Underwater treasure: silver worth $40 million was raised from the sunken "Indian Titanic" (5 photos)

The merchant steamship SS Tilawa was sunk in 1942 by two Japanese torpedoes. And the silver bars from its hold were secretly raised decades later.





The valuable cargo of a cruise liner nicknamed the "Indian Titanic" has been secretly raised from the bottom 75 years after it was sunk by a Japanese submarine.

On November 20, 1942, the SS Tilawa left Mumbai, India, for Durban, South Africa, with 958 people on board, including 732 passengers and four gunners. But it was sunk by two torpedoes fired by a Japanese submarine 1,200 km northeast of the Seychelles.



The ship, which sank at a depth of more than 4,500 meters in the Indian Ocean, was left with silver worth more than 40 million dollars. The bars weighing almost 60 tons were stored in the hold. They were intended for the Union of South Africa for minting coins.





With only nine lifeboats on the ship, 280 people died, with the rest rescued by the British navy ships HMS Birmingham and SS Carthage.

With the tragedy lost in the nightmarish news from the front, it was not until 2014 that attention was again drawn to the "Indian Titanic" and its valuable cargo.

That same year, British salvage company Argentum Exploration Ltd. began a deep-sea search mission to locate the wreck and survey the area.

The ship was at a depth of about 4,500 meters. After sinking, it lay on its port side on a rocky ledge.



Three years after the survey, the Argentum crew successfully recovered 2,364 of the 2,391 silver bars on board. The valuable cargo was found in the ship's opium room after the mail and baggage compartments were found empty.

The silver was then transported to the UK, where Argentum, a company owned by hedge fund manager Paul Marshall, claimed it under maritime law.

However, South Africa denied the claims and the matter went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in May that the silver, worth $43 million, belonged to South Africa.



Meanwhile, two passengers who were on board the Tilawa have survived to this day. They gather every year for a survivors' dinner to commemorate the forgotten tragedy.

Elvind Jani, who was three years old at the time, spoke about the tragedy in an interview for the BBC's Witness History programme.

"My mother carried me and tied me behind her with a shawl so that my hands were free, and then slowly lowered me down the rope into the lifeboat," he said, with each boat holding 20 people and some biscuits and water.

Another passenger, Tej Prakash Mangat, then aged nine, said she felt the water rising at her feet before her father could take her to safety in a life raft.

Instead of staying safe with his daughter, Mangat's father went back to look for her brothers and promised to return soon.

At that moment, a second torpedo hit the SS Tilawa.

"I saw people screaming and crying and looked at the ship. I was waiting for my father. It was a full moon when we heard a loud explosion. It was the second torpedo. I saw black smoke and the ship sank," Mangat's father was saved by clinging to the side of the boat, while her brothers died.