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Ship of
Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
The
History and Discovery of the World's Richest Shipwreck
by Gary Kinder
- Synopsis
In September 1857, the SS Central America, a
side-wheel steamer carrying nearly six hundred passengers
returning from the California Gold Rush, foundered in a
hurricane and sank two hundred miles off the Carolina
coast. Over four hundred lives and twenty-one tons of
California gold were lost. It was the worst peacetime
disaster at sea in American history, a tragedy that
remained lost in legend for over a century. In the
1980s, a young engineer from Ohio set out to do what no
one, not even the United States Navy, had been able to
do: establish a working presence on the deep-ocean floor
and open it to science, archaeology, mining, medicine,
and recovery. The SS Central America became the
target of his project. After years of intensive efforts,
Tommy Thompson and the Columbus-America Discovery Group
found the Central America in eight thousand feet of
water, and in September 1989 they sailed into Norfolk
with her recovered treasure: gold coins, bars, nuggets,
and dust, plus steamer trunks filled with period clothes,
newspapers, books, journals, and even an intact cigar
sealed under water for 130 years. Life magazine
called it "the greatest treasure ever found."
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