SA embroiled in scrap over Seychelles ship wreck

SA signed a deal to salvage R600m of sunken silver without knowing that a British company had already scooped it up. Now a UK court is set to decide whether SA has to pay a fee for a salvage job it never commissioned – for the treasure it had abandoned. The 60-ton, 2 364 silver piece cargo of the British ship SS Tilawa was back in the spotlight during a two-day UK Supreme Court of Appeal hearing late last month. The Sunday Times reports that the SA Government has laid claim to the cargo, which was salvaged by the British company Argentum in 2017 and put into safekeeping. Argentum subsequently lodged a salvage claim which SA is appealing. Judgment is expected in January. But while initial media attention focused largely on whether SA has sovereign ‘immunity’ from Argentum’s salvage claim, it has since emerged that SA in 2018 signed a Tilawa salvage contract with US-based Odyssey Marine – without realising that Argentum already had the rights. The precious cargo, originally intended to be melted into South African Union coins, had sat on the ocean bed near the Seychelles for more than 70 years, since it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in 1942 during World War 2. Nearly 300 people died.