A Hydrographer Lost at 82
Lieutenant-Commander John Clarke, who died at the age of 82, served as a naval hydrographer and the project manager behind the 1981 recovery of five tons of "Stalin’s gold" from the cruiser HMS Edinburgh.
Torpedoed by a German Submarine
HMS Edinburgh was serving as the flagship of Rear-Admiral Stuart Bonham Carter—who commanded the escort of convoy QP11—on May 2, 1942. The cruiser was carrying 465 gold ingots packed in 93 wooden boxes. The cargo served as part-payment from Russia to Britain for Allied war material.
A German submarine, the U-456, torpedoed the flagship, resulting in the loss of 60 crew members and the entire gold shipment. The cargo, valued at approximately £1.5 million at the time, lay undisturbed on the seabed for nearly four decades.
Negotiations in Moscow and Research at Kew
In May 1980, diving contractor Ric Wharton contacted John Clarke—then working as the head of special projects for the Offshore Supply Association (OSA) in London—with a proposal to locate and retrieve the bullion, as reported by the source. Clarke initially approached the scheme with caution, requiring Wharton to call twice before reviewing the research compiled by salvor Keith Jessop from the Public Record Office at Kew.
Clarke insisted on involving a professional survey company, recruiting his former Dartmouth friend Carl Oberman at Racal Decca Survey. Over the following 12 months, Clarke coordinated a consortium of shipowners, divers, and surveyors while establishing a commercial "no cure, no pay" structure.
Studying the Sister Ship HMS Belfast
When the OSA relocated to Germany, Clarke resigned but soon returned as a consultant to manage the project. His work included conducting negotiations in Moscow. To prepare the diving team for the physical layout of the target, Clarke studied the interior of Edinburgh‘s sister ship, the museum ship Belfast. He also tracked down several survivors of the original sinking, including the ship’s former first lieutenant and its senior engineer.
Cutting Through the Armored Hull
The expedition departed in August 1981 aboard the diving support vessel Stephaniturm, with Clarke and Michael Stewart serving as co-project managers. According to the source, the mission utilized saturation divers working in pairs from a bell while breathing reclaimed helium—marking the first commercial deployment of helium recovery systems.
The team cut through the armored hull of Edinburgh, cleared a collapsed wireless office along with an eight-ton generator, and brought the first gold bar to the surface on September 16, 1981. By early October, deteriorating weather forced the suspension of the operation after 431 of the 465 gold bars were recovered. A subsequent expedition retrieved an additional 29 bars in 1986.