SUNKEN Worcestershire Sauce bottles salvaged from a shipwrecked steamer are fetching up to £300 on the internet.

The saucy idea to sell bottles of Lea & Perrins' world famous product has been dreamt up by Miami-based salvage company Odyssey Marine.

The consignment of empty bottles is part of a treasure trove recovered from the SS Republic, which sank in the Atlantic Ocean in 1865.

More than 51,000 gold and silver coins, worth about £50m, have been gleaned from the wreck so far.

And experts believe it could yet surpass the richest previous shipwreck booty of £62m recovered from SS Central America, which sank off the North Carolina coast in 1857.

But some punters are ignoring the gold-rush to buy their very own bottle of Worcester's greatest ever export.

The SS Republic was sailing from New York to New Orleans in October 1865 when it sank in a hurricane about 100 miles off the coast of Georgia.

The doomed ship was carrying 59 passengers, 500 barrels of freight and thousands of gold and silver coins.

After a tenacious 12-year search the wreck was located last year 1,700ft below the ocean surface by Odyssey Marine.

Among the many treasures the ghost ship has yielded are some 6,500 bottles - more than 200 varieties in all.

Lea & Perrins has been making its sauce in the city since 1837 when the "original and genuine" ingredients were blended by a chemist.

The small back rooms at 68 Broad Street were the laboratory and production base for Worcestershire Sauce, concocted by John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins.

It has been produced commercially at its Midland Road base ever since.