On December 8-9, 1999 Sotheby's New York will auction off a consignment of recovered gold coins, dust, bars, nuggets and amalgam recovered from the wreckage of the SS Central America, which sank in 1857. Here are some excerpts from the catalog and publicity material released by Sotheby's:
For centuries, just as the spectre of gold has whetted man's imagination, so too has the allure, romance and excitement of sunken treasure. In September 1857, the SS Central America was caught in a vicious hurricane and sent to her watery grave a mile and a half beneath the furious waves of the Atlantic Ocean; with her went hopes, dreams and a vast fortune in gold. While some of the story of her loss is etched in sorrow, it is also imbued with nineteenth-century gallantry, bravado, and heroism of the first order.
The recovery of the cargo some one hundred and thirty years later required both high- and low-tech solutions, and brought to the surface what is without doubt the single richest and most important treasure in the annals of American sea salvage.
What was revealed is a snapshot in time of one of America's defining moments, the California Gold Rush. The treasure encompasses the very essence of that period, gold in all its forms; raw dust and nuggets, small balls of amalgam (the miners' most rudimentary way of purifying their finds), gold assay bars of all sizes - from five ounces to fifty-five pounds - and coins, both privately produced and those struck by a nascent San Francisco mint.
The ship foundered taking these astonishing riches with her, but her cargo was heavily insured and the underwriters paid out the claims immediately to assuage fears within the financial community and the public at large. When the gold was recovered so many years later, the insurance companies and their successor firms, both American and British, were found to still have valid title to a portion of the glittering cargo. The material presented in this auction is that awarded to the insurers of the commercial shipment aboard the Central America and represents approximately 8% of the total recovered. It is a phenomenal trove, containing material which has hitherto been unprecedented at auction: Glories of the California Gold Rush.
Recovery Of The Treasure Of The SS Central America
As the loss of such an enormous amount of gold, believed to be approximately three tons, was a drag on the economy, so too, it was a tempting goal for the enterprising. Hoping to recoup some of their losses, the insurance companies explored the possibility of raising the ship, even though her exact whereabouts were unknown. At 168 feet she might just be within reach, but not without difficulty, and the opportunity passed.
A year later the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company, which had covered part of the losses, was approached by one Brutus de Villeroi, an American citizen of French birth. He proposed to raise the treasure by means of his invention - a submarine. The insurance company's president seized the opportunity to recoup some of the loss, and entered into an agreement with the speculator, who agreed to bear all costs. The contract, dated July 28, 1858, rewarded Villeroi with 75% of any treasure recovered during the twelve-month period the contract was in effect. Of this too there was no result but an intriguing footnote.
As years turned to decades, the Central America remained beyond the reach of technology, lost in the unfathomable depths of the Atlantic. Attempts to locate her were mounted without success over the years, but she remained elusive. In August 1987, U.S. News and World Report first reported rumors that the long-lost ship had been found - off the North Carolina coast, some 8,500 feet down - but it was not until a year later that the find was confirmed. Once again, the Central America entered the imagination of the public; this time not because of her sad end, but because of the unimaginable wealth in Gold Rush riches soon to be freed from her hold.
The salvage and recovery of the Central America were carried out by Tommy Thompson and the Columbus-America Discovery Group utilizing a remarkable robotic recovery vessel, aptly named Nemo. Weighing some six tons, and looking like a cardboard box which has had random bits and pieces of orphaned scrap metal and electronics glued on, it was tethered by more than two and a half miles of cable to a refurbished icebreaker called the Arctic Discoverer.
Nemo, despite its ungainly appearance, utilized three-dimensional video imaging (which must have been dizzying to its operator), and carried an array of lights, lobster-like arms, and a vacuum; it was well suited to the task of recovering objects from the inky depths more than a mile and a half beneath the Atlantic's waves. The photographs it took of the debris field - passengers' trunks, the ship's sidewheel and bell, and the frequently bizarre life forms which now inhabit the wreck - are breathtaking.
According to Tommy Thompson's book, America's Lost Treasure, in October 1988 the first gold ingots were spotted. Amidst rotted wood, scattered gold dust, and coins, lay Gold Rush bars toppled like dominos; some glinting brilliantly in the glare of Nemo's lights, others lying like petrified wood, toned by the rust streams from the deteriorating iron of the ship.
Having sunk to such a great depth helped to preserve the Central America's glittering treasure. At some 8,500 feet the temperatures are frigid and the current is virtually nonexistent; thus the soft surfaces of the gold have not been etched by a flow of salt water or sediment, and the objects themselves have lain exactly where they fell. Columns of gold coins standing erect, as the wooden box around them rotted; piles of gold dust lay where once had been a bag.
The recovery of the Central America's treasure required all of Nemo's talents: grappling arms to lift gold bars which weighed up to sixty-two pounds, equipment to cover stacks of coins in silicone rubber for transport to the surface, and suction devices to delicately retrieve individual gold coins in a virtually perfect state of preservation. So too the vacuum was needed to retrieve the tiny flakes of gold, as fresh and as embracing as the day they had been panned from the waters of northern California. This was the "Garden of Gold" as Thompson has called it, one of the most astonishing discoveries and recoveries in the annals of sea salvage.
For more on the story of the Central America's doomed voyage and its aftermath, click on the links.
For information on the California Gold Rush, click here.
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