After An American Steamer Ship Sank In 1857 With Over 30,000 Pounds Of Gold On Board, A Marine Engineer From Ohio Discovered The Wreck Over 130 Years Later And Went On The Run With Millions Of Dollars
On September 12, 1857, an American steamer ship named the SS Central America sank off the coast of the Carolinas while carrying a total of 578 passengers and crew members.
The ship had over 30,000 pounds of gold on board. At the time, it was considered the worst maritime disaster in United States history, as only 153 people survived.
More than 130 years later, marine engineer Tommy Thompson from Ohio discovered the wreckage and walked away with two tons of treasure.
He took millions of dollars and had to go on the run after he neglected to pay investors what he owed. Eventually, the police tracked him down, but he still refused to reveal where he had hidden his loot.
The SS Central America launched in October 1852. The 280-foot vessel was built in the Webb shipyard in New York. It was captained by William Lewis Herndon, a Navy commander and explorer.
Throughout the 1850s, the ship traveled between North and South America. On each trip, it transported gold obtained in the California gold rush.
The ship left port in Panama on September 3, 1857. It was headed to New York with 101 crew members, 477 passengers, and a cargo of more than 30,000 pounds of gold on board. Many of the passengers were gold miners.
But on September 9, the SS Central America got caught in a bad storm off the coast of the Carolinas. The ship was battered by Category 2 hurricane winds for a couple of days until it began to take on water.
“It appears that when the sea had commenced with fury, the ship laid down upon one side, causing her engines to labor heavily from the total immersion of one paddle wheel and increasing the difficulty of passing the coal and firing,” stated a report from January 1858, according to the U.S. Naval Institute.
fergregory – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
“This angle caused the ship to strain heavily at the turn of her bilge, either working the oakum out of her seams or working the timbers apart, causing extraordinary leakage.”
The men worked to bail the ship while the women and children were put aboard lifeboats. The crew also flipped the flag upside down to signal they were in trouble, but no other vessel was able to get close enough to come to the SS Central America’s aid.
On September 12, the ship sank. Only 153 out of 578 people survived the catastrophe. In the years after, treasure hunters combed the Atlantic for the sunken gold. But it wasn’t until over 130 years later that Tommy Thompson rediscovered the lost treasure.
Thompson spent years studying historical records and maritime documents to trace the location where the SS Central America went down. He convinced 161 private investors to fund his expedition. They invested $12 million, and the Columbus America Discovery Group was launched in 1985.
On September 11, 1988, Thompson’s crew used a remotely operated submersible to explore the wreckage of a ship about 200 miles off the coast of South Carolina. Soon enough, they recovered the ship’s bell, which was enough for them to identify the wreck as the SS Central America. A few more dives resulted in heaps of gold.
The team recovered two tons of gold coins and ingots, but still, more was left behind at the bottom of the sea. That amount of gold equated to about $76 million in 2019.
From then on, Thompson found himself in the midst of several legal battles. Many insurance companies claimed that much of the gold belonged to them. Ultimately, the courts awarded 92 percent of the recovered gold to the expedition team.
But in 2005, some of Thompson’s investors sued him for failing to pay back the funds they had put in to his expedition. In 2012, a warrant was put out for his arrest. It ordered him to reveal the location of the gold coins. He went on the run instead.
In 2015, the police tracked him down to a Florida hotel. He had been hiding out with his girlfriend, paying rent in cash, and living under a fake identity.
In 2018, he was ordered to pay $19.4 million to his investors in compensatory damages. However, Thompson still refused to talk. He merely said the coins were in a trust in Belize.
Today, he is in prison, racking up $1,000 in fines each day until he agrees to disclose the treasure’s location.
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