Offshore Gold Dredging to Recover Deposits in Alaska
Unique among mining enterprises in the public eye today is the Offshore Gold Dredging company, which is fitting up a steamship as a sea- going dredge to recover gold from the submarine deposits in Bering sea, off the coast of Alaska. 
These deposits were discovered 30 years ago by Henry Finch who mined them by cutting holes in the ice in midwinter and going down to the sea floor in diving suits with a four-inch suction hose.
Captain John C. Benson, an experienced navigator and mining man who joined the Nome gold rush of 1900, is head of the Offshore Gold. Henry Finch Jr., son of the discoverer of the buried placers, will be a member of the expedition and will help to "spot" the best sunken gold deposits. The son is  now in the submarine diving business in Seattle, and in addition to himself will provide two experienced deep-sea divers for the floating dredge.
The steamship Gold King is now being fitted with two 10-inch centrifugal pumps, with clamshell dredges and with all the ordinary
equipment of a placer mine. The two decks of the steamship will hold a complete gold-separation plant, with sluice-boxes, mercury
plates, tables ana jigs. Only the rockers ordinarliy found in placer plants will be missing. The necessary rocking will be provided by
the motion of the boat.
PROMINENT ENGINEER
George L. Holmes of San Francisco, one of the country's best-known dredge engineers, is responsible for the design of the Gold King and will accompany the ship on its maiden voyage. Later Holmes expects to construct other sea-going dredges, profiting by the experience to be gained on the Gold King, for use off such known gold-bearing coasts as Kamchatka, the Anadir river, in Siberia; the west shore of Vancouver Island, northern California, Sonora, Costa Rica and Honduras.
There are well authenticated reports of submarine gold deposits off some of the Philippine islands and off the coast of Australia.
Among the future plans of the company are deep-sea prospecting ship, equipped and supplied for service anywhere in the world,
which will be designed merely to locate gold deposits under water, leaving the actual recovery to dredges built for the special locality.
CAPTAIN BENSON
Captain Benson, who is president of Offshore Gold Dredging company, is a native of Hammerfest, Norway, northernmost city of Europe. He, has spent all his mature life, however, in the United States and American possessions.
After the first season of gold recovery off Nome he plans to return to Hammerfest, which he left in a sailing vessel, by airplane, across northern Canada, Greenland, Iceland and Spitzbergen. 
Leon Starmont. head of the Spokane office of the Home Owners' Loan corporation, is executive vice president of Offshore Gold Dredg-