Product Description

In 1857 the SS Central America sank off the California coast. This is the true account of the search for one of the world's most fabled shipwrecks that led to the recovery of over half a billion dollars worth of gold and the astonishing scientific breakthroughs that established man's first working presence on the deep-sea frontier.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #441621 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The facts speak for themselves. In 1857, the Central America, a sidewheel steamer ferrying passengers fresh from the gold rush of California to New York and laden with 21 tons of California gold, encountered a severe storm off the Carolina coast and sank, carrying more than 400 passengers and all her cargo with her. She then sat for 132 years, 200 miles offshore and almost two miles below the ocean's surface--a depth at which she was assumed to be unrecoverable--until 1989, when a deep-water research vessel sailed into the harbour at Norfolk, Virginia, fat with salvaged gold coins and bullion estimated to be worth $1 billion.

Author Gary Kinder wisely lets the story of the Columbus-America Dicovery Group, led by maverick scientist and entrepreneur Tommy Thompson, unfold without hyperbole. Kinder interweaves the tale of the Central America and her passengers and crew with Thompson's own story of growing up landlocked in Ohio. An irrepressible tinkerer and explorer even in his childhood days, his progress to adulthood as a young man who always had "7 to 14" projects on the table or spinning in his head adds fascinating texture and depth to the story. One of those projects would become the unlikely recovery of the stricken steamer, and the resourcefulness and drive with which the project proceeds is contrasted poignantly in the narrative with the Central America's doomed battle to stay afloat in 1857.

Thompson, who spent nearly a decade planning and organizing his recovery effort, emerges as one of the great unsung adventurers of these times (the technical innovations alone required for such a task produced a windfall for the scientific community and defined a new state of the art for deep-sea explorers and treasure hunters), and the story of the steamer's sinking is compelling enough to make any reader wonder why the Central America sinking hasn't achieved greater notoriety in this Titanic-dominated area.

Time Magazine
'The summer's best nonfiction adventure story'

Time Out
'A riveting read'

Customer Reviews

"The greatest treasure ever found"--$1 billion in gold!
Gary Kinder tells three spell-binding narratives as he describes the search for the SS Central America, a sidewheel steamer which left Panama in 1857 and went down in the Atlantic while carrying gold from California (then valued at over $2 million). First person accounts by some of the survivors tell of the ship's journey, the hurricane which suddenly arose in the Atlantic, and the frantic efforts of crew and passengers to keep the engines fired and the ship afloat. Touching love stories revealed in these accounts give human faces to the drama, as women and children were put into lifeboats while their husbands stayed with the ship.

These survivor accounts alternate with the narrative of the life of young Tommy Thompson, a phenomenally inventive child who grew up in Ohio, studied engineering, became fascinated by the challenges of underwater engineering, and eventually worked for famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher, learning what kind of underwater equipment was needed but not available. In the early 1980s, Thompson, more interested in research than in treasure, decided to search for the SS Central America, with the backing of a group he convinced to underwrite his expedition. As the ship was thought to be in eight thousand feet of water, deeper than had ever been explored, Thompson would succeed only if he could design the necessary equipment.

The third story describes the search for the ship itself, a search which had two false starts before the site was finally located. Kinder develops almost unbearable tension as he describes how Thompson has to fend off rivals who are "treasure hunters," rather than scientists. Thompson's experimentation with equipment, the comprehensive documentation of the site through photographs and film, the legal battles for the rights to the salvage, and the final recovery of "treasure" ranging from gold bars and coins to beautifully preserved suitcases of clothing are vividly portrayed.

A book with appeal to historians, engineers, marine scientists, adventurers, and all who pursue dreams, Kinder brings the entire recovery process to life, honoring the efforts and heroism of the Central America's Captain Herndon, the indomitable spirit of Thompson as he developed unique robots and equipment to explore the ocean at depths of over a mile, and the scientific commitment, rather than treasure-hunting, which inspired Thompson, his crew, and his backers, the Columbus-America Discovery Group. Gripping, and filled with the wonder of discovery, this is non-fiction at its most exciting best. Mary Whipple

Payoff from persistence
Ship of Gold may be the ultimate Horatio Alger story. Kinder's account of the bizarre Tommy Thompson's quest to locate a 19th Century shipwreck is a delightful rags to riches story. Kinder weaves historical and contemporary events together seamlessly. He takes us back and forth in time, showing how a clear modern knowledge of each stage of the shipwreck led to the S.S. Central America's location at the bottom of the Atlantic.

Kinder is adept at the difficult task of maintaining two story lines in one book. The loss of the Central America is clearly a fascinating story in its own right. Its cargo, millions of dollars worth of gold bullion would have had significant impact on the nascent American economy. Kinder has performed a major feat in tracking the course of the journey and presenting the passenger accounts of the storm and sinking. He shows us the terror, the struggles to preserve the ship and the attempts by other vessels to rescue the survivors. His descriptive powers are excellent - the reader is kept enthralled as the tragedy unfolds.

Thompson's career is just as finely detailed as the historical account. Kinder shows us the workings of a firmly focussed mind. Thompson has the capacity to irritate and captivate those he deals with, whether on technical or economic levels. Clearly, he is infectious when presenting ideas or encouraging his followers. The results were almost foreordained that he would succeed in locating the wreck.

The finding, however, was anything but inevitable. Finding any sunken vessel at such depths, let alone the correct one, Kinder shows is a nearly insurmountable problem. Yet, in his account, success is achieved. It took ingenuity, persistence and insight, with some help from technology. Deep sea exploration devices, while not exactly in their infancy at this time, had serious limitations. Kinder recounts many of the issues Thompson and his team faced, but is reticent about their solutions. He presumably laboured under some form of non-disclosure agreement with Thompson. Even without explicit details, Thompson's ingenuity and persistence is clearly manifest. Kinder portrays him in the clearest possible light just as he illuminates the history of the Central America. The combination is an action-packed epic, in both historical and modern perspectives. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

3 books in one
Really three books in one; the harrowing, white- knuckle, real-life adventure of a prolonged shipwreck; the agonisingly meticulous search for the remains; the multi-million dollar rescue ... each one different, but inextricably entwined with the others. Without the clues from the diaries and memoirs of survivors, plus ships' logs, and the tenacious convictions of the salvor, this story would never have unfolded. As it is, the first third of the book had me on the edge of my seat for hours - what a tension-filled ride that was! I can recommend the book on the strength of that story alone and give it 5 stars.

What follows is less nail- biting, but nontheless exciting, as the clues unfold from information gleaned from all over the US, patched together by a man with a single- minded ambition to recover the richest prize ever recovered from the sea.

The fact that it lay in 8,000 feet of water takes up the final third of the book with the almost insuperable technical difficulties, but we are still left hanging, for we don't yet know the full value of the prize. The meticulous recovery methods employed ensured recovery in pristine condition - other quick and dirty methods would have been much cheaper and faster, but would have transformed the coins from 'gem' quality to 'fine' or less, depriving them of a another 2 or 3 times their worth, in a collectors' market. This market has probably still not been fully exploited, so there may still be millions waiting to be recouped ... and they deserve it!

A bonus is that the story of the ill-fated Captain Herndon's previous trip down the Amazon is to be released later this year (July 2000); 'Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon' written by the same Gary Kinder, it promises to be another spellbinding tale.

More like this, please.