1944 SS John Barry WWII Shipwreck - NGC Certified With Original COA

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The Story Behind This Historic Coin<br>The Silver Ship<br>Written by Arthur Clark<br>Minted in Philadelphia at Saudi Arabia's request, a cargo of three million silver Saudi one-riyal coins was shipped to the oil port of Dhahran, in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, late in World War II. But the Liberty ship that was transporting them, the<br>S. S. John Barry,<br>never arrived. Torpedoed by a German U-boat in the Arabian Sea more than 185 kilometers (100 nautical miles) off Oman in August 1944, the<br>John Barry<br>sank in waters so deep that no one thought she could ever be reached.<br>Among the debris that marked her grave swirled rumors that, in addition to the coins, she was carrying a huge cargo of silver bullion. Gerald Richards, now in his mid-70's, vividly recalls the night the<br>John Barry<br>sank. He was a Merchant Marine purser aboard the US cargo ship.<br>"We were two days and eight hours out from Aden," he says. "I was just getting around to going to bed at 9:55 p.m. when the first torpedo hit. It rocked us, I'll say that."<br>Richards was thrown into oil-covered, wreckage-strewn seas when one of the davits holding his lifeboat snapped before the boat could be lowered. After an endless 15 minutes in the water, he was picked up by another lifeboat. Later that night he and his shipmates watched as another torpedo slammed into the<br>John Barry,<br>breaking her in two and sinking her in 2600 meters (8500') of water.<br>One of the few remaining survivors of the Liberty ship's last voyage, Richards knew there was something special about the<br>John Barry's<br>cargo when he saw guards with machine-guns on board as the ship loaded in Philadelphia in July 1944. That kind of security was "very, very unusual," he recalls.<br>Amid a torrent of cargo that included refinery equipment, lengths of pipe, military trucks and a Caterpillar tractor, Richards didn't see 750 wooden boxes go into the heavily guarded No. 2 hold. Stencilled on each box was the word "Dhahran," the name of a new Middle East oil outpost.<br>Secrecy was the watchword in wartime, and the<br>John Barry's<br>crew should have known nothing about her secret cargo. But, says Richards, "I always figured there was silver bullion aboard because of the security they put on until we sailed." After the war, he says, he forgot about the matter until 1994, when he was shown a 50-year-old letter from the superintendent of the United States Mint in Philadelphia stating that three million silver coins had actually been on board.<br>The<br>John Barry<br>crossed the Atlantic in a convoy and proceeded south through the Suez Canal to Aden. Then, mysteriously, she was ordered to sail through the Arabian Sea—alone, on a zigzag course, and in radio silence. When a German submarine picked up her trail, the<br>John Barry<br>didn't stand a chance. Astonishingly, only two crewmen were lost in the sinking. The next day, ships picked up the survivors and ferried them to shore.<br>According to published accounts of the sinking, both Richards and the<br>Barry's<br>captain, Joseph Ellerwald, stated that the ship had been carrying $26 million worth of silver bullion. Since silver was then worth 48 cents per troy ounce, that reckoning—never corroborated by the US government—would mean that the vessel's cargo had included more than 1688 metric tons (1857 US tons) of silver.<br>"I've asked myself how I knew: Everything was confidential then," says Richards, who now lives in Independence, Missouri. "Up till I saw the letter from the mint, I just figured there was silver bullion."<br>Richards might also have asked himself why the silver, whether bullion or coins, was headed for Dhahran.<br>The small town on Saudi Arabia's east coast was the regional headquarters of what was then the Arabian American Oil Company, known as Aramco, now the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco). It was also the site of a new US consulate. Oil had been discovered there just six years before (See<br>Aramco World,<br>May/June 1988), and Dhahran's population was only a few hundred men. But it was becoming clear that there were considerable oil deposits under Saudi Arabia's soil, certainly in commercially interesting quantities, and oil was the lifeblood of the war eff