most inaccessible wrecks in the race to identify and salvage sources of treasure gold.

When you throw into the mix the estimated 1500 shipwrecks that are reasonably believed to contain sunken treasure then the potential for a lucrative market becomes clear. Identifying wrecks is unfortunately the easy part, historical documents and ship manifests are notoriously unreliable sources often due to the illicit nature of the cargo being carried and the wish by ship Captains to avoid port taxes and increase their personal earnings.

Treasure gold is probably not for everyone, but for those wishing to inject a little variety into their portfolio or for the casual investor looking more for interesting pieces the established history, that can be many hundreds of years old, adds a fascinating story to the well established intrinsic value of this non traditional source of Gold.

Endurance Exploration Group researched 1,500 shipwrecks yet to be found, they then brought this number down to 20 after further research. The SS Connaught is their best bet and if found the tale of the missing gold coins will finally be put to an end.

Photograph credit: Endurance Exploration Group