Stories of lost treasure, and those of rumored lost treasure, always fascinate. When it involves a sunken ship, it is somehow more intriguing. This was the case with one of the most famous of sunken ships – the Lusitania.
“The day was May 7, 1915,” begins the story, “The Ocean Floor Is Covered with Money … they say,” by W.J. McIntyre in the April 1965 Coins magazine. “Eleven miles off the coast of Ireland, the steamship ‘Lusitania’ sailed at a leisurely pace, on this, the last day of its voyage from New York to Liverpool. From the bridge of the 795-foot-long ship Captain William Thomas Turner surveyed the distant coast. The liner had just come out of a day’s traveling through fog and bad weather and now the Captain was bringing the ship close to land so that he could check his bearings. Ahead lay an unmistakable landmark, the Old Head of Kinsale, a massive lump of rock, rising up over 260 feet from the coast.
“As the ship drew closer to the gigantic peninsula, it rose clear and sharp to starboard. On board, hundreds gathered to watch the first sight of land since they had left New York, over
