The Giant Beast | This 3,000-Ton Gold Dredge Sank Twice — The Second Time Was Worse

Dredge No. 4 was a 3,000-ton gold-mining monster — eight stories of machinery floating on a wooden hull. It survived decades in the brutal Yukon, processed enormous amounts of gravel, and once pulled roughly 800 ounces of gold in a single day. Then it sank. The first recovery took three years. The second time, after a dam failure in 1960, the dredge disappeared deeper into ice, silt and mud and stayed there for roughly 30 years. Raising it eventually required Parks Canada and a Canadian military engineering unit to excavate, refloat and relocate the enormous machine. But even after it was saved, Dredge No. 4 nearly suffered another catastrophic collapse. In this documentary, we follow the strange history of one of North America’s largest wooden-hulled bucket-line dredges — the gold it produced, the engineering that kept it alive, the sinkings that nearly destroyed it, and why the historical record itself cannot even agree on whether it sank twice or three times. Subscribe for more stories about the giant machines, industrial disasters and forgotten engineering that built the modern world. #GoldDredge #MiningHistory #DredgeNo4 #IndustrialHistory #GiantMachines #Klondike #Yukon #GoldMining