“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.
