Stalin's Silver: The Sinking of the U.S.S. John Barry

By John Beasant

Book Overview

August 28, 1944, off the coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea: three torpedoes fired by German submariners aboard U-859 ram an American merchant ship, the USS John Barry. The 7200-ton surface vessel caries Saudi silver riyals worth $80 million, and another $300 million in silver bullion. When the torpedoes strike, they tear the John Barry into two pieces, delivering the ship and her treasure to a watery grave 8500 feet below sea level. For forty-five years the wreck lay inaccessible on the ocean floor. But in 1989, Skeikh Ahmed Farid al Aulaqi acquired salvage rights and enlisted the help of the French International Maritime Institute and Jean Roux. Roux had led an expedition recovering artifacts from the Titanic; now he and his team would develop the technology and the technique to permit an operation of deep-sea recovery never before deemed possible. In Stalin's Silver , John Beasant recreates the USS John Barry's fateful voyage and death-defying salvage. With help from the mission's survivors, Deasant resolves a fifty-year-old mystery: Where was the merchant ship taking its precious cargo? Stalin's Silver is an exceptional account of politics and intrigue during the Second World War. It is also the story of the world's most valuable and mysterious sunken treasure, and the men who recovered it.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312267819
• ISBN13: 9780312267810
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.6" x 6.6"

Customer Reviews

THE MYSTERY LIBERTY SHIP

The USS John Barry was a mystery ship in all respects: what was its cargo, where was it going and why? The author explores the multiple mysteries with all the forces at his command, yet is obstructed at every turn: the US government withholds documents, the ship lies split in half at the bottom of the Arabian Sea and the weather prevents the 1994 salvage operation from looking in all the holds. Given these problems, the author has to be credited with a heroic effort, not faulted for failing to solve all the mysteries. He unearths and reasonably interprets historical documents, both American and Soviet; he interviews people of the time, including one of the German crew on the U-boat that sunk the John Barry in August 1944; and he provides backgrounds and portraits of the daredevils who try to recover the treasure from the deep. Best of all, he reviews the WWII history with a fresh eye, and sees that Lend-Lease to Britain served a far different purpose than the lifesaver role it played for the USSR: for Britain it was meant to break the economy, destroy the colonial system and to make the UK more dependent on the USA. All in all, this is an offbeat story with lots of difficulties, but with the grist and thrill of reality. A lot of funny things happened during President Roosevelt's last year, and the mystery voyage of the USS John Barry seems to be one of them. All archival documents relating to it, of course, should be released, along with all other government documents of 50 years duration.

My father was there.

I found the book to be very interesting. My father survived the sinking of the USS John Barry. He thought that they were transporting gold. He also predicted some day there would be an attempt to recover the cargo. The details of the voyage, sinking, and actions of the crew, are in accordance with his report. He would have enjoyed this book.