Right; she sank off the coast of the United States. And nobody got to her until 130 years +/- later. Here's the story:
As a mail steamer called the S.S.
Central America chugged along the Atlantic coast In 1857, bound for New York,
it was hit by a hurricane off the coast of South Carolina. More than 400 people
died, 38,000 pieces of mail were lost, and an estimated 21 tons of gold — a
huge portion of the national wealth recently prospected in the California Gold
Rush — plunged to the bottom of the Atlantic after a sinking that took upwards
of 40 hours. The shipwreck took with it so much commercial gold, and so many
newly-rich gold prospectors, that the incident triggered a downturn
in the U.S. economy that wasn't righted until after the Civil War.
Convincing 160 investors (mostly from his home state of Ohio) to give him almost $13 million to invent a robotic device to find and retrieve the loot from beneath 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) of open ocean, Thompson became a hero.
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| Thompson - then |
The ship was located by the use of Bayesian search theory and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) operated by the Columbus-America Discovery Group of Ohio, that was sent down on 11 September 1988.[3] Significant amounts of gold and artifacts were recovered and brought to the surface by another ROV built specifically for the recovery. Tommy Gregory Thompson led the group. Thirty-nine insurance companies filed suit, claiming that because they paid damages in the 19th century for the lost gold, they had the right to it. The team that found it argued that the gold had been abandoned. After a legal battle, 92% of the gold was awarded to the discovery team in 1996.[4]
The total value of the recovered gold was estimated at $100–150 million. A recovered gold ingot weighing 80 lb (36 kg) sold for a record $8 million and was recognized as the most valuable piece of currency in the world at that time.[5] Thompson was sued in 2005 by several of the investors who had provided $12.5 million in financing, and in 2006 by several members of his crew, over a lack of returns for their respective investments. Thompson went into hiding in 2012, and was located in January 2015, along with assistant Alison Antekeier, by US Marshals, and was extradited to Ohio, to provide an accounting of the expedition profits.[4][6][7][8]
A receiver was appointed to take over Thompson's companies and, if possible, salvage more gold from the wreck,[6] in order to recover money for Thompson's various creditors.[4] In 2014, Odyssey Marine Exploration was selected to undertake the salvage.[9] The original expedition only excavated "5 percent" of the ship.[4]
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| More Recent image of Tommy |
Then, in 2012, when Thompson was
called into court yet again, he didn't show up. A warrant was issued for his
arrest, but when the police tried to find him, they found instead that he had
disappeared completely. And catching him and his girlfriend Alison Antekeier
was difficult; not only is Thompson smart, he had "almost limitless
resources and approximately a 10-year head start," Peter Tobin, U.S.
Marshal for the Southern District of Ohio, told the Chicago Tribune.
When it came to disappearing, Thompson and
Antekeier did everything by the book, literally. Specifically it's a book
called "How to Be Invisible," which was found in Thompson's rented
Florida mansion (paid for with damp cash, according to the landlord) that they
fled in 2012, leaving behind nothing but some boxes of papers, several
disposable cell phones, and money straps marked for amounts of $10,000. After a
manhunt spanning two years, police found Thompson and Antekeier living in a
$200-per-night hotel near West Palm Beach. Although the police celebrated the
capture, it turns out they weren't much closer to finding the treasure.
Fast forward 28 years, and Tommy
Thompson, once celebrated as the genius who recovered a significant national
treasure, sits in an Ohio jail cell, refusing (or unable) to tell the authorities
where he hid the gold.
In case you're interested, when an
enormous treasure is discovered, it's no simple matter parsing out who it
belongs to. When Thompson and his crew first discovered the wreckage of the
Central America, legal troubles arose almost immediately. Insurance companies
claiming to have insured the ship in the 1800's, for instance, immediately sued
for a cut of the profits. In 2000, when Thompson sold a portion of the first
3-ton haul for an estimated $50 million, the investors who had funded the
expedition sued him for their share of the gold (they haven't seen an ingot of
it yet).
Thompson is currently sitting in an
Ohio jail cell, incurring a $1,000-per-day fine. That's on top of the $250,000
stemming from a criminal contempt charge and 208 hours of community service he
was slapped with for not showing up in court in 2012. And while Thompson sits
in jail, the wreckage of the S.S. Central America remains at the bottom of the
ocean. Subsequent expeditions have turned up even more treasure, like on a 2014 foray by the recovery outfit Odyssey
Marine Exploration.
But although he remembers a lot
about his discovery, Thompson says he can't remember where he hid the remaining
gold he didn't sell. He's even been given back his papers confiscated in 2012
so that he can try to put together the story, but he's not budging. An Ohio
court has ruled he is faking his memory problems, but the fact remains:
for now, most of the treasure from the SS Central America is lost — again.
Sounds like a Mexican stand-off to me! But who knows? Maybe he'll have a "come to Jesus" moment and suddenly recall where the loot is hidden. It sure ain't doing him any good in jail!
Until next time,
Fair Winds,
Old Salt
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