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The robot Nemo 8,500 feet underwater
at the recovery site of the 1857 Shipwrecked
S.S. Central America.
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For more than a century, the legends and mystery of the “Ship of
Gold” lured would-be salvagers to the Carolina Coast. Books were written
documenting the disaster. Tales abounded of gold bars weighing up to 750 ounces.
Ultimately the lure of the S.S. Central America attracted the attention of the
world’s best ocean engineers and scientists. Still, it seemed impossible that
the lost treasure ship could ever be found and recovered from the deep waters of
the Atlantic Ocean.
Shipwreck Located After 131 Years
In 1988, ocean engineer Tommy Thompson, geologist Bob Evans, and the Columbus
Discovery Group went in search of the treasure ship S.S. Central America. Dr.
Lawrence Stone, a leading expert on search theory, was brought in for the
search. He had gathered data from the 1968 search in the Atlantic of the U.S.
nuclear submarine Scorpion. With the aid of sophisticated computers, the
scientists built sophisticated search models similar to those you've seen used
in recent airplane crashes in the Atlantic.
An enterprise of 161 partners raised $10 million dollars over three years to
fund the team of 40 scientists, engineers and technicians in the search. The
advent of side-scanning sonar helped to map the ocean floor in detail. After two
years of searching, a ghostly image of the sidewheel of a steamship and a ships
bell appeared on the monitors. Without a doubt, this was the S.S. Central
America! In a strange coincidence, it was the same day September 11th some 131
years earlier that the S.S. Central America began taking on water during the
hurricane.
Finding
the "Ship of Gold" Was An Historic Event
In many ways, locating the S.S. Central America was a more important event
for Americans than locating the Titanic. After all, this was U.S. mail
steamship, filled with historical artifacts from the California Gold
Rush. It was a treasure ship filled with gold unlike any sunken ship in
history. Naturally, the next problem was locating the valuable gold and
bringing it to the surface.
The team used the eyes and arms of the underwater robot Nemo in the process.
With the aid of lights, video cameras and robotic arms, Nemo was able to
search to the deepest depths more than a mile and a half below the Atlantic.
Then, unexpectedly the first gold ingots came to light. Amidst rotted wood,
scattered gold dust, gold bars and gold coins began to appear. And now,
after 12-years of legal battles, the Supreme Court has ruled and the coins
are now available to American public. If you'd like to speak to a Gold
Specialist about these coins, call Austin Rare Coins at 1-800-928-6468 seven
days a week.
